ABSTRACT
While on a trip to Zürich, I decided it would be important to visit Jung’s boyhood homes in various parts of Switzerland to get some sense of his early experiences. Unplanned and with time to just wander, I traveled about an hour north to locate the vicarage at Laufen above Rheinfall, where Jung spent most of the first four years of his life. The home and church are impressively preserved and located in a historic park surrounding the roaring waterfalls of the Rhine. The home is the place where Jung had the haunting dream of the phallus and where he ran from the priest in the black cloak on the country road. After spending a few hours taking in the setting around the home and falls, I then traveled to Kleinhüningen near Basel, where Jung lived from age five until he was 21. Unlike the vicarage, the home is in an area overrun by urbanization, yet the house and large yard are still there and fairly well kept. There is a small plaque with Jung’s name on the front of the house and it was occupied by multiple families; there was some graffiti scribbled in large letters on the side of the house that, strangely enough, read, “Sex Sex.” As I stared at the house, I wondered about his life there and if the hand-carved mannequin, his secret figure, might still be undisturbed on an attic rafter where he secretly placed it more than a hundred years ago. Staring at the yard and courtyard on the side of the house, I thought about the teenager who got into fights and lit fires in the rock walls that still line the yard. At the end of the day back near my hotel in Küsnacht, I happened upon Jung’s family grave in a local cemetery. The day’s theme had been a reflection on the cycle of one’s life from birth to death and it left me wondering more about the man rather than the image and myth I had studied for years.
