Saturday Memory for July 12, 2025
Saturday Memory
July 12, 2025
When I was in the training program to become a Jungian analyst (in Los Angeles, 1969-1974), the most interesting thing was that the crucial part of my training was not part of the training program at all. The most crucial part of my real training was in a seminar on Zarathustra that was hosted by Hilda Kirch.
Hilda had been in the seminars on Zarathustra that Jung gave between 1934 and 1939. Jung would read from the text of Zarathustra and comment on it, and then the participants would ask questions that Jung would answer, or they would be asked questions by Jung about the material.
Hilda had been deeply affected by the seminars, and she told me it was one of the most important experiences of he life.
The transcript of the seminars (by Mary Foote) was made available to the participants in multigraphed form altogether distributed in 10 volumes. In 1970, when Hilde started the seminar for analyst candidates and others, she let me copy the 10 volumes. It is still a prized possession. The seminars were published in two volumes in 1988 by Princeton University Press as part of the Bollingen Series.
Hilda would read from the text of the seminars, slowly, and comment on both the portions from Zarathustra and Jung’s commentary as well as on the participants’ questions and comments. What was so amazing about this experience of Hilda’s doing this was that almost all participants would report on synchronicities that were occasioned by the seminar. The whole experience was psychoactive in ways that were not characteristic of the training program itself.
There was something “palpable” in the air during these meetings. I think it was some combination of the psychoactive text of Zarathustra, the psychoactive effects of Jung’s deep commentary, and especially Hilde’s psyche, so “alive” with the material from her experience in the original seminars, and then again in doing it her way.
Russ:You know this is my own experience, now going on 4 years with at least another year to go. I see it in Hilde’s spot, reading aloud, feeling our way through this incredible text. When my seminar meets, inevitably a part of the discussion abc reading is because Jung was so impacted by the material and was so close to Nietzsche’s own sensibilities. Even more odd for us now is the parallel between what was then happening in Germany in the mid to late 30s and nearly 100 years later, what is going on in the U.S. every seminar we read deeply impacts all the participants. Though a giant undertaking, it has been worth every moment. Thank you for moving me toward teaching this seminar. Or more accuratlrr er ly, being a member of the seminar as well. I go not feel like any expert, but a grateful participant.
Thank you Russell!!
Somewhat similarly for me, reading the Vision Seminars, especially the first volume of Christina. A few lines of her vision, and then Jung riffing!! I suggest to friends, w a wink of caution, but full on encouragement: “This might break you open, as Jung reinterprets human history, animal life, vegitative life, and more!” I don’t think this is what he actually said in the intro, but I imagine: “This woman was blessed, for she got into a difficult spot, some go thru all their life, and never face themselves!”
I was blessed in the 70s to work w Jane Main in Whittier on my dreams when I visited LA. I wrote down every dream for 4 years, 2900 lines when I typed up the first year. One time we had a 6 hour session. I haven’t yet looked at the other earlier set w a German man in his 40s. Christina was an American in her 30s. Robert Bly would say about my friend Joseph Campbell, “If he’s within 500 miles, go hear him!”
Check out the Visions Seminars! They are transcriptions of his lectures. Juicier than some of his writings IMO. And life changing for me. Like the stories you tell Russell! ??Dan
Thank you for your memory Russ of this most exquisite of Jung’s seminars.
Your memory brings up mine from 1963 when I was utterly captivated by those mimeographed seminars, (which volumes had belonged to Kristine Mann from her attendance), as I read them at the library named for her by the Analytical Psychology Club of New York. In those days the club and library were private so one could read undisturbed any time, all hours.
At that time I was studying Nietzsche with the German professor Eugene Kullmann at The New School for Social Research. Prof. Kullman was academically brilliant — but oh what a contrast from the living voice of CG Jung. Prof. Kullmann would go into a trance, eyes closed and be brilliant whereas Jung’s brilliance was alive and lusty, a most living presence. After classes I would eagerly take the subway each night and read from 10:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m., being transported from the empty club library room to the full club room in Zürich, listening to the voice of Jung as well as the occasional voices of participants — of which, of course, I was one — and at one time responding loudly to his impatient probing, when no one was “getting it”,
“Isn’t there a woman here with a heart connected to her brain?” “Yes! Here I am!”
That enthusiasm was not only youthful but a natural reaction to the evocative atmosphere created by Jung’s approach. His joy, and the passion of his honesty, has remained as a touchstone throughout my life.