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This video shows a collage portrait of Jung, mostly in the second half of his life; it concerns itself with the character of the man, gives an introduction to the main ideas of his work and conveys some feeling for the cultural environment, and the world he worked in and was concerned with.
It is made up, in the main, from interviews with former patients, analysts, friends, grandsons, neighbours, who describe fragments of their own analyses, social memories, or comment on Jung's theories, work and life. Jung himself is seen in generous portions (from the Freeman interview — ‘Face to Face’ — and others) talking on such topics as the nature of the unconscious, its autonomy, the individual's responsibility for his/her own life, the anima/animus, archetypes, transference and psychotherapy.
This documentary is sensational. It catches the feeling of spontaneity and the uniqueness of the subject, and, although it balances the fascination with several lengthy and serious passages of quotation and with sobering commentary, especially from Dr von Franz and Sir Laurens van de Post, the film delights to tell the story of a genius who ‘had this tremendous human, almost animal warmth and immediacy’ and for whom the paranormal was normal and on whom one could rely for the unpredictable. There are tales of telepathy (or at least extraordinary synchronicity), of talking to the spirits, and a description by Dr Frey-Rohn that ‘when you met him in the club, privately, or in analysis, it was always a man interested in … the supernatural food’. Through this emphasis the film gives us some experience of the effect he had on those he met; and whereas we admire Freud for his survival in the face of opposition, here we admire Jung for surviving in the midst of a cult of adoration and for developing his great theories. The film gives us both a taste of the former and an introduction to the latter.
This emphasis has an uplifting effect, and creates a strong bias away from the methodical and towar