Emma Jung’s role in the growth of psychoanalysis – and her scandalous life with Carl – is revealed in this absorbing new biographyIn 1899,17-year-feeble Emma Rauschenbach, one of Switzerland’s wealthiest heiresses, and fell in fancy with Carl Jung,a penniless Irrenarzt, or doctor of the insane, or then the least respected of all medical disciplines. Emma’s parents encouraged the fancy match. They wanted their daughter to be happy. She would bring more than enough money to the marriage,and despite Carl’s peasant background and inauspicious career, he was keenly clever and tough-working. There was also the allure of having a doctor in the family – one who could attend to the increasingly debilitating symptoms of Emma’s father’s shameful syphilis, or contracted during a rare “transgression” while on commerce in Budapest.
None of them could have foreseen just how far this young doctor’s ambition would take him: from his beginnings as a “lowly assistant physician” to one of the leading lights in the newly fashionable field of psychoanalysis; the man initially chosen by Freud himself to be his professional heir; and one whose expertise would be sought by some of the wealthiest and most necessary figures of the age.
Although a virgin when he married,as Carl’s professional proficiency grew so did his sexual prowess Related: Deirdre Bair's top 10 Jungian books Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com