Jung’s stone with inscription

One of the attractive aspects of the Jungian approach is the idea that even in old age we are growing towards realization of our full potential. Most psychological thinking emphasises the decline and disengagement of this life stage, stressing the degenerative changes occurring in the body and the brain, and so the need to keep active and engaged. Whilst Jung didn’t deny elements of decline as we age, he insisted that the goal of this time of life was not senility but rather wisdom. The Jungian Anthony Stevens points out that Jung was not alone with this view as Erik Erikson, child psychoanalyst and writer about psycho-social development – (who incidentally lived until 91) agreed.

Jung’s approach to old age has been criticised as being too influenced by his personal experience, and his great interest in the idea of individuation – becoming the person we are meant to be. Jung saw the task of old age as a time of reflection, for assimilation of the past, a time to search for meaning, and to move towards wholeness. This involves coping with physical and mental limitations, coming to terms with death, and experiencing our co-existence with all of creation. Having said that, Jung continued to work with patients well into his 70s, and worked with people in their sixties and seventies – as indeed many Jungians still do. Jung only closed his practice because it was interfering with his writing. His autobiography he completed at 84.

Jung wrote:

‘From the psychological point of view, life in the hereafter would seem to be a logical continuation of the psychic life of old age. With increasing age, contemplation and reflection, the inner images naturally play an ever-greater part in …life. … In old age one begins to let memories unroll before the mind’s eye and, musing, to recognise oneself in the inner and outer images of the past …’

Jung continues that the inner images keep him from getting lost in personal recollection, where there is a danger of getting too involved in the reconstruction of past events which can imprison us. Rather, reflecting and retrospection can be a way of seeing the path taken in life out into the world, and then out of the world again into life after death.

Jung’s solace in old age was solitude, and the peace of spending more time at Bollingen, the house he spent much time in alongside Lake Zurich. This contrasted with his more extrovert life in the city at Kusnacht. At Bollingen he lived very simply, and the place became the main support of his spiritual life. There was no electricity, telephone or central heating. Water had to be fetched from the well, and food was cooked on a stove for which Jung chopped all the wood himself. In the centre of the house there was a room, which no one was allowed to enter, where he wrote and meditated undisturbed.

In 1950, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, Jung set up a stone cube on the lakeshore, just west of the tower, on one side of the stone there is an inscription:

‘Time is a child – playing like a child – playing a board game – the kingdom of the child. This is Telesphoros*, who roams through the dark regions of this cosmos and glows like a star out of the depths. He points the way to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams.’

The writer Robert Moss has suggested that the message is ‘to play in the spirit of the child, who plays without concern for consequences, because the play is the thing.’  He suggests:      ‘Synchronicity is a child at play, moving pieces on a board. On our side of reality, we see the pieces move, but not the hand that moves them or casts them.’

*Telesphorus – a child-god of healing