And he had replaced her with Toni Woolf, a new patient and lover. Was Jung working through his own complicated love life? He had just ended a passionate affair with a young Russian patient, Sabina Spielrein, who, when rejected, ratted him out to Freud and then became Freud’s patient and ultimately an analyst herself. Jung fantasized a dangerous, erotic blind young woman he called Salome who traveled with a wise man, Philomon. Was this a precognitive vision of the World War that was soon to break out in Europe? Rivers of blood covered Europe in one of Jung’s visions. I know Heraclitus wasn't right about everything being fire, does that mean that I won't get anything out of reading him? Hell no.What caused Carl Jung to dare his remarkable experiment? Was it because active imagination was the next step in his exploration of the Self, a choice? Or was it, as some say, the expression of an unavoidable breakdown?
This knee-jerk reaction is short sighted and unnecessarily emotional, I feel. It is akin to saying that Newton is irrelevant, just because we "know better" now about some aspects of his work. Some of Freud's theories have later been developed into more complex systems of thought that we still operate with. "Das Unbehagen in der Kultur" still offers lots of insight. He has a lot more to offer, but for some reason I doubt most people have read, or are even aware of, Freud as a cultural critic for example. As if psychology or even psychotherapy was such a reliable hard science, as if Freud only wrote about the anal phase and dream interpretation. On the topic of Freud: I think it's pretty embarrassing when people try to write him off with "He's been disproven countless times! He is not relevant for modern science anymore!". Who is this Carl Jung? Probably just some obscurantist esoteric who goes on long rambles with no substance! (Oh wait, I just described the most important philosopher of the 19th century, can you guess who it is?)
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