Labyrinths

July 25, 2016
This book takes as its starting point the observation that although Carl Jung’s ideas did much to shape our understanding of all that is interpersonal, his own most significant relationship has remained largely unexamined. Clay (King, Kaiser, Tsar), a BBC director and producer, suggests that Jung’s wife, Emma, was the driving force behind her husband’s renowned insights. Clay’s narrative displays expert scholarship in drawing on a variety of archival sources, some never used before in a published study. However, her writing is most infused with the spirit of a storyteller, weaving a tale of love, despair, and the psyche in which, predictably, Sigmund Freud makes regular appearances. Such prioritization of story over the intricacies of each source might leave historically inclined readers unsatisfied. And inevitably, this kind of biography will, in spite of its insistent focus on a wife, at times veer more towards the famous husband. Indeed, the survival of Jung’s diary allows his own voice to be directly present while Emma’s is drawn from hearsay. But with its imagery and dramatic tenor, this is a tale within which Jung himself would find many psychoanalytic riches, even as it places some of his greatest innovations at the feet of a fascinating woman.

The making of two psychoanalysts: Carl Jung and his loyal, ever supportive wife.When she was 17, Emma Rauschenbach, the quiet, shy daughter of an "unimaginably wealthy" Swiss business magnate, met the impoverished medical student Carl Jung (1875-1961). Already engaged to a young man from her own class, she refused Jung's first proposal of marriage. But eventually, encouraged by her mother, she was won over by her handsome, intelligent, boisterous, and persistent suitor. Award-winning documentary producer Clay (Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend, 2010, etc.) tries to push Emma to the center of this sympathetic, carefully researched biography, but Emma's volatile, difficult husband intrudes, resulting in a portrait of a troubled marriage and the rivalrous beginnings of psychoanalysis. Clay diagnoses Jung's neurosis as a kind of split personality: a "loud, opinionated, energetic Steam-Roller" Personality 1 alternated with Personality 2, a depressed, neurotic, "inferior wretch" who flew into inexplicable rages; withdrew from family life (the Jungs had five children); and was haunted by disturbing dreams. Confronting her husband's dramatic mood swings was one challenge for Emma; another was his conviction that infidelity was a requirement for a good marriage. Clay chronicles many "infatuations," including notorious liaisons with two deeply unstable patients: Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff. Wolff came to live with the Jungs, with Emma's acquiescence, serving as Carl's "anima figure." Spielrein, Wolff, and Emma herself became analysts, demonstrating the fluid nature of professionalism in early psychoanalysis. Clay maintains that Emma's close involvement in her husband's work provided her analytical training. As is well-known, Freud first considered Jung to be his heir, but Jung came to reject Freud's views and, to Emma's dismay, broke off their relationship. "So we are rid of them at last," Freud wrote to a colleague, "the brutal holy Jung and his pious parrots." Emma forged her own friendship with Freud, often sharing her analysis of her husband and herself. A sensitive biography of a woman whose emotional and intellectual strengths were the ballast of her marriage and family. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2016

Anyone who has read a biography of Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung has to have wondered why his wife, Emma, put up with him. Beautiful, intelligent, filthy rich (and with a marriage contract that ensured that wealth would have reverted to her in case of divorce), Emma endured Carl's dalliances with other women, his periodic breakdowns, his frequent long journeys, and his insistence that his long-term mistress, Toni Wolfe, be given equal status in social situations with his wife. This was while she was raising their five children, maintaining a large household, studying psychoanalysis, and bankrolling the whole circus. Unfortunately, documentarian Clay's (King, Kaiser, Tsar) book fails to answer that question, and Emma herself remains a shadowy figure, stoically suffering along in the shadow of the Great Man. Can there be people who are so self-contained and private that they can't be biographized? Emma may be one; the only other attempt, Imelda Gaudissart's Love and Sacrifice, suffers from the same lack of data. VERDICT For readers already familiar with the Carl Jung bio basics (the autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections and Deidre Bair's Jung: A Biography), this study adds some provocative snippets to our knowledge of the more confessional Carl.--Mary Ann Hughes, Shelton, WA

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