Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Florida Scott Maxwell. Early Memories of Jung
Inward Light vol. 36 no. 83 (Spring 1973) : 30-34
note: paragraphs numbered, to ease transcription and referencing.
- I was analyzing with H. Godwin Baynes, note belowDr. H. Godwin Baynes, who was the leading Jungian analyst in London, and to whom I had been sent by Dr. Jung. It must have been the second year of the analysis. Dr. Baynes had decided in the first year that I must become an analyst, but at that time no form of teaching analysis had been thought out. Dr. Baynes took me as closely into his own work as was possible, explaining his cases, working on the dreams, doing much reading, and of course continuing with my own analysis
- I was in my late forties then, and some twelve years before had, for a year and a half, very unusual experiences that gave me deep insight into the Collective Unconscious. It was because of this that Dr. Baynes said my life had already half trained me to be an analyst. I had never been to a university, but Dr. Jung said analyzing was an art, and that he approved of lay analysts. I felt it was way beyond me, and beyond my understanding, though reading Dr. Jung was reading something very natural for me.
- I had a dream of sitting at a very large table, that was somehow magnificent, perhaps it was of marble. I was writing with great concentration on large sheets of paper which I then pushed under soft piles of grey chiffon. grandfather — so-far unsuccessful attempts to identify My grandfather, in whose house I had spent my childhood, stood just behind my left shoulder, and in his soft, benign voice dictated what I wrote. It was a dream that made Dr. Baynes suggest that I do automatic writing.
- I protested, as I had once known a silly woman who often did what she called automatic writing, and when she read it to me, as she insisted on doing, I found it meaningless. I did not want to resemble [31] her in any way. Dr. Baynes thought it advisable for me to try it, and explained that I should just sit at a table, when alone of course, with a pencil in my hand, and my right arm relaxed to the elbow lying on the table, as though it was not mine. Next day I tried it and was surprised that a few broken sentences came. One was about Isis and a curtain that was split, that is all I remember, and I disliked it and stopped. Next day I tried again and only a word came, then nothing. I waited, and at last wrote down the one word; at once another word came, and when I wrote down that another word came. It began to take on meaning and I was deeply impressed. It took two days I think, then came to a coherent end. There was authority in every word. There was authority in every word.
- Dr. Baynes was a little dismayed, and said: “It’s too big.” A few weeks later he told me that Dr. Jung was due in London for a series of lectures and many people were asking for private sessions. No one, as I remember, could have more than half an hour, but he had secured an appointment for me.
- Dr. Jung was to use Dr. Baynes’ consulting room, where I want often. It was a large room with three windows reaching from ceiling to floor. Dr. Baynes always sat at the far corner to the right, and one entered by a very heavy mahogany door in the centre of the inner wall. I had opened the door countless times, but when I went to see Dr. Jung a great rush of wind snatched it out of my hand and blew me with a rush into the centre of the room. I stood still, much mortified, and glanced at Dr. Jung busy cleaning his pipe, but looking up in astonishment at the rush of my entrance. What was it? Real wind? All gone now. My whole unconscious? My inflation?
- I bowed to Dr. Jung, went and closed the door, then meekly walked to him and said: “Dr. Baynes wishes me to read some automatic writing.” Dr. Jung nodded toward the chair facing him, and I sat down and read the few pages confidently and simply, for they were sensible, part of a world that had come to me, and made more sense than my ordinary life in a very old Scotch house with its conventions and problems, and its blankness now that my four children were all away at boarding school, or training, even working.
- When I finished reading I looked at Dr. Jung, and was surprised to see that he was moved, and when he spoke his voice was full of [32] awe. “Remarkable,” he said, “most remarkable. The Animus at its highest point.”
- I had childishly hoped that he would explain, make it all more simple. He asked a few questions about my life, said that my background was so alien that there had been this uprush from the Collective Unconscious. Then a few more questions which I must have answered naively, for he became almost angry and pointing to a heavily upholstered chair said: “Would you be surprised to see that chair rise to the ceiling and stick there?”
- I was asonished by this question, and said, “Yes, naturally.” He became slightly more vehement, and said, “Why? It would not be half as astonishing as what you tell me as though they were the most natural things in the world.” A pause, and the great honesty in his eyes still holding me, he went on: “You live with marvels and do not know it. You must learn to relate to this ordinary world, and then you will not be so simple about this inner world.”
- Just then came a knock on the door, the next patient was waiting, and I bowed and went down the stairs feeling very foolish. I had expected greatness and mystery to be made simple, and he had made life greater, then scolded me like a child. I was half laughing with humility and bewilderment; walked out on to the street, looked about me and thought, “This is the ordinary world, how do I learn to know it?” As I crossed the street, a heavy lorry came so near that I made a great leap, and only just reached the safety of the pavement.
- The next incident must have been some years later after I had been to Zurich, worked with Miss Toni Wolff, attended all Dr. Jung’s seminars, and had a few personal sessions with him, Miss Wolff always reporting on my analysis to him.
- I was continuing my work with Dr. Baynes, taking some of his patients, and I was least the beginning of an analyst. Dr. Jung was again in London, and he was to meet all the analysts, some from out of town, about fourteen in all. For the first time I was to join the group. They were doctors, and there was only one other lay analyst, a man. Dr. Jung followed his frequent practice of answering one written question sent in advance by each of those attending.
- [33]
Why I had not discussed my question with Dr. Baynes I cannot now remember. He had an illness about that time, and this may have prevented his giving advice. What I wanted to ask was — ‘Who am I?’ I did have the sense to see that on my first appearance as an analyst I could not ask that. In analysis — are two ever the same? — I had been told not to identify with the persona, the social mask, and I had a marked on which had been built up to protect my many uncertainties, caused by very real difficulties. Very well, I was not my persona, or my persona was not me. consistent with Florida Pier’s recurring idea of the male in the woman, and the woman in the male.I must not identify with the animus, who was usually considered the inferior man in the woman, although I had found him divinely superior. I must not identify with the animus, who was usually considered the inferior man in the woman, although I had found him divinely superior. Animus was a term of opprobrium used frequently about women. So I must not be the animus, though he seemed part of all women. Of course, I was not the Self, though the term gave one hope that there was a connection. The Self was the subject of much of Dr. Jung’s later writing. It was an Archetype, the Archetype of Order. You might experience the Self, but the connection between the Self and your self is like most of life, mysterious. - I was conscious, but not as much as I should have been. My conscious side did not seem to be very conscious, and the unconscious is called that because we are literally unconscious of the larger part of our total psyche. Both together were, presumably you. Is this not justification for wanting to ask who was meant when the analyst said “You —” and expected you to take responsibility for the charges he made. You were you, you were that to whom the things that happened, happened; yet it felt as though you had no limits, or outline.
- I was wanting Dr. Jung’s whole theory of individuation, without knowing it.
- Now, at nearly ninety, through some of the difficult last years that teach one so much, detachment among them, the pain and suffering accepted, the sense of solidity they give noted, one is almost indifferent to who one is. It seems a small matter. Live a lifetime, and we learn that we are part of order and meaning, mystery and contradiction. Is our travail and our joy not the evolution of mankind? And is that not enough?
But those are thoughts.Now, at nearly ninety, through some of the difficult last years that teach one so much, detachment among them, the pain and suffering accepted, the sense of solidity they give noted, one is almost indifferent to who one is. It seems a small matter. Live a lifetime, and we learn that we are part of order and meaning, mystery and contradiction. Is our travail and our joy not the evolution of mankind? And is that not enough? - But those are thoughts. The facts that evening long ago were that as I entered Dr. Bayne’s consulting room I saw that everyone was dressed as though straight from work. I wore a long black skirt with [34] short, graceful train, correct in those days, and a soft blue chiffon blouse, simple, but not workmanlike. Dr. Jung stood near me and I went up to him, and to my utter astonishment curtsied, a slight dip of the knee. I had not curtsied since I was a child, when it was ordinary good behavior. But lately I had seen much of a Belgian woman, old, almost penniless, an aristocrat, the women of whose family had a right to act in turn as Lady in Waiting to the Queen; but she, known to be poor, had not I think been called. Her charm was her utter simplicity, and part of her grave good manners was that she always gave her little dip when she left a room and when she entered. This may explain why I did the same on entering the room and meeting Dr. Jung, but I was frozen when he neither bowed nor spoke, but scowled and turned away as though saying, “What nonsense is this?” Greatness brings out littleness in others, and he had doubtless learned how to protect reality.
- We sat down, all analysts now, and Dr. Jung turned to a small table beside him on which were a pile of cards. I saw that mine was the one on top, and so the first to be read. It was, of course, signed.
- He looked at it for a moment or two, and everyone waited. My persona sat calmly in its chair, while I hid in a black pit of discouragement. Dr Jung shook his head as though completely out of patience, read out the four words: “What is the Self?” Then, having summoned patience, he said: “This question is so simple that it is impossible to answer.”
- As reply, into the air, he said in a voice of true kindness: “Read the first ten Upanishads.”
- I did, of course. They did not help at all. They do now.
—
The author has written several plans and books, including Women and Sometimes Men (in paperback) and The Measure of My Days. She practiced as an analyst in Scotland and in England.
notes
H. Godwin Baynes (1882-1943), physician, army officer, analytical psychologist and author, who was a friend and early translator into English of Carl Jung. Mythology of the Soul : A Research into the Unconscious from Schizophrenic Dreams and Drawings (1940)
wikipedia : link
digitallibraryindia (via archive.org) : link