Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / A Jungian Sense of Place: Bollingen and The Tower on the Marsh
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I think what's interesting about Jung's sort of psycho-architectural history,
- 0:04Speaker 1: if you like, is that the prototypes, if you like,
- 0:09Speaker 1: or the typologies of Bollingen, which you might consider as
- 0:15Speaker 1: the cell, the castle, the tower, are all associated with very,
- 0:21Speaker 1: very potent what you might call animations, anima encounters. So
- 0:27Speaker 1: I think that's To me, rather enchanting how this other,
- 0:33Speaker 1: in his case, saint animal, feminine, is just present at
- 0:38Speaker 1: these kind of key architectural moments as much as emotional moments.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
- 0:51Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
- 0:55Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
- 0:58Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
- 1:04Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
- 1:08Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
- 1:13Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
- 1:28Speaker 4: it's a wonderful treat to have two guests talking about
- 1:35Speaker 4: Jung and towers, and Jung's analisand, Christiana Morgan, who was
- 1:43Speaker 4: inspired by Jung's tower in Bowlingon and built her own
- 1:46Speaker 4: tower on the marsh in Newburyport, Massachusetts. So let me
- 1:53Speaker 4: tell you a little bit about Martin and about Hillary.
- 1:58Speaker 4: Martin is an architect, and he's a former senior lecturer
- 2:04Speaker 4: in England at the University of Bath. And he also
- 2:08Speaker 4: holds a master's degree in Jungian studies from Essex University.
- 2:13Speaker 4: And he's combined both of his incredible interests in architecture
- 2:17Speaker 4: and Jung's tower and other places in Jung's life where
- 2:23Speaker 4: architecture and a sense of place influenced Jung so strongly.
- 2:29Speaker 4: And Jung's Tower is a sort of an application of
- 2:33Speaker 4: a lot of his ideas, the symbolic and the spiritual.
- 2:38Speaker 4: He's given lots of lectures in Jungian communities around the world.
- 2:43Speaker 4: And this book, which I'm about to mention, please order it,
- 2:49Speaker 4: is the culmination of 12 years of work. It was
- 2:53Speaker 4: the subject of his master's thesis and his PhD thesis.
- 2:58Speaker 4: And it is absolutely fascinating and a unique contribution to
- 3:03Speaker 4: the body of work about Jung because it deals with place, buildings,
- 3:09Speaker 4: influences as a substrate of Jung's work. The name of
- 3:14Speaker 4: the book is The Bollingen Tower, Constructing a Jungian Sense
- 3:20Speaker 4: of Place by Martin Gledhill, spelled just like it sounds.
- 3:24Speaker 4: And we'll put the title in the show notes. And
- 3:27Speaker 4: we also have a friend from the past who has
- 3:31Speaker 4: been on a podcast almost two years ago, Hilary Morgan,
- 3:36Speaker 4: who came on to tell us about her grandmother's tower
- 3:41Speaker 4: that I mentioned, Christiana Morgan's Tower on the Marsh. Hilary
- 3:47Speaker 4: is Christiana's granddaughter, and she is a filmmaker who has
- 3:53Speaker 4: made a film well worth watching if you haven't done
- 3:55Speaker 4: so already. You can see it online at www.towerofdreamsdoc.com. So
- 4:05Speaker 4: look that up for sure. Hillary's made documentaries for many years,
- 4:12Speaker 4: literally all over the world, for PBS and National Geographic.
- 4:17Speaker 4: And this film, about the Tower on the Marsh, she
- 4:20Speaker 4: made in 2019. Having had a long interest, in her
- 4:27Speaker 4: grandmother's work and the very unique aspects of her grandmother's tower.
- 4:34Speaker 4: So we're going to see where all this conversation takes us.
- 4:40Speaker 4: And Martin, I have lifted some things from your book.
- 4:47Speaker 4: So here's what I'm thinking about. Everything that a building
- 4:51Speaker 4: can be, a building can transform. The idea of psychic place.
- 4:57Speaker 4: and formative place, a real and imagined place, an archetypal place,
- 5:05Speaker 4: a dream place. And you discuss all these multivalent aspects
- 5:12Speaker 4: of Bollingen, von Franz's tower, the Morgan Tower in your book.
- 5:17Speaker 5: So where do we start?
- 5:21Speaker 1: Probably by honoring... Jung and Christiana just, you know, and
- 5:26Speaker 1: von Franz says, what a thing to do, to create
- 5:31Speaker 1: this place, this place that was more than, well, more
- 5:36Speaker 1: than a place, wasn't it, really? It was a kind
- 5:38Speaker 1: of place of soul, place of the self for all
- 5:41Speaker 1: of them in very different ways. But yeah, incredible, an
- 5:48Speaker 1: incredible act, really. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Christiana. Thank you, Marie-Louise.
- 5:56Speaker 4: I'm remembering that you said, you know, there were in
- 5:59Speaker 4: the book about how there were all these stages of
- 6:02Speaker 4: building the tower. And then in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung's memoir,
- 6:10Speaker 4: he talks about the stages as having begun with the
- 6:15Speaker 4: idea of repose and renewal.
- 6:18Speaker 5: And then in.
- 6:19Speaker 4: The first round tower, that has the kitchen in it,
- 6:24Speaker 4: very primitive, but that that's the maternal hearth. And then
- 6:29Speaker 4: an area later on, he kept adding to it, the
- 6:33Speaker 4: area of retirement, a place where he could.
- 6:35Speaker 5: Go by himself.
- 6:37Speaker 4: And then finally a need for a larger space, so
- 6:41Speaker 4: he constructed a courtyard and a loggia, which is sort
- 6:45Speaker 4: of just outside but has a roof. Finally, at the
- 6:49Speaker 4: very end, after his wife Emma had died, he put
- 6:53Speaker 4: a top part on it that he said had to
- 6:56Speaker 4: do with his— represented his ego personality.
- 7:01Speaker 5: So this is a.
- 7:02Speaker 4: Pretty psychological endeavor. It was never like what I imagine
- 7:08Speaker 4: many people do when they just, you know, build a house.
- 7:12Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I suppose— I feel really uncomfortable criticizing MDR,
- 7:18Speaker 1: but I'm going to do it anyway. I think one
- 7:21Speaker 1: of the key points that he makes, which is not
- 7:25Speaker 1: a criticism, it's a sort of honoring, is that the
- 7:29Speaker 1: interpretations he makes, or Jaffe made, because probably that chapter
- 7:34Speaker 1: was not written by Jung, occurred to him latterly. He
- 7:40Speaker 1: wasn't working in the first instance, apart from maybe the
- 7:43Speaker 1: primitive the first tower from an overtly psychic manifesto you
- 7:50Speaker 1: know the patterns kind of emerged you might say naturally
- 7:54Speaker 1: and I suppose why which is the critical bit why
- 8:00Speaker 1: I find the MDR account a little bit problematic A
- 8:05Speaker 1: is it's very brief it conflates different stages so you
- 8:10Speaker 1: might say it's kind of inaccurate but it I think
- 8:13Speaker 1: whenever we say something is, when you're working symbolically, I
- 8:20Speaker 1: don't think we could say that. Do you know what
- 8:22Speaker 1: I mean? That I think evokes or, you know, I
- 8:25Speaker 1: know it sounds a bit pernickety, but I think maybe
- 8:29Speaker 1: that's why he never spoke so extensively about the tower,
- 8:33Speaker 1: that it's inexplicable in a sense, or it cannot be reduced,
- 8:39Speaker 1: if you like, to this equals that. So that's my
- 8:45Speaker 1: sense of MDR, but it's only actually two pages long,
- 8:47Speaker 1: the description of the tower.
- 8:49Speaker 5: Well, I think it's so interesting how the towers were
- 8:55Speaker 5: places that were never complete. The whole sense that it's
- 8:59Speaker 5: not a finished product, that it's something that sort of
- 9:05Speaker 5: always perplexed me a great deal because early on in
- 9:09Speaker 5: researching the project, at least about my grandmother's tower, I
- 9:13Speaker 5: read somewhere that Harry Murray, her partner of 40 years,
- 9:17Speaker 5: he came to visit two years before he died. And
- 9:20Speaker 5: as he walked up to the place, he said that
- 9:23Speaker 5: the tower was a place that was never complete. It
- 9:26Speaker 5: was always an ongoing, unfinished product. And having grown up
- 9:30Speaker 5: next door to the tower in a rustic cabin and
- 9:34Speaker 5: having visited a lot, I didn't really understand how it
- 9:37Speaker 5: could be that a place that had had so much
- 9:40Speaker 5: work and seemed like a completed project to me was
- 9:44Speaker 5: an ongoing, uncompleted building. And then I started to study
- 9:49Speaker 5: Jung and then realized, ah, it's a symbol for the
- 9:54Speaker 5: individuation process and that it's always ongoing, that one is
- 9:58Speaker 5: always searching for wholeness and that the similarity of the
- 10:01Speaker 5: buildings and the psyche are parallel in that whole process.
- 10:08Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really good point, isn't it? Because I suppose,
- 10:11Speaker 1: you know, the account in MTR positions the ego personality as,
- 10:15Speaker 1: and I think you said something like, and I declared
- 10:19Speaker 1: it complete, or, you know, that was both geometrically, you know,
- 10:23Speaker 1: it was a triangle, but also kind of psychologically. I'm
- 10:27Speaker 1: not so sure Jung would have said that, actually, which
- 10:30Speaker 1: is developing your point that it's complete at that moment,
- 10:34Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's a restless place, isn't it?
- 10:38Speaker 1: It's a restless place in terms of its kind of
- 10:41Speaker 1: spiritual ambience, but also its kind of architecture is... absolutely
- 10:47Speaker 1: wonderfully iterative, isn't it? You know, it's always added to,
- 10:51Speaker 1: subtracted to. And I just love that about it.
- 10:55Speaker 5: Well, I was curious, too, to understand how you spoke
- 10:58Speaker 5: about bullying and being a wish and the tower being
- 11:03Speaker 5: a plot. I was curious if you could explain that
- 11:07Speaker 5: a little bit.
- 11:08Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. This sounds really pretentious, but I'm
- 11:13Speaker 1: going to say it anyway.
- 11:14Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 11:15Speaker 1: That I think when I was writing the book, there
- 11:19Speaker 1: was a point when I felt as it was writing itself.
- 11:22Speaker 1: And so you get these kind of accidents of language.
- 11:26Speaker 1: Plot just occurred to me. I mean, plot can be
- 11:29Speaker 1: read as place content, but also a theatrical plot. And
- 11:34Speaker 1: so I've lost the point that you made, Hilary.
- 11:37Speaker 5: Oh, it was the quote about Bullingham being a wish
- 11:41Speaker 5: and the tower being a plot.
- 11:44Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:44Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 11:45Speaker 1: I'm not sure I remember writing that, actually. But I
- 11:49Speaker 1: think Jung's... Well, I know that Jung's great-grandson, Daniel Baumann,
- 11:55Speaker 1: who has been very helpful, and I share his conviction.
- 11:58Speaker 1: I think Jung always wanted a tower. He was always
- 12:02Speaker 1: wishing for a tower. You know, right from his youth,
- 12:05Speaker 1: his building games. So I think it was embodied in him.
- 12:09Speaker 1: But I think that the... plot aspect of it does
- 12:13Speaker 1: a little bit come out in the house well I
- 12:15Speaker 1: call the house dream but I think Debs you call
- 12:18Speaker 1: the two skull dreams that it's a story that's adapted
- 12:23Speaker 1: and it's sort of keeping track with the tower so
- 12:28Speaker 1: I have this slight sense that the tower is suggesting
- 12:31Speaker 1: you know if you sort of personify the tower if
- 12:34Speaker 1: you like is suggesting ideas and work and Jung sort
- 12:39Speaker 1: of feeding back and sort of plotting its kind of evolution.
- 12:45Speaker 1: Does that make any sense? You know, there's a... You
- 12:48Speaker 1: wouldn't say it's under Stark as curating it, but I
- 12:51Speaker 1: think he's very alert to accidents and he sort of
- 12:57Speaker 1: configures them into his work and into that place. You know,
- 13:03Speaker 1: the classic one is what I call the filament stone.
- 13:06Speaker 1: You know, the accident of the arrival of the cube.
- 13:10Speaker 1: So I think... I think it is constructed in the
- 13:15Speaker 1: widest sense. Does that make sense? That it's narrated, it's constructed,
- 13:22Speaker 1: and retrospectively MDR is part of that construction, which can be... Oh,
- 13:29Speaker 1: that's interesting.
- 13:31Speaker 4: That the MDR construction about the tower, the story of
- 13:36Speaker 4: the tower, it is constructed. just as the tower was constructed,
- 13:44Speaker 4: but not in an entirely sort of cerebral or planned way.
- 13:51Speaker 4: It kept adding to itself in a way like a dream.
- 13:56Speaker 4: And I just want to fill in for listeners the
- 14:00Speaker 4: reference to Jung's dream that, you know, in my association
- 14:07Speaker 4: with Jungians, we always call it the two skulls dream.
- 14:10Speaker 4: And in the index, it's called something altogether different, which
- 14:15Speaker 4: really made me laugh about it. They call it the
- 14:19Speaker 4: multi-storied house, which is in fact what it is. And
- 14:23Speaker 4: the dream is that he's in the upper story of
- 14:27Speaker 4: a living room, basically with fine old pieces in a
- 14:31Speaker 4: Rococo style with oil paintings and so on. And Jung,
- 14:36Speaker 4: as the dreamer, thinks to himself, not bad. Then he
- 14:39Speaker 4: decides to go down a floor. Let's see what that
- 14:41Speaker 4: looks like. And down he goes. And that's a story
- 14:46Speaker 4: that dated from the 15th or 16th century with medieval
- 14:50Speaker 4: furnishings and red brick floors. And then he says to
- 14:55Speaker 4: himself in the dream, oh, gosh, now I've really got
- 14:57Speaker 4: to go look at what's in the rest of the house.
- 15:01Speaker 4: He comes on the heavy door. He goes down another stair.
- 15:04Speaker 4: There's stone and brick and so on. And then he's
- 15:07Speaker 4: at a level that dated back where the walls dated
- 15:10Speaker 4: from Roman times. So he says, well, now my interest
- 15:15Speaker 4: was intense. And he looks even more closely, and he
- 15:18Speaker 4: sees that on the floor, there is a stone slab
- 15:22Speaker 4: with a ring to lift it. And again, a stairway,
- 15:26Speaker 4: but this time very narrow stone steps and a low cave.
- 15:31Speaker 4: And there on a dirt floor, very, very old, are
- 15:36Speaker 4: two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated, and
- 15:40Speaker 4: he awoke. And so thinking about Jung's life, how he
- 15:48Speaker 4: rendered some of these ideas into actuality with Bollingen, that
- 15:55Speaker 4: it links the above, the towers that go up, with
- 16:01Speaker 4: what the depths of psyche are, even though the house
- 16:04Speaker 4: itself does not contain a basement because it's so close
- 16:08Speaker 4: to Lake Zurich.
- 16:10Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I mean, again, this is a hypothesis. Well,
- 16:16Speaker 1: I mean, who can say about truth? But I think
- 16:20Speaker 1: the discovery of the Napoleonic soldier, the great, you know,
- 16:25Speaker 1: the skeleton is wonderfully serendipitous, isn't it? Because it does
- 16:30Speaker 1: add that forgotten layer. And actually, when you go into
- 16:35Speaker 1: the first tower, the ground floor is quite different to
- 16:40Speaker 1: the upper floor. You know, it's almost grading. And he admits,
- 16:44Speaker 1: doesn't he, that even as they were building it, they
- 16:46Speaker 1: were moving beyond the primitive, if you like. But I
- 16:51Speaker 1: think it's just how wonderful that you might say forgotten
- 16:55Speaker 1: events somehow surfaced to kind of cooperate with his dreams.
- 17:00Speaker 1: So that's one point. The second point, I mean, Freud
- 17:03Speaker 1: interpreted the dream as a sort of death wish. And
- 17:06Speaker 1: that death wish, Jung sort of camouflaged by suggesting that
- 17:11Speaker 1: it was towards Emma and her sister, Gret, because that
- 17:17Speaker 1: was during the period of marital difficulties. But actually, he
- 17:21Speaker 1: was thinking and beginning to diverge from Freud. So who
- 17:24Speaker 1: can say what a dream sounds? But he does adapt
- 17:27Speaker 1: that dream a lot. There's four versions of it. And
- 17:31Speaker 1: then in the last telling in Man and His Symbols,
- 17:35Speaker 1: it's changed quite a lot, which, I mean, that's not
- 17:39Speaker 1: my idea. I can't remember the lady who wrote the paper,
- 17:42Speaker 1: but a really nice paper on that kind of ongoing process.
- 17:48Speaker 4: That's so interesting. It's exactly like Bowlingon, that this dream
- 17:53Speaker 4: changes as he goes along. And it's true that dreams
- 17:59Speaker 4: are not static. What we recall and what it means
- 18:03Speaker 4: and the current version fits. And somebody could say, yes,
- 18:08Speaker 4: but that's not what you said the first time.
- 18:10Speaker 5: Yeah. So many years ago. And we say, that's right.
- 18:13Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 18:14Speaker 5: That's right.
- 18:14Speaker 4: It's not what I said. And Bowling Inn is really
- 18:20Speaker 4: evidence of that in stone, of.
- 18:23Speaker 5: What comes next.
- 18:25Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I suppose I'm kind of interested in the,
- 18:28Speaker 1: and this is a point that Andreas Jung has touched
- 18:32Speaker 1: on in his really lovely book about Kushnacht, how you
- 18:37Speaker 1: can see the two homes as a kind of split
- 18:40Speaker 1: pair or a kind of reductive view of two personalities
- 18:44Speaker 1: or a continuum. Because I think that Kushnacht was so
- 18:51Speaker 1: modified by the act of an architect, never employ an.
- 18:54Speaker 5: Architect, But you're an architect, Martin.
- 18:59Speaker 1: I know, never employed. That there was a kind of deficit.
- 19:06Speaker 1: Some of the early drawings of Kushnakt are quite similar
- 19:09Speaker 1: to the tower in many ways. And so there's this
- 19:11Speaker 1: kind of deficit that is kind of satiated in Bollingen.
- 19:17Speaker 1: But I just love the idea of them as a
- 19:20Speaker 1: continuum rather than family home retreat, you know, which is
- 19:24Speaker 1: the kind of normal.
- 19:26Speaker 4: So we might say, I mean, I'm stretching what you've said,
- 19:30Speaker 4: that Kushnacht, which was the family home, all very proper,
- 19:37Speaker 4: very large. You could take tours through it. Now it's
- 19:41Speaker 4: a proper upper class kind of home versus Bowling Inn
- 19:48Speaker 4: which is much more primitive all the towers they correspond
- 19:56Speaker 4: to his number one and number two personalities.
- 20:00Speaker 5: Which Jung talks about.
- 20:02Speaker 4: That his ego personality is one thing but he has
- 20:06Speaker 4: this old unconscious.
- 20:09Speaker 1: It's kind of archaic, isn't it?
- 20:10Speaker 4: The archaic expression that is also a huge part of him.
- 20:15Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just to develop that, I think they,
- 20:21Speaker 1: as I say, sort of cooperate. But Kushnacht was finished when,
- 20:27Speaker 1: I think when, I forget the date, it's kind of,
- 20:30Speaker 1: you know, 1907 or something. And so, yeah, my main
- 20:34Speaker 1: point is there's this kind of, deficit that somehow Kushnack
- 20:38Speaker 1: has been adapted. It's probably under quite considerable influence from Emma.
- 20:45Speaker 1: And so the dream, how interesting that the dream appears
- 20:48Speaker 1: at a point that he would say that gives him
- 20:51Speaker 1: his divergence from Freud, but actually is giving him a
- 20:55Speaker 1: kind of signal for this other place. I mean, other, literally,
- 20:59Speaker 1: with a capital O.
- 21:00Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting that Kushnack still has a tower. that
- 21:06Speaker 5: didn't he work that out with a, he, there was
- 21:08Speaker 5: a little bit of conflict with his architect, but he
- 21:11Speaker 5: still insisted on the tower that is the main feature
- 21:14Speaker 5: when you first walk up.
- 21:16Speaker 1: Well, at one stage it had two towers.
- 21:19Speaker 4: Oh.
- 21:20Speaker 1: But the original drawings show this kind of grading from
- 21:25Speaker 1: a kind of what you'd call rusticated, you know, very
- 21:28Speaker 1: lumpy stones to this kind of Baroque volutes on the,
- 21:33Speaker 1: and these are Jung's sketches. But it's been, I don't
- 21:39Speaker 1: know the word, but it's been sort of gentrified. It's
- 21:42Speaker 1: quite polite. I think it's a wonderful house, but it's
- 21:44Speaker 1: quite polite. Whereas, you know, Bollingen is more unfettered, really,
- 21:51Speaker 1: isn't it? It's quite visceral, in a sense.
- 21:54Speaker 5: Well, and I find interesting that in Kunstnacht with the tower,
- 21:58Speaker 5: it's actually where the patients would come up to see
- 22:03Speaker 5: him that, You come in the front door and you
- 22:05Speaker 5: hit the stairs and you wind up the tower to
- 22:07Speaker 5: go to the waiting room and to his office. So
- 22:10Speaker 5: it's interesting that that was the placement of it, I think.
- 22:14Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's a rather delightful comparison between Freud's study
- 22:21Speaker 1: and Jung's, their therapy spaces. The therapy spaces at Berghausen are...
- 22:29Speaker 1: away from the family. They're kind of split from the family.
- 22:32Speaker 1: They're obviously in the same apartment, but you don't go
- 22:35Speaker 1: through the family. Whereas to an extent, that spiral, that
- 22:39Speaker 1: ascent in Krishna is kind of through the family. I
- 22:46Speaker 1: know there's a glass, there's a frosted screen between them,
- 22:50Speaker 1: but how wonderful the difference. The difference is architectural as
- 22:56Speaker 1: much as intellectual. And actually, Kushnack is about four, maybe
- 23:01Speaker 1: five times the size of Freud's house, Freud's apartment. So,
- 23:07Speaker 1: you know, a kind of house envy, if you like.
- 23:10Speaker 5: Well, I think it's also interesting how Jung's Bollingen seems
- 23:13Speaker 5: so much more inspired by his dreams. For Christiana, she
- 23:17Speaker 5: did have a vision of a long white column that
- 23:24Speaker 5: Jung described as sort of a yin-yang. a phallic symbol,
- 23:28Speaker 5: and then next to it was this Poseidon or Neptune,
- 23:32Speaker 5: very small figure that her animus or, you know, the
- 23:37Speaker 5: leader to the underworld. She was then, as far as
- 23:41Speaker 5: Jung was saying, he felt that she needed to kind
- 23:44Speaker 5: of emerge, to ascend out of the depths to this place,
- 23:50Speaker 5: and that she needed to lose herself by this column,
- 23:53Speaker 5: and which ultimately meant to find herself. But I don't think,
- 23:57Speaker 5: you know, in the readings that I've done of hers,
- 24:00Speaker 5: I don't see too much reference to that. To me,
- 24:03Speaker 5: it was more the creation of the tower that she
- 24:06Speaker 5: and Harry built, I think, was inspired more by Harry
- 24:11Speaker 5: visiting Jung in Kunstnacht for three weeks. And while he
- 24:17Speaker 5: was there, this was like 1925, while he was there,
- 24:20Speaker 5: Jung apparently took him to Bollingen. And when he came back,
- 24:23Speaker 5: he told Christiane about it. And that was the prime
- 24:27Speaker 5: inspiration for their building the tower.
- 24:30Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a really beautiful point, actually. I found
- 24:37Speaker 1: myself wrestling between Deirdre Bair's account of Murray visiting in 1925,
- 24:42Speaker 1: which I'm sure you'll be much more correct, or Clare Douglas's,
- 24:49Speaker 1: says he visited Bollingen in the mid-30s. But that's quite
- 24:54Speaker 1: important because I think it's a lovely point that he's
- 24:59Speaker 1: influenced by Kushnacht, but I was wrestling with how influenced
- 25:03Speaker 1: they were by Bollingen. And of course, across that time period,
- 25:07Speaker 1: in 1925, it would have just been one tower. In
- 25:10Speaker 1: the mid-30s, it would have had certainly the second tower,
- 25:14Speaker 1: the spiritual tower, but also probably the courtyard. So I
- 25:17Speaker 1: know it sounds like a moot point, but what did
- 25:20Speaker 1: he see? What did he see? We won't know. We
- 25:24Speaker 1: don't know.
- 25:25Speaker 5: Well, and Christiane also, first, when I was making this film,
- 25:29Speaker 5: I interviewed the builder's son, and he had some very
- 25:34Speaker 5: rough sketches. They're in the film. But working with the
- 25:38Speaker 5: architectural historian in our group, he was actually able to
- 25:42Speaker 5: go to the architectural firm that helped build the tower
- 25:47Speaker 5: and found actual blueprints. So what we... originally thought was
- 25:52Speaker 5: just kind of Harry and Christiana and Kenneth Knight, the builder,
- 25:55Speaker 5: coming up with sketches to create this tower. It now
- 26:00Speaker 5: turns out that they actually did hire professional architects.
- 26:05Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think Kenneth Knight's son in your lovely
- 26:10Speaker 1: film says, oh, I don't think there was an architect involved,
- 26:13Speaker 1: which is a red herring. I mean, maybe they just
- 26:16Speaker 1: did the original scheme, but there's a really use for
- 26:19Speaker 1: those drawings and you were very kind in sharing them.
- 26:22Speaker 1: Because the first two floors are half the height of
- 26:29Speaker 1: the final thing. So there's a kind of something architects do,
- 26:33Speaker 1: you know, that they sort of set up proportioning systems
- 26:36Speaker 1: and things. So, you know, they're an absolute gift, aren't they,
- 26:39Speaker 1: to begin some interpretation, I suppose. Is that right? The study,
- 26:46Speaker 1: the thalamus of the mind, I think you called it,
- 26:49Speaker 1: isn't it? I think it's twice the height, isn't it?
- 26:52Speaker 5: It is much higher, but I think that given the proportions,
- 26:56Speaker 5: I mean, the first cabin that they built, which is
- 27:01Speaker 5: now called the main room or the great room, extends
- 27:05Speaker 5: straight out to the beginning of the tower, which is
- 27:07Speaker 5: the level of the bedroom. So I think there was
- 27:11Speaker 5: a certain constraint with the geography. And then they had
- 27:15Speaker 5: to dynamite out the bottom floor, the meditation room. And
- 27:21Speaker 5: I think wanting that sort of low because it was
- 27:23Speaker 5: sort of a cave-like, you know, the symbol of the unconscious,
- 27:28Speaker 5: the place of rituals and meditation. And then, as you say,
- 27:32Speaker 5: the last floor being the thalamus, it is a domed
- 27:37Speaker 5: roof and it is much taller. So what I found
- 27:42Speaker 5: interesting about when you were talking about the four and
- 27:47Speaker 5: its symbol of spatial unity, The tower as it stands
- 27:53Speaker 5: now is three rooms. But then in the top floor,
- 27:58Speaker 5: the study, the thalamus, there is a metal ladder that
- 28:01Speaker 5: leads up to the roof. And you were sort of
- 28:06Speaker 5: saying that that rooftop was really probably a fourth element
- 28:10Speaker 5: to the architecture. And what I wanted to add to
- 28:13Speaker 5: you about that is that when they first designed the tower,
- 28:17Speaker 5: they were going to make that into an observatory. So
- 28:21Speaker 5: it actually would have been a fourth, interestingly. Yeah. And
- 28:26Speaker 5: in my studying, you know, more recently, the kind of
- 28:29Speaker 5: layout of the tower, I've realized that it actually does,
- 28:33Speaker 5: as separate components have four elements, it's a quadrant, and
- 28:38Speaker 5: that you have the tower itself as one, you have
- 28:41Speaker 5: the cabin or the great room attached to it as two.
- 28:45Speaker 5: And then she added a kitchen and And then what
- 28:48Speaker 5: we now call the sunroom, which was very similar to
- 28:50Speaker 5: the logia, which was originally open. It didn't have the
- 28:55Speaker 5: pane glass windows it has now. It was open to
- 28:59Speaker 5: the outside. But those are four separate elements. So there again,
- 29:04Speaker 5: a fourth was created as far as the structural unity
- 29:08Speaker 5: of the place. It's amazing that just the symbolism and
- 29:12Speaker 5: the thought that went into absolutely everything that went on.
- 29:17Speaker 5: It's really extraordinary.
- 29:19Speaker 4: And I'm thinking about the correspondence between Jung's dream of,
- 29:25Speaker 4: you know, ego and modernity on the more or less
- 29:30Speaker 4: top floor, you know, down to this primitive basement, the unconscious.
- 29:37Speaker 4: And what Jung did in Bolingan there was a room
- 29:42Speaker 4: there that was only for him, of his own place
- 29:47Speaker 4: for unconscious ruminations. And then the Morgan Tower... He painted
- 29:55Speaker 4: the paintings on the walls. Yes, and he painted the paintings.
- 29:58Speaker 5: It was of.
- 30:00Speaker 4: And then the Morgan Tower with her study at the
- 30:02Speaker 4: top of the tower for the intellectual ego work, which
- 30:07Speaker 4: Jung finally said, however accurate it is, that he added
- 30:11Speaker 4: last at the tower, but that we go, the symbolism
- 30:15Speaker 4: of top to bottom, ego to psyche, carries through With intention,
- 30:24Speaker 4: but also it seems like it's just psychic reality that
- 30:28Speaker 4: this is, of course, the way it should be.
- 30:30Speaker 1: I think what we can develop out of that, and
- 30:33Speaker 1: I know I would say this as an architect, I
- 30:36Speaker 1: think the correspondence between the needs of the moment and
- 30:40Speaker 1: practical constraint are not the enemy of psychic intent. Do
- 30:47Speaker 1: you know what I mean? The idea that we're going
- 30:49Speaker 1: to be symbolic and everything else just goes out the window.
- 30:52Speaker 1: I just love the idea of them, you know, they
- 30:55Speaker 1: needed a kitchen, didn't they, Christianas? You know, Jung was
- 31:00Speaker 1: playing cat and mouse with the children, you know, just
- 31:02Speaker 1: trying to get away from everyone. So the needs of
- 31:05Speaker 1: the moment gave birth to something enchanting, I suppose.
- 31:11Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so much union of so many opposites, of
- 31:15Speaker 4: the rational need for planning with an architect part of it, and...
- 31:21Speaker 4: constructing a place that is a home you know for
- 31:25Speaker 4: your soul that that this is my creation this is
- 31:31Speaker 4: what mirrors me and the above and the below and
- 31:35Speaker 4: and the the interior and exterior of there's so many
- 31:41Speaker 4: dualities uh kushnakt and bowling and they get unified through
- 31:48Speaker 4: through the tower and I'm aware we haven't talked about
- 31:51Speaker 4: the interiors of the Morgan Tower. We see what's outside,
- 31:57Speaker 4: but the interior, I think, is astonishing. And you know
- 32:04Speaker 4: more about what's on the interior of Bowlingon, but visitors
- 32:08Speaker 4: are not permitted in that part of the building.
- 32:14Speaker 1: Yeah, the inside of Christianos is... The photographs that you've
- 32:20Speaker 1: kindly shared, Hilaria, I mean, it's a total work of art,
- 32:24Speaker 1: isn't it? It is.
- 32:27Speaker 5: They say the Gusamtikunstwerk, which is a total piece of art. Yeah,
- 32:31Speaker 5: she married the architecture of the building to the architectural
- 32:35Speaker 5: landscape and the sculptures and artwork she did inside all
- 32:40Speaker 5: together to create one universal piece that speaks together as
- 32:45Speaker 5: one art.
- 32:46Speaker 1: I think I've always been enchanted by the resonance between the,
- 32:50Speaker 1: is it Lachaise, the sculpture of her?
- 32:56Speaker 5: Oh, say what that is, Hilary, so people don't know
- 32:59Speaker 5: the sculpture. They commissioned Gaston Lachaise to do a sculpture. First,
- 33:06Speaker 5: it began as a bust of Christiana, and then it
- 33:10Speaker 5: extended down to, I guess, her waist, and then eventually
- 33:15Speaker 5: down to... to her thighs, and they were actually hoping
- 33:18Speaker 5: to do a full statue, but he was preparing for
- 33:23Speaker 5: a retrospective at the Metropolitan in New York, so he
- 33:26Speaker 5: had to stop. But they had this beautiful sculpture of Christiana, new, done,
- 33:32Speaker 5: and it would sit in the gardens of the tower
- 33:36Speaker 5: in the summertime, and then that was brought downstairs into
- 33:39Speaker 5: the meditation room in the winter.
- 33:41Speaker 1: But I think the, I mean, it's a I've never
- 33:44Speaker 1: seen it, but from the photographs that I have seen,
- 33:47Speaker 1: it's a beautiful thing. But I suppose the echo, if
- 33:53Speaker 1: that's the word, or the reflection in Philemon, so in
- 33:59Speaker 1: the upper floor of the tower, this painting of Philemon,
- 34:03Speaker 1: which is also in the Red Book, this huge winged
- 34:06Speaker 1: figure standing over the bed, this kind of this contrast
- 34:12Speaker 1: between this kind of imaginary figure, shall we say, this
- 34:16Speaker 1: loving figure, and this other figure, the figure of Christiana,
- 34:21Speaker 1: you know, I love that speaking, if you like, between
- 34:24Speaker 1: the two.
- 34:26Speaker 5: Well, the tower was, you know, an exploration and a
- 34:29Speaker 5: place to reconnect to the feminine and to nature and
- 34:33Speaker 5: to instincts. And that was a lot of what she
- 34:37Speaker 5: felt as if she was you know, moving past what
- 34:42Speaker 5: she called her inherited religion or culture, which was Christianity,
- 34:47Speaker 5: which had done so much to, it was, you know,
- 34:51Speaker 5: dogmatic with its beliefs and repression of the feminine and
- 34:58Speaker 5: the sensuality of the body that she was there to undo.
- 35:04Speaker 1: Yeah, so beautifully and in some senses, Tragically, I guess. Yeah,
- 35:12Speaker 1: just these two figures that kind of are emblems. I mean,
- 35:17Speaker 1: Bollingen is dedicated to Philemon, shrine to Philemon, repentance for Faust.
- 35:25Speaker 1: And I think it's, you know, what I think he's
- 35:28Speaker 1: trying to say there is he's kind of anti-modern. But
- 35:31Speaker 1: I don't think it is anti-modern. It's very easy to
- 35:34Speaker 1: read it as medieval and kind of historicist. I think
- 35:41Speaker 1: when you look at it architecturally, it's very clever. But
- 35:45Speaker 1: also its attitude is kind of transmodern in a sense
- 35:48Speaker 1: that it assimilates psychic material rather than just material.
- 35:54Speaker 5: Are we possibly veering into the dangerous territory of masculine
- 35:59Speaker 5: and feminine?
- 36:01Speaker 1: We might do, and I'm a bit outnumbered, so.
- 36:06Speaker 4: Feeling a little anxious about where these two women might go?
- 36:11Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm happy to go with that. Okay.
- 36:15Speaker 4: But I am thinking, you used the word medieval, and
- 36:18Speaker 4: there is a sort of medieval solidity, even stolidity to
- 36:25Speaker 4: Bowlingon from my perspective. And Christiana Morgan's tower is... somehow
- 36:35Speaker 4: much more accessible and open and has a lightness to it.
- 36:45Speaker 4: And that first vision, which is right there in the film,
- 36:50Speaker 4: and so uplifting. That first vision when I saw the tower,
- 36:59Speaker 4: I just gasped. Mm-hmm. of that there it was, just
- 37:03Speaker 4: rising on the bank of the river in a spirit of,
- 37:10Speaker 4: I don't know, just a kind of openness versus the
- 37:14Speaker 4: closedness of Bowlingon.
- 37:18Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the painting that Hilary mentioned, you know,
- 37:21Speaker 1: the luminous column, you know, it absolutely captures that spirit
- 37:27Speaker 1: of emergence. but with a delicacy and a luminosity as
- 37:32Speaker 1: much as a luminosity, isn't it? I don't know. I
- 37:35Speaker 1: don't think it splits neatly, does it? But it is
- 37:41Speaker 1: quite stolid. And actually, von Franz's tower is even more so.
- 37:47Speaker 1: But then it's relieved by beautiful touches of the mandala
- 37:51Speaker 1: over the fireplace. So I think they both... Well, that
- 37:57Speaker 1: would be the synergy, you know, that kind of transit
- 38:01Speaker 1: between two energies, I suppose. Sorry, just to hulk the point,
- 38:07Speaker 1: but I think what's interesting about Jung's sort of psycho-architectural history,
- 38:12Speaker 1: if you like, is that the prototypes, if you like,
- 38:16Speaker 1: or the typologies of Bollingen, which you might consider as
- 38:22Speaker 1: the cell, the castle, the tower, are all associated with very,
- 38:29Speaker 1: very potent, what you might call animations, anima encounters. The
- 38:35Speaker 1: young girl at Brother Klaus's cell, his association with Emma's
- 38:42Speaker 1: mother on the banks of the Rhine, where this is.
- 38:45Speaker 1: So I think that's, to me, rather enchanting how this other,
- 38:52Speaker 1: in his case, Saint Anima or Feminine, is just present
- 38:56Speaker 1: at these kind of key architectural moments as much as
- 39:01Speaker 1: emotional moments. There's some very lovely drawings of both Kushnacht
- 39:06Speaker 1: and Bollingen by Sabi Tauba, who she and her husband
- 39:14Speaker 1: were friends of Jung's. And she draws the tower as
- 39:19Speaker 1: though it's got a big spiral staircase. But she's drawing
- 39:23Speaker 1: the tower. She's not drawing Kushnow. And she also draws
- 39:27Speaker 1: a picture of arrival through this, you know, it's almost
- 39:30Speaker 1: like Merlin's hut, you know, in the wood. And I
- 39:36Speaker 1: think they absolutely capture the spirit of it and transcend,
- 39:42Speaker 1: you know, the kind of solid and delicate or solid
- 39:45Speaker 1: and effete. Does that make sense? You know, her imagination is...
- 39:50Speaker 1: adapted it somehow. They're really lovely drawings, or paintings, really.
- 39:55Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think, you know, what's interesting about Christiana's
- 39:59Speaker 5: was the sort of private language of symbols that she
- 40:04Speaker 5: and Harry set up. You know, that even in the gardens,
- 40:09Speaker 5: there were these paths that they would build, and they
- 40:12Speaker 5: would line them with statuary and inscriptions of They planted
- 40:19Speaker 5: all the trees and gave names to the various parts
- 40:23Speaker 5: of the garden and to each major tree that was
- 40:28Speaker 5: in the garden. They had, like, Bullion Circle and Guardian
- 40:32Speaker 5: Hill and Via Sacra and Gortes Brow. And they would,
- 40:37Speaker 5: you know, ritualize these places. And, you know, everything was symbolic.
- 40:44Speaker 5: Everything represented... something of the knowledge and what they'd learned,
- 40:50Speaker 5: you know, of their journey into their psyche, which was
- 40:56Speaker 5: so profound. And then throughout the tower, it's the same
- 40:59Speaker 5: way with her carvings and the artifacts that she plays,
- 41:03Speaker 5: the paintings on the walls. It was so meticulously thought out.
- 41:08Speaker 5: It's really, really interesting.
- 41:11Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a kind of... In some sense, it's a
- 41:14Speaker 1: kind of animism, isn't it? The sort of animating of
- 41:17Speaker 1: the natural as well as the artistic world. I mean, Jung,
- 41:23Speaker 1: in his letters, he talks about many of the carvings
- 41:28Speaker 1: at Bollingen as being emergent. They weren't carved into the stone.
- 41:34Speaker 1: They emerged from the stone. So I'm really fascinated about
- 41:40Speaker 1: this is kind of unfinished work of analytical psychology, psyche
- 41:44Speaker 1: and matter, you know, that, you know, it kind of
- 41:47Speaker 1: rhymes with the kind of ecological issues, you know, that
- 41:51Speaker 1: the stone is alive, it just breathes slower sort of thing.
- 41:54Speaker 5: Well, and you bring that wonderful part about the Jung
- 41:57Speaker 5: being connected to the arts and crafts movement of the
- 42:01Speaker 5: alignment of the head and the heart and the hand
- 42:05Speaker 5: in the creation of connecting psyche and matter with with creating,
- 42:10Speaker 5: which is really beautiful. Yeah, it's really gorgeous.
- 42:14Speaker 1: So it's just utterly enchanting and really difficult, you know,
- 42:23Speaker 1: trying to kind of navigate through these things.
- 42:26Speaker 4: I find myself going back to all these dualities, you know,
- 42:30Speaker 4: so I'm adding a couple more of Jung's carvings on
- 42:33Speaker 4: the outside of Bollingen, of there's a bear and I
- 42:38Speaker 4: forget what else. I'm sure you know them all by heart, Martin.
- 42:41Speaker 1: There's a horse with a mare who's being milked by
- 42:46Speaker 1: a woman. Yeah.
- 42:48Speaker 4: And of all the things, you know why that? But psyche,
- 42:52Speaker 4: you know, that's what emerged. I remember reading something about
- 42:56Speaker 4: Michelangelo saying that he just released the forms that were
- 43:01Speaker 4: already within the marble. But You know, and I'm thinking
- 43:06Speaker 4: about Christiana Morgan's carvings. I mean, they are remarkable throughout
- 43:12Speaker 4: her tower and in the main room, the great room,
- 43:17Speaker 4: that she learned to carve in wood. And there's one
- 43:21Speaker 4: up above the bed with script.
- 43:25Speaker 5: It is remarkable.
- 43:26Speaker 4: But, you know, that here is the interior was such
- 43:31Speaker 4: a focus for her. And for Jung, with the logia
- 43:36Speaker 4: and the inscriptions of family, heraldic structures, that's.
- 43:43Speaker 5: All on the outside.
- 43:45Speaker 1: Yeah, that's partly, yeah, maybe. But I think the spiritual
- 43:50Speaker 1: tower is, as far as I know, I've never been
- 43:53Speaker 1: into it, is entirely surrounded in paintings. And the upper
- 43:59Speaker 1: floor of the first tower has these two significant paintings,
- 44:04Speaker 1: Emily's Star and Philemon. And there are quite a lot
- 44:09Speaker 1: of other moments that are added. So, you know, the
- 44:15Speaker 1: more famous ones are on the outside.
- 44:18Speaker 4: Let me amend what I said, that it's a private
- 44:23Speaker 4: structure with the paintings are for him and maybe a
- 44:30Speaker 4: select few. Whereas the Morgan Tower has an openness to
- 44:37Speaker 4: it and it's all very visible and can be shared.
- 44:43Speaker 4: And then the other contrast I'm thinking about is Bollingen
- 44:47Speaker 4: was for Jung. It was his retreat and he said,
- 44:51Speaker 4: you know, that there was nowhere where he was more
- 44:54Speaker 4: fully himself than when he was there at Bollingen alone.
- 45:01Speaker 4: Whereas the Morgan Tower was built for two people, Henry
- 45:07Speaker 4: Murray and Christiana Morgan, to carry Jung's work, they hoped,
- 45:13Speaker 4: forward by translating it into an interpersonal relationship.
- 45:20Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really lovely point, isn't it? That two-ness,
- 45:25Speaker 1: it's not a division, it's a union. I suppose somebody
- 45:29Speaker 1: contradicting that, but I think because Bollingen was also a
- 45:33Speaker 1: holiday home. Well, actually, so was Christiana's. Jung had to
- 45:38Speaker 1: navigate with kind of intruders, didn't he, if you like.
- 45:42Speaker 1: You know, either family intruders or, you know, kind of visitors.
- 45:45Speaker 1: So it probably wasn't quite as vigorously introverted as kind
- 45:51Speaker 1: of history records. I mean, who knows?
- 45:54Speaker 5: I don't know.
- 45:54Speaker 1: But I get the sense that it was quite a
- 45:57Speaker 1: lot going on there. And a second point, and I got...
- 46:01Speaker 1: very little basis to say this. I've often wondered about
- 46:06Speaker 1: Tony Wolfe's involvement in the Tower because the photograph on
- 46:14Speaker 1: Nan Savage Healy's lovely book about her has the two
- 46:20Speaker 1: of them standing together. In actual fact, those are two
- 46:23Speaker 1: photographs that have been put together, but the point still
- 46:27Speaker 1: stands that at the height of their relationship and collaboration,
- 46:33Speaker 1: perhaps not the relationship, but the collaboration, that's when the
- 46:36Speaker 1: Tao's coming. So kind of what was, do you know
- 46:41Speaker 1: what I mean? What was her, you know, it's been
- 46:43Speaker 1: edited out, isn't it, from MDR and what was it?
- 46:47Speaker 5: Yeah, it felt to me from your book as if
- 46:50Speaker 5: Jung's Bollingen was much more of an evolution, that as
- 46:53Speaker 5: you said, he started it with Tony. It became a
- 46:58Speaker 5: very private place. He took only certain people there for
- 47:02Speaker 5: a while. The children came along and then Emma started
- 47:06Speaker 5: to begin to like it. So she came, the children came.
- 47:09Speaker 5: There was the building of the annex on top for
- 47:12Speaker 5: the children's bedrooms to accommodate them. But then there was
- 47:17Speaker 5: a spiritual tower. And so it seemed like it evolved
- 47:21Speaker 5: and it was many things in his life and in
- 47:23Speaker 5: his family. Whereas Christiana's tower was very much a place
- 47:28Speaker 5: that that she built for her and Harry. And then
- 47:31Speaker 5: I think most of the time she was there by herself,
- 47:34Speaker 5: but Harry did come. And a similar little, just one
- 47:39Speaker 5: little detail that I thought was so interesting in your book,
- 47:42Speaker 5: you talked about how Jung would put a yellow flag
- 47:46Speaker 5: signaling for people not to come. Well, oddly, Christiana did
- 47:49Speaker 5: the same thing with a red flag. I mean, with
- 47:52Speaker 5: a black flag. We knew when the black flag was
- 47:55Speaker 5: flying that we were not to come close. And because
- 47:58Speaker 5: we had a separate building, we never did intrude in
- 48:02Speaker 5: the same way that his children were there living. So
- 48:06Speaker 5: she kept it much more separate.
- 48:08Speaker 1: What's funny about the flag thing is that in the
- 48:11Speaker 1: English sensibility, to fly a flag shows you're at home.
- 48:16Speaker 1: But actually, he was saying, well, I kind of am
- 48:18Speaker 1: at home, but keep out. So it's sort of flipped somehow. Yeah,
- 48:23Speaker 1: I think I agree. I think... architecturally and almost in
- 48:30Speaker 1: terms of its inhabitation. Christiana's tower is kind of, if
- 48:35Speaker 1: you could use the word, purer, isn't it? Bollingen is
- 48:39Speaker 1: always fighting with itself. It's fighting for privacy. You know,
- 48:45Speaker 1: it's a battleground, basically, which is psychic as much as familial,
- 48:52Speaker 1: isn't it, somehow?
- 48:54Speaker 4: Say more about that, that bullying is always fighting with itself.
- 48:59Speaker 4: That fits with my experience of having been there, but
- 49:04Speaker 4: I never thought about it in those terms before.
- 49:07Speaker 1: Well, it's only just kind of been given to me
- 49:10Speaker 1: actually from above. I think that essentially Jung is always
- 49:19Speaker 1: trying to reassert his privacy and his inner-ness, isn't he?
- 49:23Speaker 1: So the, you know, originally the kids camped outside and
- 49:27Speaker 1: presumably he and maybe Emma slept upstairs. And then, you know,
- 49:32Speaker 1: the spiritual tower reasserts that and then the fifth story
- 49:35Speaker 1: is he's always trying to get away from So he
- 49:38Speaker 1: was trying to get away. So that's the kind of
- 49:41Speaker 1: emotive response. I mean, architecturally, it's always flipping between the
- 49:49Speaker 1: kind of contingent, you know, what you might call vernacular
- 49:53Speaker 1: or free form, and the kind of statements, you know,
- 49:56Speaker 1: the square or the circle. And as a result of that,
- 50:01Speaker 1: he and his son, Franz, were always struggling to resolve
- 50:07Speaker 1: really complicated junctions, which would be complicated enough architecturally if
- 50:13Speaker 1: they didn't have a psychic kind of intent on top
- 50:18Speaker 1: of that. Does that make sense? So there's this kind
- 50:19Speaker 1: of psychic intent, this familial intent, and a kind of
- 50:24Speaker 1: architectural problem, if you like.
- 50:28Speaker 4: See if this feels like it might be kind of
- 50:32Speaker 4: an accurate reflection. Bollingen and maybe the Morgan Tower as well,
- 50:39Speaker 4: but Bollingen in particular, the lifelong or attempt over many
- 50:45Speaker 4: years to reconcile opposites of these dualities of Kushnack versus Bollingen,
- 50:52Speaker 4: all the things we've talked about, and now we're adding
- 50:55Speaker 4: another one of the private retreat for Jung alone and family.
- 51:05Speaker 4: the place where family could come. And that some of these,
- 51:09Speaker 4: I think it's just so very human that we don't
- 51:12Speaker 4: just resolve these dualities once and for all of like, oh, good,
- 51:17Speaker 4: you know, no more inner conflict, but continuing to wrestle
- 51:24Speaker 4: with the opposites in so, so many ways. And I'm
- 51:30Speaker 4: thinking for Christiana Morgan, some of those same opposites, a
- 51:36Speaker 4: place for her alone, a place for her and Harry,
- 51:40Speaker 4: and you, family members, lived right next door. Fortunately, Kushnotch
- 51:46Speaker 4: is a good ways away from Bowlingham, but you were
- 51:50Speaker 4: in a passel of grandkids who loved the tower and
- 51:55Speaker 4: wanted to climb up that ladder and get up on
- 51:57Speaker 4: the roof. And so she had a flag that said,
- 52:01Speaker 4: keep out.
- 52:03Speaker 1: The black flag, yeah, yeah.
- 52:05Speaker 5: Or the black car, which meant that Harry was there visiting.
- 52:08Speaker 5: And then in later years, she built a fence, actually,
- 52:11Speaker 5: a wooden fence. So the messages got stronger and stronger. Yeah,
- 52:17Speaker 5: but throughout the duality of the secular and sacred, the unconscious, conscious,
- 52:23Speaker 5: the primitive, you know, they're such profound places. And I
- 52:30Speaker 5: love that they... that jung even wrote christiana about keeping
- 52:34Speaker 5: it her tower primitive as well that it was necessary
- 52:39Speaker 5: not to disturb the spirits of nature that that was
- 52:42Speaker 5: a integral part that to keep it such that there
- 52:45Speaker 5: was no electricity no running water that you know to
- 52:49Speaker 5: stay warm you'd build a fire and that that was
- 52:52Speaker 5: a way to keep it close to to the instincts.
- 52:57Speaker 1: Yeah and it talks about um breaking the ground, which
- 53:02Speaker 1: actually was quite violent, wasn't it? You know, the explosive
- 53:04Speaker 1: of the rock, the great rock, releasing essentially spirits, isn't it? Which,
- 53:09Speaker 1: I mean, where do they, do they just, are they
- 53:11Speaker 1: just exiled or they just come back into the fabric?
- 53:14Speaker 1: You know, they belong there. That's their home as much
- 53:17Speaker 1: as Christiana and Harry's home. You know, it's a really
- 53:21Speaker 1: lovely letter that, isn't it? When he's talking about sharing
- 53:25Speaker 1: the process of building, I suppose.
- 53:27Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 53:28Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, and I love the story that the builder's son, David,
- 53:31Speaker 5: who I interview in the film, I don't think it's
- 53:34Speaker 5: in the film, but he talked about after the dynamite
- 53:37Speaker 5: went off, he was about six at the time, he
- 53:41Speaker 5: climbed down where the rubble was and he discovered this
- 53:45Speaker 5: really huge, large black snake. And I found that pretty
- 53:51Speaker 5: astounding because of all the summers growing up playing there,
- 53:54Speaker 5: I don't remember coming across any large black snakes. So
- 53:57Speaker 5: that That seemed like an interesting symbol of.
- 54:00Speaker 1: Yeah, that kind of, I don't know what you would
- 54:03Speaker 1: call it, but that kind of animal spirit that belongs there.
- 54:08Speaker 1: You know, the snake, what a wonderful... How Jungian, if
- 54:12Speaker 1: you like. I think Jung was also chasing away the public.
- 54:16Speaker 1: I think that's really why I think the courtyard wall
- 54:19Speaker 1: was built. Because, I mean, I'd be guilty of this,
- 54:23Speaker 1: of going past on a boat and trying to get in.
- 54:28Speaker 1: You know, so at the height of his fame, he
- 54:32Speaker 1: would have been pestered continually, I would have thought.
- 54:35Speaker 5: And he had some really interesting and odd experiences at Bollingen.
- 54:39Speaker 5: I'm wondering if there are corollaries with the Morgan Tower.
- 54:44Speaker 5: You mentioned the Napoleonic soldier and his daughter, when he
- 54:50Speaker 5: was building the tower, said, oh my gosh, you know,
- 54:52Speaker 5: you're not going to build something here, are you? There's
- 54:55Speaker 5: so many dead people around. And when they started to
- 54:59Speaker 5: do the building, they found the skeleton of a Napoleonic
- 55:03Speaker 5: soldier that his daughter had sensed was there. And Jung
- 55:09Speaker 5: gave that skeleton a proper formal burial ceremony. And then
- 55:16Speaker 5: there are the times that he heard people singing outside
- 55:23Speaker 5: the tower. And he'd open a window and there was
- 55:27Speaker 5: nothing there. And then go back and presumably sit down
- 55:32Speaker 5: and hear these spirits playing music and singing. The psyche
- 55:40Speaker 5: enters in these ways.
- 55:43Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And he, I mean, as ever, under the
- 55:47Speaker 1: guise of scientism, I suppose, he, in a sense, tries
- 55:52Speaker 1: to explain that. And he observes that because that attributory
- 55:56Speaker 1: of the Jacob's Way, the James Way, runs near the tower.
- 56:01Speaker 1: And I think he suggests that mercenaries were using that route.
- 56:06Speaker 1: But there's another story where he hears, I think he
- 56:09Speaker 1: describes it as a polyphony, you know, multiple sounds, of
- 56:15Speaker 1: the nature and essentially singing. I mean, what an enchanting,
- 56:18Speaker 1: you know, rhyming with Hilary's point about the garden being alive.
- 56:24Speaker 1: I must admit, when I was sitting there once, and
- 56:28Speaker 1: I'm sure this could be explained away if we wanted to,
- 56:31Speaker 1: but A, there was a bee that was distracting. And
- 56:38Speaker 1: he talks about bees quite a lot. It was distracting.
- 56:40Speaker 1: And I was kind of intrigued by this bee, as
- 56:45Speaker 1: though something had disturbed the place. And secondly, the water
- 56:50Speaker 1: was lapping in. But there were no boats around, you know,
- 56:54Speaker 1: so there was nothing that, and it was, I just
- 56:57Speaker 1: remember thinking there's something insisting and something disturbed. And I
- 57:05Speaker 1: don't know, I just remember that phenomena, I suppose you'd
- 57:09Speaker 1: call that.
- 57:11Speaker 5: So, Hilary, I'm wondering, given Jung's very interesting experiences at Bollingen,
- 57:18Speaker 5: of whether your grandmother, Christiana, ever, reported any special, interesting,
- 57:28Speaker 5: you know, out of the ordinary experiences at our tower?
- 57:33Speaker 5: You know, I don't remember. I was 12 when she died.
- 57:37Speaker 5: So I don't remember anything being described. I know, you know,
- 57:46Speaker 5: there was so much that seemed so spiritual and unusual
- 57:51Speaker 5: to me. Well, it didn't seem that unusual as a child,
- 57:54Speaker 5: but the ritual burning of the cuttings every year was
- 58:00Speaker 5: done on a particular year. Just everything was ritualized and
- 58:05Speaker 5: had symbols to it. So, yeah, it was really special
- 58:10Speaker 5: and unique that way.
- 58:13Speaker 4: Nothing that ever happened for you in you personally? I'm
- 58:20Speaker 4: hoping for some magic here.
- 58:22Speaker 3: I know.
- 58:24Speaker 5: I don't remember. I don't remember at this point. Yeah.
- 58:28Speaker 4: Well, one thing that I do remember as having magic
- 58:32Speaker 4: to it is this ladder at the top floor of
- 58:37Speaker 4: the tower. which is just a metal ladder attached to
- 58:40Speaker 4: the wall. It couldn't be more rudimentary. And that you
- 58:45Speaker 4: and your siblings and cousins would climb up there and
- 58:50Speaker 4: go on the roof, and she let you. And in
- 58:54Speaker 4: today's world, kids would not be allowed up there.
- 58:59Speaker 5: No, and what was especially fun about it is if
- 59:02Speaker 5: she was sitting at her desk working, we had to
- 59:04Speaker 5: be very quiet. And because it was such a tall,
- 59:08Speaker 5: very thin, ladder, it was very challenging to get up
- 59:15Speaker 5: and to stay quiet. And then you had to push
- 59:17Speaker 5: really hard on the door to get it open. So
- 59:20Speaker 5: it was a particularly mysterious and fun thing to be
- 59:23Speaker 5: able to have to do. Yeah, we really enjoyed it.
- 59:26Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm thinking of another way of these edges that
- 59:29Speaker 4: get traversed from the ordinary to what is edgy, whether
- 59:35Speaker 4: it's sort of psychic or the edginess of climbing that
- 59:39Speaker 4: narrow little ladder up to a place that was dangerous.
- 59:44Speaker 4: And of course, as towers do, there's visibility, which is
- 59:49Speaker 4: one of the great advantages of towers is to be
- 59:52Speaker 4: able to see far and wide. But Martin, I know
- 59:57Speaker 4: you had an experience in and with Jung's Tower where
- 1:00:05Speaker 4: you were a little abducted by psyche, as it were.
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Just before developing that, when Hilary was talking,
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: I was thinking of, you know, Jung and the attic.
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: the attic at Klein Hunnigan and the mannequin, you know,
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: the attic, as you say, the above is a place
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: of illumination as much as the below, isn't it? So
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: he traverses both those worlds. But yeah, my experience is
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: deeply embarrassing, actually.
- 1:00:33Speaker 5: Oh, by all means, tell us.
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: I was looking at what's called Jung's Room, which is
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: upstairs of the first tower. And I can still see
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: to this day in my mind a mandala, which is
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: in the Red Book and it's called the Golden Fortress.
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: It's essentially a fort, you know, a star fort really. Anyway,
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: so I wrote about that and I was probably a
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: bit pleased for myself that I'd spotted this and the
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: rest of it. And then I got to know this
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: lovely guy in America, Jim Givens, who's really drawn a
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: huge amount of the tower. And in doing that, he
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: had found a picture of that room that showed a
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: very different painting. And so, I suppose you could explain
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: it away by carelessness, but I suppose it's true that
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: I really wanted to see it and I saw it.
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: And of course, that means that there's a bit of
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: the book that's basically wrong but hey that little trickster
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: has sort of come.
- 1:01:47Speaker 4: In but it reminds me very much of jung's trip
- 1:01:52Speaker 4: to ravenna in italy yeah where he saw and i
- 1:01:59Speaker 4: i think he was with tony both of them saw
- 1:02:04Speaker 4: in the basement of a basilica if i've got this
- 1:02:08Speaker 4: right it's.
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: In the baptistry they were The Neonian baptistry, yeah.
- 1:02:13Speaker 4: No, they both saw four walls of mosaics having to
- 1:02:20Speaker 4: do with water. And biblical scenes, or at least some
- 1:02:24Speaker 4: of them were biblical scenes. And they were smitten by
- 1:02:29Speaker 4: these incredible mosaics. And it was a very special experience.
- 1:02:38Speaker 4: And when Jung got back to Switzerland, he remembered them.
- 1:02:44Speaker 4: They had impressed him so much that he wrote to
- 1:02:47Speaker 4: the mayor or governing official of the town and said,
- 1:02:52Speaker 4: you know, if there are pictures of them, please send
- 1:02:54Speaker 4: me the pictures.
- 1:02:57Speaker 5: We remember them. They're very special.
- 1:03:00Speaker 4: And the response was, there are no mosaics like that
- 1:03:04Speaker 4: anywhere in Ravenna. and certainly not in this building.
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wonderful story. And I think he says
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: something like, I was convinced that something that is inside
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: can be outside, and something that is outside can be inside,
- 1:03:22Speaker 1: you know, that traffic. I spent, at the university's expense, actually,
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: a few days in Ravenna to try and get to
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: the bottom of this. And Lower down in the baptistry,
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: there's a series of niches, four niches, that have partial
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: Latin inscriptions. And some of those kind of align with
- 1:03:45Speaker 1: the subject matter of the visions. Not trying to say
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: the visions were devalued in any way, but I think
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: what's enchanting is that that atmosphere and those prompts... produced
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: these images for them. Now, some critics say that Jung
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: was getting confused and he admits, I think, to Hull,
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: the curator of the collected works, that he was confused.
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: But I prefer to believe that they saw, you know,
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: something manifested.
- 1:04:19Speaker 4: Yeah, I like that way of saying it so simply
- 1:04:24Speaker 4: and yet profoundly. What is on the inside can be outside.
- 1:04:30Speaker 4: And I prefer to believe that you saw that painting
- 1:04:36Speaker 4: in that room in Bollingen.
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: Well, that would mean that would be helpful because I
- 1:04:42Speaker 1: wouldn't have to revise the book. But why I was
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: so convinced is I remember looking at the pinholes where
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: it had been transferred from the book to the wall.
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: So I wasn't just, you know, whipping by it. So
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: it's how wonderful that place can well appear seems too
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: reductive but emerge i suppose you.
- 1:05:08Speaker 5: Know i'm.
- 1:05:10Speaker 4: Thinking you know my my way of sort of summing
- 1:05:16Speaker 4: up our conversation if if such a topic can ever
- 1:05:21Speaker 4: be summed up which it can't but is how profound
- 1:05:27Speaker 4: the rendering of psyche in art, in carving, in stone
- 1:05:34Speaker 4: can be. That it really does become infused with, what
- 1:05:41Speaker 4: do we call it, a different reality. That these buildings
- 1:05:46Speaker 4: are very magical and what Christiana Morgan and Jung invested
- 1:05:55Speaker 4: in their towers. is a spirit that moves us even
- 1:06:02Speaker 4: to the point of being able to see something that
- 1:06:06Speaker 4: in ordinary reality isn't there. But they are images of
- 1:06:13Speaker 4: spirit and soul and depth and dualities, and they affect us.
- 1:06:21Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: Beautifully put. You know, that kind of resonance, isn't it?
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: which can be difficult as well as beatific, can't it?
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: We are affected by a place in a modern world
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: where we're disaffected by a place.
- 1:06:38Speaker 5: It goes to the theme of the alchemists who are
- 1:06:42Speaker 5: trying to find spirit in matter and architects who create
- 1:06:48Speaker 5: something out of matter that then becomes a home, a
- 1:06:54Speaker 5: dwelling place for spirit. And these special occurrences, these places
- 1:07:04Speaker 5: that can affect us, they're like, they have connections to
- 1:07:11Speaker 5: other realities that we don't always experience. Yeah, and as
- 1:07:15Speaker 5: you say, sort of this beautiful journey of one's journey
- 1:07:20Speaker 5: into one's psyche. And as Martin, I thought you so
- 1:07:23Speaker 5: beautifully talked about using the word totem. a totem of individuation,
- 1:07:29Speaker 5: that it was the embodiment of this, which I thought
- 1:07:33Speaker 5: was so beautifully placed.
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, and as you were both talking, I
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: was thinking of the word scintillae, you know, these kind
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: of sparks, you get these kind of flashes that I just,
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: you know, a cynic can explain away, but I prefer
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: to at least inhabit something that's enchanted you know not
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: in a kind of floppy sense but just is animated enchanted.
- 1:08:05Speaker 5: Oh well thank you both for coming on and sharing
- 1:08:13Speaker 5: thank you your work and experiences and history with all
- 1:08:19Speaker 5: of us out there.
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: Thank you thank you it's a beautiful ideas that settle,
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: don't they, and emerge. But thank you very much for
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: the invite.
- 1:08:33Speaker 4: And I think we can all find places that are
- 1:08:35Speaker 4: so special to us where we can be so deeply
- 1:08:40Speaker 4: and creatively ourselves. So let us wish that for all
- 1:08:46Speaker 4: of you out there and certainly for you, Hilary, and you, Martin.
- 1:08:50Speaker 5: Well, thank you for having us.
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really beautiful. Thank you.
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