ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how Carl Jung's background, environment and personality, his 'personal equation' moulded and contributed to his theoretical work. Jung was at pains to point out that his personal equation included the fact that he was a European, Swiss, scholar, scientist and psychiatrist, and he was saying all this because he was keenly aware of the impact of socialisation and environment in moulding unconscious perceptions. When reading Jung, one can see that as a commentator on political events he showed an increasingly sophisticated level of political realism. Jung was increasingly concerned that what he perceived as the Freudian stress on sexuality and antipathy to religion would accelerate the drift to secular materialism and that world without religion and faith would be more vulnerable to the demagogues. After the Second World War, he continued to be suspicious of large states and commented on 6th September 1947: 'mass man breeds mass catastrophe.
