Recognising Emma Jung’s exploration of the unconscious

The Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, birthplace of Dada, is dedicating an exhibition to Emma Jung. As early as 1911, the psychoanalyst and artist feared that she would be eclipsed by her famous husband. Over a century later, she is now being recognised. 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had long regarded him as his successor – until their dramatic falling out. Jung thought that Freud’s psychology was too fixated on sexuality, and in 1913, he broke away. The split would probably have happened even without a dispute about psychoanalysis because of Jung’s anti-Semitic views and his cosying up to the Nazis. He was keen to secure his place in what he saw as the German-speaking world of the future – in opposition to Freud’s psychoanalysis, which he labelled “Jewish”. In a 1918 essay titled On the Unconscious, Carl Jung wrote, “the Jew […] is badly at a loss for that quality in man ...