Carl Jung - Face to Face (1959) - Special Edition with Newspaper replies and Jung's Letters
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Published 2023-05-28
"[I have to ask] 'Have you read a book I have written within the last 30 years? And did you understand it?'" - Professor Carl Jung, 1960.
Presented here is a historical overview with one of the most-famous interviews of Jung, including the immediate public replies in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and a number of Jung's letters.
The BBC interview's media has been wholly remastered from multiple references/sources: video has been clarified, audio has been completely revised, the whole waveform hand-edited.
In early 1959, producer Hugh Burnett and journalist John Freeman traveled from their Face to Face studio in England, to Switzerland, to interview Carl Jung at his home in Zurich. Shortly after an endearing story about Jung's grandchildren stealing his hat, Freeman asks about spirituality, along these lines: "Did you believe in God when you were young?" Jung: "Oh yes." Freeman: "Do you still believe in God?" Jung: "Difficult to answer. I know. I don't need to believe. I know".
Immediately after the broadcast, replies were published in London in The Observer, The Guardian, Daily Herald, etc., with both delighted and dismissive tones. Talk around the town, and many people wrote the editors. Others wrote to Jung. At the end of this video, I read the articles, letters to the editor, and letters which Jung wrote directly in response about the fallout from the interview.
Dr. Jung expresses frustration at the frequent misunderstanding of his work. Worse still, the intentional disregard. Throughout his life he had patience with those who make demands for reducing complex ideas to simple ideas, as it appears in his two volumes of Letters. In his final years, he expresses fatigue from his continued writing, compounded by the never-ending flow of reductive/ill-informed colleagues and fans, and antagonistic people.
Such antagonism, as tends to come from one-sided people. While researching for this project, we uncovered a surprising fact: Mr. Richardson mentioning Professor Jung, in the Observer, November 1 1959, not in only the one article included in the video, but a second! Twice, in one day! His second article was omitted; he mentions Jung by name, but the article is not about the broadcast: Richardson wrote a gushing positive book review for the autobiography of a Freudian.
The examples set by one-sided people, along with opportunists in social media, we see tribalism of "members of the club", fans of X, regularly mocking Y and fans of Y, etcetera. There is a model of dignity shown in the Face to Face interview, where Dr. Jung extends his professional courtesy to the late Dr. Freud.
We encourage all viewers to read Jung's original writing.
This video is PART TWO of a single project.
PART ONE: an evaluation and analysis on popular interpretation of his writing, study of quotes and ideas that are used in over-simplified formats, that become alterations/distortions, and to get a sense for healthy vitality or pathology of those transformations. It is available here: • Carl Jung's words & writings - I am n...
PART THREE: 2024 on-going, where I create some videos about CW Vol 5: Symbols of Transformation, "CG Jung Speaking", and "Jung Stripped Bare By His Biographers, Even".
0:00 — Introduction
1:08 — Face to Face (Oct 22 1959)
39:11 — Friday Oct 23 1959 - Guardian article, by their TV critic
41:41 — Friday Oct 23 1959 - Daily Herald article, Phil Diack
43:06 — Sunday Oct 25 1959 - Observer article, Maurice Richardson
45:10 — Sunday Nov 1 1959 - Observer article, Maurice Richardson
46:50 — Sunday Nov 1 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, Phoebe Hesketh (to Maurice Richardson)
48:04 — Sunday Nov 8 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, Margaret Knight (to Phoebe Kesketh)
50:36 — Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, (several)
50:45 — Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from (Rev) R. F. Dosseter
52:20 — Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from Phoebe Hesketh (to Margaret Knight)
53:19 — Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from Bernard Campbell (to Margaret Knight)
55:13 — Introduction to Jung's letters
55:38 — Nov 16 1959 — Letter to Valentine Brooke (see Maurice Richardson, Oct 25, also Nov 1)
1:06:13 — Dec 5 1959 — Letter to Hugh Burnett
1:07:49 — Dec 5 1959 — Letter to M. Leonard
1:11:59 — Jun 30 1960 — Letter to Hugh Burnett
1:16:27 — Recommendation of books
Playlists on Jung-related topics
• Carl Jung
• Alchemy Psychology
• Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (audiob...
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#interview #psychology #psychologyfacts #documentary #carljung #wisdom #carljungquotes #alchemy #london #zurich #switzerland
All Comments (21)
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Great job, this is very well done. Informative and well spoken with great research.
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There's just something so magnetic about Jung. There's no going back, once you're into his teachings, you're in for life. 🥰💫
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HUGE Respect to Jung not speaking about Freud’s dreams ❤
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Amazing how sharp mentally he was in his 80s, not even in his first language.
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This is so wonderful and beautiful that it's worth noting and people are not even aware of it. One of the greatest minds in history, presented in this film as a person practically communicating with us, gives the impression of simplicity and some kind of accessibility to all of us. However, behind this lies much more than meets the eye. He communicates with us both verbally and non-verbally. We hear words, can relate to his fate, to some elements of thinking, and yet, on the other hand, his thoughts are at the peaks of human contemplation and creation, so far-reaching and untouchable. This is a great honor, as if we were listening to Plato, Shakespeare, or another giant, but since it's so close to us through this screen, we are not aware of the gift we have listening to Jung. Thank you!
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What a wonderful, humble and unashamedly spiritual man Jung is!
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How fortunate we are to have men like him on film..to know for sure exactly what he said..think of all the historical figures we are forced only to know through writings possibly corrupted by translations and time
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one of the best uses of you tube
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What an extraordinary and beautifull soul.
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This is like the third time I have listened to this discussion with Jung, what wonderful insights about understanding our nature. “The greatest danger to Man is himself” wow
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When one remembers this was recorded in the 1950s, this is still so current. What a Bright and Gentleman 🙏♥️🙏
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So wonderful to see this interview. Jung's book, memories, dreams and reflections was instrumental for me in providing a framework with which I could make sense of experiences I was having at the age of 14-15. Ultimately becoming a catalyst for a dive into occult knowledge ... meaning hidden. Carl Jung remains as one of the giants in my life. Thank you for sharing this upload.❤
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This is such a lovely compilation of some historical moments. I almost feel I was the one talking to Jung, touching and understanding his thoughts. Would be great he is still available to us today to chat more in depth on many things that he probably didn't want to talk fearing to stir up the crowd.
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Beautiful interview, even now after many years. Wisdom combined with science is growth in a beautiful way. Science without wisdom is poor, narrow minded and deeply ignorant missing and excluding important faculties of mankind and therefore even dangerous
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What a beautiful video you have put out there! Love this part on Freud, "When he has thought something then it was settled, while I was doubting all along the line." Make me think to this quote by Bertrand Russell: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
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Thank you so much for posting this video. I didn't expect that today I would be confronted with such thought-provoking information. What a joy!
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This was an opening of mind-blowing conversations. What an enormous contribution you have given with these letters. It was as if the voice of Jung was walking alongside me. "Do you remember of your consciousness of your own individual self?" "That was in my 11th year, I was own my way to school, I stepped out of a mist, it was as if I had been in a mist walking in a mist, and I stepped out of it and I knew, I am, I am. What am I? And then I thought I was that happened in the mist, not knowing to defferriate myself from the things I was that happened in the midst not knowing to defferiate myself from things was just one among many things." 🙏❤️🌎🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
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You have done a very good, possibly a great thing through your presentation and curation of this content. Herr Professor Jung, in my modest judgment is the most consequential thinker of the 20th century. Anything that brings him more fully into our lives is manna.
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"We are the origin of all coming evil" love this!
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Another great soul ❤️
