Stung by Jung

Stung by Jung June 26, 2010

I am not a “Jungian” (Carl Jung himself said: “Thank God I’m Jung and not a Jungian”), but I have always been fascinated by the life and work of the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology.

Jung died 20 days before I was born. My birthday present for myself this year was to register for an evening lecture at The Jung Center on the significance of the recently released Liber Novus (The Red Book).

As my son was at Scout Camp and my youngest went with a friend to Galveston for the weekend — I dropped my wife and teen daughter at the movie theater and proceeded to my lecture …

Though this was my Plan A, a Plan B had originated — which was later changed, allowing for the original Plan to proceed.

You see, my wife — on a whim — called a radio station and won two tickets to a concert in The Woodlands for the same night. However, when we found out the seats were on the lawn (y’all, this is Houston in the summer), enthusiasm waned. We gave the tix to others.

Who was performing?

Sting — singer/song writer and former lead singer and bassist of the rock band The Police — with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra on his Symphonicity Tour.

Why do I even mention all of this?

From Wikipedia: “On the cover of The Police’s final album, Synchronicity, which was named after Carl Jung’s theory, Sting is seen reading a book called “Synchronicity” by Carl Jung.

[For those unfamiliar with the concept: Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance. The phenomenon of synchronicity was first described by Carl Gustav Jung in the 1920s.]

About the picture: These figures stand beside my computer in the church office. Freud was given to me as a birthday present, years ago, by Fr Mark Mancuso (whose birthday is the day after mine, June 27th); Jung, I bought a while back. Buzz … a Christmas gift from my son.

Buzz?

Well … sometimes a toy is just a toy.


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