Part 8 (1/2)

Yet Pauli's mandala contains both the masculine Trinity (three pulses) and the feminine quaternity (four colors, four Cabiri), combined to create an alchemical hermaphrodite. Bearing in mind that Pauli is a physicist, Jung speculates on the cosmic significance of this image. Could it be that the mandala symbolizes the four-dimensional source of s.p.a.ce-time? But this seems overly scientific. Jung does not have the knowledge to pursue this line of speculation and turns instead to medieval symbolism.

Guillaume's vision.

In the last canto of Les Pelerinages de l'ame (Pilgrimages of the Soul), the fourteenth-century Norman poet Guillaume de Digulleville describes a vision of paradise made up of forty-nine rotating spheres. (Guillaume's three exquisitely ill.u.s.trated allegorical poems Pilgrimage of Human Life, Pilgrimage of the Soul, and Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ were to inspire John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.) An angel informs Guillaume that these forty-nine spheres represent earthly centuries, not in ordinary time but in eternities. A vast golden heaven surrounds all the spheres. A blue ring, a mere three feet across and half-submerged in the vast golden heaven, glides by. So there are two intersecting systems, one vast and golden, the other small and blue. Guillaume asks the angel why the blue circle is so much smaller than the golden circle of heaven. The angel tells him to look up and he sees the King and Queen of heaven on their thrones.

The angel then explains to Guillaume that the small blue circle is the ecclesiastical calendar and carries the element of time. This very day is the feast day of three saints, the angel says, and begins a rapid discourse on the zodiac. As he tells Guillaume about Pisces, sign of the fishes, he adds that the feast of the twelve fishermen will be celebrated during the sign of Pisces and that all twelve will appear in the Trinity. Guillaume is totally bewildered. What most irks him is that he has never really understood the mystery of the Trinity. The angel launches into a discourse about the three princ.i.p.al colors, green, red, and gold, then stops abruptly and orders Guillaume not to ask any further questions. That is the end of both the canto and the poem.

Guillaume's vision and Pauli's mandala-the quest for the fourth.

Guillaume's vision of heaven provides Jung with vital clues both to Pauli's mandala and to his feeling of sublime happiness. In Guillaume's and Pauli's visions the blue circle represents time. In Pauli's mandala it intersects with another of equal diameter, giving a more harmonious fit. The blue circle with its equally s.p.a.ced segments and ticking hand represents rationalism and thus the masculine Trinity. It drives the circle it intersects, which is segmented into four colors-red, green, gold, and blue, on which stand the four Cabiri. This circle, Jung decides, represents the fourness, the quaternity. The pendulums the Cabiri carry denote the eternal nature of the world clock. The whole mechanism causes the golden circle to rotate. This great circle is no longer dark. In Pauli's psyche, the shadow or dark side has been separated from the anima-his female aspect-which now s.h.i.+nes like the sun. No longer buried in the unconscious, it has become enlightened.

The clock on the blue circle sets the entire process in motion. This, says Jung, is because the Trinity is the pulse of the threefold rhythm of the system, which in turn is based on thirty-two, a multiple of four. The circle and the quaternity interpenetrate so that each is contained in the other: three is contained in four.

In a way it was not surprising that Pauli and Guillaume should have had similar visions, in that Pauli too was brought up as a Catholic. Throughout the Middle Ages the problem that hung over the Trinity was that it excluded the feminine. It makes sense that the missing color in Guillaume's dream is blue, the color of the small undeveloped circle. Blue, of course, is the color of Mary's cloak. It is Mary who is missing.

Guillaume was given this clue but he missed it. Instead he saw the King and Queen sitting side by side. But is not Christ the King also in himself the Trinity? Guillaume, a man of the Middle Ages, focused so much on the King that he forgot the Queen. Put the two together-King and Queen, Christ and Mary-and the result is four, a quaternity. Perhaps this was why the angel slipped away before Guillaume started asking awkward questions.

The problem for Guillaume and all the philosophers of the Middle Ages was to find the fourth. Perhaps Pauli's vision provided ”a symbolic answer to this age-old question. That is probably the deeper reason why the image of the world clock produced the impression of 'most sublime harmony.'” wrote Jung.

As for the absence at the center of Pauli's mandala, Jung concludes that it is ”an abstract, almost mathematical representation of some of the main problems discussed in medieval Christian philosophy.” It is only through his knowledge of Guillaume's vision that Jung is able to understand the connection of Pauli's dream with preoccupations going far back into history.

But how could the concept of fourness-the quaternity-arise in the unconscious? The conscious mind could not have put it there. Jung concluded that there must be some element in the psyche expressing itself through the concept of fourness, driving toward the completeness of the individual. Jung emphasizes that the concept of fourness is found in prehistoric artifacts all over the world. It is an archetype often a.s.sociated with the Creator-though, far from being a proof of G.o.d, it proves only ”the existence of an archetypal G.o.d-image” within human consciousness.

A changed man?

Jung claimed that as a result of his a.n.a.lysis Pauli ”became a perfectly normal and reasonable man” and even gave up drinking. He often spoke about the case of the intellectual young scientist as a prime example of the way in which his work on alchemical symbols had helped to shed light on the ”development of symbols of the self.” It cast light on physics, too.

Two years after he first approached Jung, Pauli wrote to him describing how difficult it had been to cope with the very different but equally repellent parts of his personality before he started a.n.a.lysis: The specific threat to my life has been the fact that in the first half of life I swing from one extreme to the other (enantiodromia). In the first half of my life I was a cold and cynical devil to other people and a fanatical atheist and intellectual ”intriguer.” The opposition to that was, on the one hand, a tendency toward being a criminal, a thug (which could have degenerated into me becoming a murderer), and, on the other hand being detached from the world-a totally unintellectual hermit with outbursts of ecstasy and visions.

It shows what an extraordinary degree of self-awareness he had achieved through his dreams and Jung's a.n.a.lysis of them.

A few months later Pauli wrote again to Jung: With regard to my own personal destiny, it is true that there are still one or two unresolved problems remaining. Nevertheless, I feel a certain need to get away from dream interpretation and dream a.n.a.lysis, and would like to see what life has to bring me from the outside. A development of my feeling function is, of course, very important to me, but it does seem to me that it cannot emerge solely as the outcome of dream a.n.a.lysis. Having given the matter much thought, I have come to the conclusion that I shall not continue my visits with you for the time being, unless something untoward should arise.

That was the end of Pauli's face-to-face sessions with Jung.

Thanks to Jung, in later years Pauli was somewhat calmer, less acerbic, and less hypercritical, although he was still never seen without a gla.s.s of wine in his hand or the occasional martini. Friends guessed that alcohol enabled him to cope with his lifelong bouts of depression.

”The naive certainty of my former Hamburg days, with which I could easily declare, 'That's all nonsense,' is something I have since rather lost,” he wrote to Erich Hecke, a former colleague and friend from those same riotous Hamburg days some years after he stopped his sessions with Jung. Later still, in the middle of a string of critical comments on the work of his former mentor Born, Pauli added wryly to Born, ”You will certainly remember old times where I did not have the habit to mix my critical remarks with so much sugar.”

As Jung put it, ”On a conservative estimate, a third of my cases were really cured, a third considerably improved, and a third not essentially influenced.” Pauli fell in the middle.

The Superior Man Sets His Life in Order.

Franca.

PAULI WAS still deep in his sessions with Jung when he happened to go to one of Adolf Guggenbuhl's parties in 1933. It was at another of Guggenbuhl's famous parties, three years earlier, that he had had his second fateful meeting with Kathe Deppner. On this occasion he was introduced to an elegant and striking young woman named Franziska Bertram.

Born in Munich, Franca was thirty-two, a year younger than Pauli. Always fas.h.i.+onably dressed, she was cultured and well traveled, a woman of determination and strong opinions. Her parents had divorced and she had been brought up by her mother, first in Italy, then in Cairo, where she went to high school. When World War I broke out the family returned to Munich. She moved to Zurich in 1922, where she had been the personal a.s.sistant of Friedrich Adler, an eminent Communist politician-famous for having shot the prime minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire-among several high-level secretarial positions.

Franca moved in high cultural circles and had just ended a relations.h.i.+p with the Swiss author and film writer Kurt Guggenheim. She was still in a fragile state, but was intrigued by Pauli's strange personality. When Guggenbuhl suggested that Pauli drive her home, as they both lived on Hadlaubstra.s.se-Franca at number 17, Pauli at number 47-Pauli replied off-handedly, ”I suppose I could take you along.” Franca was not impressed.

Pauli was certainly lacking in social graces but nevertheless, despite his apparent coolness, he set out to court her. Perhaps his gauche behavior had simply been shyness. After all, Franca must have been rather intimidating. Shortly afterward, Franca moved in with him. A year later, she recalled, Pauli said abruptly, ”Now we marry.”

As the great day approached, Pauli maintained his usual air of indifference. But his a.s.sistant at the time, Victor Weisskopf, tells a different story. Being Pauli's a.s.sistant was a full-time job. It involved grading problems for Pauli's courses as well as being available for discussions with him about his work and keeping him updated on developments in physics. It was always a struggle to obtain his permission to leave Zurich. Late in March that year, Weisskopf with great trepidation asked for one week's leave to go to Copenhagen. ”Why?” Pauli demanded impatiently. ”I intend to marry and come back with my wife,” Weisskopf explained. To Weisskopf's amazement, Pauli replied, ”I approve of that, I am going to get married also!”

Pauli and Franca married in London on Sunday, April 4, 1934. Most likely Pauli chose London because he had never been there. Franca's hooded eyes and half smile make her look uncannily like a female version of Pauli.

A couple of weeks later Jung sent Pauli his ”best congratulations.” Jung had predicted that Pauli's marriage ”would constellate the 'dark side of the collective',” meaning that it would bring the good side of otherwise potentially dark archetypes into his consciousness. Pauli, elated, declared Jung was ”perfectly correct.” To Jung, Pauli described Franca as someone who had ”a similar problem of opposites, but the reverse of mine.... She fell in love with my shadow side because it secretly made a great impression on her.”

Shortly afterward the couple found themselves seated across the table from Jung at yet another of Guggenbuhl's dinner parties. Strangely, Jung totally ignored Franca. To make matters worse, Pauli had only just told her that he had previously been married, to Kathe. How could Jung not speak to her when he ”was aware that the new marriage could lead to a devastating catastrophe,” she later demanded. Pauli rea.s.sured her that ”Jung knew [from Pauli's dreams] that the binding would be good.”

Franca's conclusion was that Jung had ignored her because of ”Pauli's decision to marry” in other words, that Jung had lost Pauli to her. ”Pauli, the extremely rational thinker, subjected himself to total dependence on Jung's magical personality,” she remembered bitterly. Her distrust of Jung was augmented by her anger that he had sent Pauli to be a.n.a.lyzed by a mere student, Erna Rosenbaum. She insisted that Pauli end his sessions with Jung. Perhaps, in fact, it was she who was jealous of Jung.

Nevertheless, Pauli acquiesced. He ceased dream a.n.a.lysis with Jung. Colleagues at the ETH such as Hermann Weyl thought that Franca had done him a favor.

Nevertheless, Pauli remained somewhat disturbed and insecure. On a skiing trip with Franca that December he panicked that the ”earth was shaking under his feet” and screamed that he wanted to ”thrash someone.” Weisskopf and his wife were skiing nearby and dropped in to see them. Pauli was angry with Weisskopf because he had made an error in a physics paper and was not speaking to him. Weisskopf was eager to get back on speaking terms but Pauli refused to see him. Weisskopf asked Franca to intervene but Pauli had stopped speaking to her too because she had dented their car.

Back in Zurich, Pauli tried to make it up with Weisskopf. ”Don't take it too seriously,” he said grandly. ”Many people have published wrong papers.” Then he ruined everything by adding, ”But I never did!”

The following year, Erich Hecke wrote to Weyl that he was concerned about Pauli's mental health. He seemed too preoccupied with ”dreaming and waking fantasies.” Hecke felt sympathetic toward Franca and referred to the ”huge piece of work” she had to contend with in her marriage.

In fact Franca contended well. She took care of day-to-day tasks, put up with his cynicism and, all in all, provided a secure home for him. She gave Pauli what he sorely needed-an ordered life in which he could get on with his work. Theirs was an affectionate relations.h.i.+p. The two of them always appeared comfortable with one another.

Over breakfast, Pauli regularly told Franca his dreams and then wrote them down. She recalled that this routine became increasingly important to him as he grew older. To her his dreams were useless exaggerations. After his death, she destroyed all the records of them she could find.

Though Pauli had stopped going to Jung for a.n.a.lysis, the two never ceased corresponding. Franca could not stop his dreams and Pauli continued sending Jung dreams that ”perhaps [may be] of some interest to the psychologist.” Jung was ecstatic and promised to ”'excavate' [the] ancient and medieval lines that have led to our dream psychology,”-to continue unearthing the mythical and alchemical aspects of Pauli's dreams and working out what they revealed about archetypes. Jung referred not to ”my” but to ”our dream psychology,” a phrase he never used to anyone else. His patient had become a co-worker.

In search of a fusion of physics and psychology.

In October 1935 Pauli had a dream in which he was at a physics conference. In his dream he was trying to explain his dreams to colleagues using everyday language but they could not understand. He realized that his dream was all about the need to find a common language that could be understood by both physicists and psychologists. Writing to Jung about it he played with the idea. Perhaps the term ”radioactive nucleus,” for example, could be interpreted in psychological terms as the Self. Jung declared it an ”excellent symbol” for a constellated archetype in the collective unconscious which then made an appearance in individual consciousness and thus encompa.s.sed both the unconscious and conscious Selves.

Over the next few years Pauli forged ahead in his research. He worked on crucial problems in physics and maintained a huge correspondence. He pursued infinities in quantum electrodynamics, d.a.m.ning certain of his colleagues' results as deplorable; mulled over the myriad end products of cosmic rays smas.h.i.+ng through the earth's atmosphere; delved into the exciting new subject of nuclear physics; and sought a deeper understanding of his greatest discovery, the exclusion principle.

But he never revealed to his scientific colleagues another issue that continued to preoccupy him: the need for a fusion of physics with Jung's a.n.a.lytical psychology in order to understand first the unconscious and then the conscious. Weisskopf recalled that in all the years he knew Pauli, Pauli never once mentioned the topic.

Pauli's dreams and Jung's a.n.a.lyses of them had led Pauli to the rather extraordinary conclusion that ”even the most modern physics lends itself to the symbolic representation of psychic processes,” he wrote to Jung, adding that there are ”deeper spiritual layers that cannot be adequately defined by the conventional concept of time.”

In January 1938, Pauli recorded the following dream and ill.u.s.trated it with a drawing: Pauli's drawing showing his dream of January 23, 1938.

In the dream he sees three layers or lines. The top line contains a rectangle, labeled ”window,” and a circle divided into three sections and labeled ”clock.” The two other lines are waves with different degrees of oscillation. Pauli and his anima, his female aspect, are both present, but neither can see the time on the clock because it is too far above the lower two levels which he is moving along. So his anima tries to create her own time with what he calls ”these odd oscillation symbols,” the same as those produced by the dwarves with their pendulum clocks in his ”world vision.”

Pauli tries to work out the meaning of the dream. He realizes that the rate at which the oscillatory forms vibrate per second must be related to the notion of time. To bring harmony into this system he must find a way to relate all ”3 layers to a four-part object (clock).” Once again he is torn between three and four.

Pauli began to notice symbols in his dreams that related to concepts in physics, such as pendulums and time. ”In my dreaming and waking fantasies,” he informed Jung, ”abstract figures are appearing.” These included ”acoustic rhythms” or ”alternating dark and white stripes” like spectral lines or wasps about which Pauli had a severe phobia. ”It will become a matter of life and death for me to understand more about the objective (communicable) meaning of these symbols than I do at the moment,” he wrote to Jung.

Jung and the rise of Hitler.

But no matter how otherworldly they were, in the end neither Jung nor Pauli could ignore the ominous changes in the world around them-to be specific, the rise of n.a.z.ism.

Back in 1935 Jung was invited to attend the tercentenary celebrations at Harvard University, scheduled for August 31 to September 18 the following year, as an honored guest.