Jung's Attitude During The Second World War In The Light Of The Historical And Professional Context

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung describes how much trouble he had choosing a field of study, so keenly interested was he in all forms of knowledge. At first, he felt drawn to archaeology; then to the natural sciences, such as zoology and biology, but he could not visualize the sort of profession to which they might lead. Only then, rather to his surprise, did he realize he had not thought of practising medicine like his paternal grandfather.

The same question arose when the time came for him to choose a speciality: he liked the idea of becoming a surgeon, but his family's modest means forbade him such an expensive option. It was then, as he delved into the manual of psychiatry by Krafft-Ebing, that he was overwhelmed by an intense emotion as he read that psychoses were ‘diseases of the personality’ and that any psychiatric text was marked by a more or less subjective bias. He knew then that psychiatry would be his chosen path:

Here was the empirical field common to biological and spiritual facts, which I had everywhere sought and nowhere found.

… it was fate. It was as though two rivers had united and in one grand torrent were bearing me inexorably towards distant goals. This confident feeling that I was a ‘united double nature’ carried me as if on a magical wave through the examination, in which I came out at the top. (Jung 1963)