Jung-Rauschenbach, Emma (1882-1955)

JUNG-RAUSCHENBACH, EMMA (1882-1955)

Emma Rauschenbach was born on March 30, 1882, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and died on November 27, 1955, in Zurich. Analyst and wife of Carl Gustav Jung, she was the first president of the Psychology Club of Zurich (1916-1919) and vice-president of the Carl Gustav Jung Institute of Zurich (1950-1955).

Although her family came from the upper bourgeoisie and her father was a cultured patron of the arts, she did not receive a higher education. At the age of twenty-one, while visiting Berthe Rauschenbach, Jung, an old friend of Emma's parents, noticed the adolescent Emma. He was so taken by her that he thought, "This is my wife," as he recounted in his memoirs.

They were married on February 14, 1903, and had five children. Emma was one of the rare wives of pioneers to take an interest in her husband's intellectual activities and to participate in his research. As was customary in family psychoanalysis at the time, Jung began to analyze her in 1910. In the six letters that Emma addressed to Freud in late 1911, she displays a subtle comprehension of the unconscious. When she intervened in the foreseeable conflict, she fearlessly and with amazing acuity interpreted Freud's attitude to her husband: "Do we not often give much because we want to keep much?" and she recommended: "Do not think of Carl with a father's feelings . . . but as one man to another, who like you must accomplish his own law." She also confided in him the difficulty of being the wife of a man with whom "all women are naturally in love," while Jung's relationship with Sabina Spielrein was taking an amorous turn and an indestructible bond with his assistant Toni Wolf was forming. Confronted with her husband's infidelities and in spite of the suffering they caused her, she used her intelligence and sensitivity to try to understand him; but more so, she used these traits to understand herself as a woman.

She started work as an analyst in 1930 and left a memory of great qualities as a human being. She undertook a long study of the Grail, published after her death by Marie Louise von Franz who, by integrating it into her own work, unfortunately deprived it of its originality. In 1931 she led a conference at the Psychological Club of Zurich on "The Problem of the Animus," published by Jung in Wirklichkeit der Seele (Reality of the Soul) in 1934. In 1950 she wrote an essay on "The Mythical Representations of the Anima," published in 1955 in the joint work entitled Studien zur Analytischen Psychologie C. G. Jungs (Studies for the Analytical Psychology of C. G. Jung). These two essays dealing with the opposing archetypes of psychic sexuation, the feminine "anima" in the man, and the masculine "animus" in the woman, were brought together a single publication (1957).

The originality of Emma Jung's writings lies in her woman's approach to the female psyche, marking a break with the often sexist works of the pioneers of psychoanalysis. Moreover, her thinking always remained close to her experience as an analyst. When she died, Jung declared: "She had an immense influence of unfathomable depth on my life."

Brigitte Allain-DuprÉ

See also: Animus-Anima (analytical psychology); Jung, Carl Gustav.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund, and Jung, Carl Gustav. (1974). Sigmund Freud-C. G. Jung, Briefwechsel. (1906-13) (W. McGuire and W. Sauerländer Eds.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Hannah, Barbara. (1976). Jung, his life and work: A biographical memoir. New York: Putnam.

Jung, Carl Gustav. (1966). Memories, dreams, reflections. London: Routledge. (Original work published 1962)

Jung, Emma. (1957). Animus and anima. New York : Analytical Psychology Club of New York.

Jung, Emma, and Franz, Marie Louise von. (1971). The grail legend. (Andrea Dykes, Trans.). London: Hodder & Stoughton.