ABSTRACT
In C. G. Jung’s psychology the biological mother is important, but behind her stands the primordial Mother. Jung’s mother dominates his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Emilie, in contrast, had two dominant personalities, referred to as such by Jung – one the pleasant, daytime mother. The other the Night Mother who was full of stories about the psychic events in her family, and who herself seemed forbidding and mysterious, full of a dark knowledge not expressed by day. And Emilie keeps this pagan quality throughout her son’s autobiography. What Jung does not mention was that Emilie’s own mother spoke of having two personalities within herself, the Good Monk and the Bad Monk. The degree of sublimation of Emilie Jung’s energies is indicated in the fact that at one point she had to enter a hospital for the treatment of an unspecified illness.
