Emil A. Fischer: How important is the time factor in your scientific activity? Isn’t it a great strain for you to work both as an analyst and as a research scientist?
Dr. Jung: My time has always been divided.
Either I dealt with patients, or I did research work.
For a time, I used to see patients only in the afternoons. The mornings were devoted to scientific work.
In earlier years I worked a lot at night, especially during the first World War.
Until the middle of my life I worked chiefly in the morning, and after I was 36, chiefly in the afternoon.
In the last ten years I’ve turned again to working in the morning.
Emil A. Fischer: How do you react to disturbances?
Some occultist authors recommend that their adepts go into retreat to enhance their energies. Do you think that creative energy grows as a result of isolation?
Dr. Jung: The energy is there, but I must have the possibility of "casting my net." Once I have all the material, nothing and nobody must get near.
I am not as sensitive to noise as Carlyle, who installed triple glass windows and saw to it that all the fowl and dogs near his property were bought up.
But when I am in the active creative process, any disturbance is downright physically painful.
I have a little house at Bollingen, to which I retreat and where I can work undisturbed when my notes and preparatory studies have reached the stage where I can start writing.
Emil A. Fischer: Do some Yoga systems offer the possibility of developing one’s creative energies?
Dr. Jung: Yoga can liberate certain psychic contents and natural dispositions but it cannot produce them. You can’t make something out of nothing, not even with will-power.
And what is will-power?
To have will-power means that you have a lot of drive. Creativeness is drive!
A creative calling is like a daimonion, which, in some instances, can ruin a person’s entire life.Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 164-167
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