Book Review: "Labyrinths" by Catrine Clay
We don't know about you, but we love to read about the lives of some of the greatest influencers of the 20th Century, especially those who walked the earth during our own lifetimes. And whilst its a cliche to use the phrase "behind every great man", nevertheless, we are fascinated by the spouses of famous men: in this case, the wife of Carl Jung.
“Labyrinths” tells the story of Carl’s marriage to the wealthy and ambitious heiress Emma Rausenbach, her struggle to keep their marriage together, and her contribution to his body of work (as one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis).
For anyone who isn’t familiar with Carl and Emma’s story, it reads like something from a modern-day celebrity gossip mag. At the age of 17, Emma was probably one of the wealthiest young women in Switzerland, and so it might come as a surprise to readers that her family encouraged and supported her marriage to the penniless Carl Jung. You could speculate that having a doctor in the family might come in handy when your father has contracted syphilis and needs someone close to the family to treat the matter with the utmost discretion?
The scandal continues throughout their working lives and marriage: Emma consulted Freud (no less) about the problems in their marriage and Carl had affairs with a number of former patients, which in this day and age just seems ludicrous, but psychoanalysis was in it’s infancy, and those were very different times.
Most striking is Carl’s thirty-year relationship with Antonia Wolff (also a former patient) which Emma appears to have accepted/agreed to/tolerated (delete as you will), leading to an infamous menage-a-trois.
Clay tells the story in a factual way, managing to keep away from over dramatising events. At the same time she narrates how Emma went on to become a practitioner of analytical psychology herself, making it clear her contribution to Carl’s work has most likely been understated.
But Labyrinths isn’t just about the early years of psychoanalysis. At it’s core, it’s a story about a man and a woman: a woman struggling to keep her marriage and her family together, and putting her own needs, desires and ambitions on the back burner for the sake of her husband; and a man who would never have achieved all that he did without the great woman behind him.
Labyrinths: Emma Jung, her marriage to Carl and the early years of Psychoanalysis by Catrine Clay is available from amazon.com.