C.G. Jung: The Wisdom of the Dream - Part 1: A Life of Dreams
First in a three-part series of films produced by PBS, on the life and works of the great thinker and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. Part one provides an overview of the major contributions made by Jung in his long career. Born on July 26, 1875, in Switzerland, Jung became interested in psychiatry during his medical studies.
He saw that the minds of mentally deranged persons had similar contents, much of which he recognized from his own interior life, described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. His lifelong quest to understand the workings of the psyche led him to develop the analytical method of psychiatry.
He proceeded by looking at the role in his patients' lives of what he termed the personal and collective unconscious, as expressed through dreams, myths, and outer events. With film clips, photographs, and interviews with some of his colleagues, as well as with Jung himself, the story of one of the most important figures of the 20th century is told.
In this first film, as throughout the series, unprecedented access to Jung's family house near Zurich, with his library and consulting room, and to his famous retreat, the lakeside Tower at Bollingen on Lake Zurich, have enabled the producers to refer Jung's biographical story with exactly appropriate visual references. In addition, a major English-language interview with Jung, recorded in 1956 and never previously transmitted on television, forms a substantial element within the series; besides various previously undiscovered home-movies shot during Jung's travels in Africa and elsewhere.