‘C.G. Jung: Retrospect’

36 page manuscript book, written out in black Chinese ink with gouache illustrations on mould-made paper, light green Zerkall endpapers, bound in yellow card with a yellow Khadi paper cover. Completed in 2020. Text reproduced with permission of the Jung Foundation

I have made a number of pieces using this text, which comprises the final chapter from Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I was pleased to have found a few sheets of mould-made paper in a delicate shade of green from the collection that passed to me on the death of Margaret Daubney. It has quite a rough surface, but still satisfying to write on using a larger nib than I would normally employ.

I particularly like the sentiment which Jung expresses at the end of this extract, writing as an old man, where he says that ‘the alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity [my emphasis] with myself.’ That notion of an ‘unfamiliarity with myself’ inverts the conventional perception that, however much one puzzles about life, at least in older age one knows oneself better.

In fact, like Jung, the opposite seems to me to be the case: the person we once thought ourselves to be no longer seems to exist in quite the same way - and, perhaps more importantly, does not appear to be of any particular consequence.