[Stephen Gerringer]

Robert – one more tantalizing clue re Jung’s vision of “Philemon,” and Goethe’s Faust:

C.G. Jung’s grandfather and namesake, Dr. Med. Carl Gustav I Jung (or sometimes Karl Gustav I Jung – his grandson, “our” Jung, was officially christened Karl Gustav II Jung and used that spelling until he graduated from the University of Basel) had a promising career in Berlin as a physician, but as a result of his liberal associations was arrested in 1819 and jailed for 13 months. Unemployable in Germany, who became a starving political refugee in Paris, where according to family lore the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt sat at the same park bench one day and started a conversation. Upset at Jung’s plight, impressed with his scientific knowledge, he secured  a position for him at the University of Basel’s medical school – which is how the Jung’s became Swiss.

Carl Gustav the elder is a fascinating figure who believed himself to be the illegitimate son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – which would make C.G. Jung Goethe’s great-grandson. Deirdre Bair (author of my favorite of many Jung biographies) notes that C.G. Jung read Faust when he was 16, and that all the inner figures that later emerged came from Faust.