Carl Gustav Jung, the man who created analytical psychology both as a concept and as a practice, was a complicated person. He is also very difficult to understand, partly because so many of his personality traits seem to be contradictory and sometimes mutually exclusive.

Ferociously intelligent, he used rigorous scientific method to derive a completely new set of tools for understanding and healing the human mind, yet he also believed completely in telepathy, ESP, poltergeists and precognitive dreams, and he was convinced that coincidences were not the result of chance but evidence of the ability of the human mind to manipulate the physical world.

He was married to the same woman for over 50 years and claimed to love her, yet he was also a serial womanizer who also admitted to having a crush on a male colleague. For several years he was Sigmund Freud’s closest confidante and admirer, but after the two disagreed, he never spoke to Freud again.