A Sunday walk through the ‘Landscapes of the Soul’

The starting point for the ‘Journey of the Soul’ is the entrance hall of the Zurich State Museum. You can get there by public transport or car via Zurich Central Station. On a chilly Sunday, I join fellow hikers here, and our mountain guide, Riccardo Giacomello, gives us a warm welcome. After a short climb to the 4th floor, we begin with paintings from the Romantic period. The mighty glacier panorama by Caspar Wolf and The Nightmare by J.H. Füssli impressively demonstrate how, in Europe, landscapes were first understood as a mirror of the soul. They are a kind of foreshadowing of the development of archetypes according to C.G. Jung. A kind of universal archetypes and patterns that are anchored in the psyche of all humanity.

We wander along the shores of a tranquil lake, whose surface reflects the most intimate confessions of the philosopher J.J. Rousseau. Past the karstic contours of Enlightenment materialism, which understood man as a body-soul-machine.

Countless small rivulets of pre-modern theories and schools of thought characterise this plateau. Among them is Nietzsche’s insight that the ‘conscious self’ is merely an illusion. Like a phantom of mist dancing over fertile ground, it also strongly influenced Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung in the development of their ideas. Freud measured the individual psyche. He mapped secret dreams and repressed drives. Jung, the son of a pastor, enthusiastically emulated him at the outset. From here, the path leads downhill. Deep into the depths of the modern Swiss psyche.

We hear the bells that heralded the new age of psychoanalysis at the start of the 20th century. A few metres further on, a gaping chasm in the rock illustrates the rift between Freud and Jung. A turning point that plunged Jung into crisis. And into the darkness of his unconscious, a kind of labyrinth of his repressed personal experiences.

Upon entering Jung’s cosmos, we first pass by his many handcrafted mandalas and symbolic figures. We then approach the legendary Red Book, in which he lays the foundations for his theory of analytical psychology. In it, Jung develops the idea of a collective unconscious and the need to reconnect with our innermost forces. He senses that the shadows from Plato’s cave flicker to life as symbols and archetypes in myths and fairy tales. Various significant women emerge from the shadows of Jung’s legend – including patients, lovers and his wife Emma Jung-Rauschenbach. They all played a central role in the development and dissemination of his theory. And the influences of other cultures and wisdom traditions also shine through.

From here, the path descends steeply once more over the scree. Jung was initially enthusiastic about National Socialism, and Freudian psychoanalysis was denounced as a Jewish science. The path narrows and the shady slopes require sure-footedness. Over the course of the last century, Zurich became the global Mecca of psychoanalysis. In Switzerland, countless sanatoriums sprang up and psychiatric clinics opened their doors. At the time, they were called ‘madhouses’. It was not uncommon for patients to be subjected to coercive measures, abusive experiments with psychotropic drugs or involuntary electroconvulsive therapy.