ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and discuss Jung's confrontation with that fundamental world openness phenomenologists call intentionality. It forms a bridge between considerations of Jung's method and theories, between the way of seeing and what he saw and thought. Primarily descriptive, it is an enquiry into the place and significance of psychological life as Jung experienced it, the task here is to discover an experiential and descriptive base from which to address Jung's thought. Jung's experience in Africa provides such a base. It is relatively unspoiled by theoretical and philosophical reflection, and it is Jung's only concrete description of the goal of individuation and a consciousness that has attained that goal. Described most extensively in his autobiography, it thus makes excellent data for phenomenological analysis. It is seen that Jung's experience in Africa radically challenged the European identity, and it exposed an existential tension that his conceptual thought was unable adequately to heal, except perhaps near the end of life.
