Emma Jung


Emma Jung was a Swiss Jungian analyst and author. She married Carl Jung, financing and helping him to become the prominent psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, and together they had five children. Enduring his infidelities and mood swings, she was his "intellectual editor" to the end of her life. After her death, Jung described her as "a Queen".

Early life

Emma Rauschenbach was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Johannes Rauschenbach, the then owner of IWC Schaffhausen. At the time of her marriage she was the second-richest heiress in Switzerland.

Family life

Marriage and children

Emma Rauschenbach first met C. G. Jung in 1896 when she was still a schoolgirl, through a connection of his mother. Jung reported at the time that he knew then that one day Emma would be his wife. The couple married on 14 February 1903, seven years later. They had five children : Agathe, Gret, Franz Karl, Marianne, and Helene.
Upon her father's death in 1905, Emma and her sister, together with their husbands, became owners of IWC Schaffhausen - the International Watch Company, manufacturers of luxury time-pieces. Emma's brother-in-law became the principal proprietor, but the Jungs remained shareholders in a thriving business that ensured the family's financial security for decades.
Emma Jung not only took a strong interest in her husband's work, but assisted him and became a noted analyst in her own right. She developed a particular focus on the Grail legend. Her independence of him in this field has been contested. She had a brief correspondence of her own with Sigmund Freud, during 1910–11. In 1906, Freud interpreted several of Jung's dreams of the period as portending the "failure of a marriage for money".
Around the birth of the couple's last child in 1914, Jung is said to have begun a relationship with a young female patient and trainee, Antonia Wolff, which was to last for several decades. Shortly after the child's birth, Jung and Wolff set off for a "vacation" in Ravenna. In her biography of Jung, Deirdre Bair describes Emma Jung as just tolerating it when her husband inserted Wolff into the household, but she was excluded from all meal times and evenings. For Jung, Wolff was "his other wife". Wolff tried to persuade Jung to divorce Emma, but this did not happen.
A former patient of Jung's and later a psychoanalyst, Sabina Spielrein, claimed to have been Jung's lover, keeping a diary to document the relationship.

Death

Emma died in 1955, predeceasing Jung by almost six years. After her death from a recurrence of cancer, Jung carved a stone in her name, "She was the foundation of my house". He is also said to have wailed, "She was a queen! She was a queen!" as he grieved for her. Her gravestone was inscribed: "Oh vase, sign of devotion and obedience."

Works about Emma Jung