Money vs. Carl Jung

When I was about 20 or 21 years old and had dropped out of college to play with the Zambo Flirts full-time, I happened to go into the University of Georgia bookstore where I noticed a paperback copy of Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung. It looked interesting and I bought it. That casual decision turned out to be a life changing act that led me to read The Portable Jung (edited by Joseph Campbell) followed by a large chunk of Jung’s Collected Works which occupied a long shelf in the main UGA Library. When I read Jung, I could literally hear his wise voice speaking the long Germanic sentences, something that never happened before or since. I'll never forget the opening line of the English translation of Memories, Dreams, Reflections: "My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious."

Eventually I became disenchanted with the band and decided to go back to school, where I ended up changing my major from Film Making to Psychology. I was in the Honors Program and I was assigned the Honors advisor, Dr. Hazen. I went in to meet him and before I told him anything about me, one of the first things he said was “Psychology is not about interpreting dreams and such things. It’s an experimental science. And if you want to make money, go into Industrial Organizational Psychology.” But, I didn’t want to make money- I wanted to be like Carl Jung.

So, in spite of what he said about the Science of Psychology, I did model my career on Jung’s, integrating the science into my approach while making extensive use of Jung’s technique of active imagination, even though I wasn’t formally trained in how to do it. My guiding principles were “Keep an open mind and do what works.”

Ironically, in private practice I was able to make more money than I ever imagined I would, even though I saw numerous patients free or at reduced rates and haven’t raised my basic outpatient therapy rate in the last 10 years or so.