Carl Jung on a Fulfilled Life: Five Conditions and No Guarantee

In the summer of 1960, an English journalist named Gordon Young visited Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, was about to turn 85. Young asked him what the basic factors are that make for happiness. Jung answered with a short list, and that list is now quoted all over the internet. Much less known is what Jung said right after it. Both parts together answer a better question: what did Jung think a fulfilled life needs, and what did he think no list can give you?

What did Jung answer?

Jung named five conditions. The interview appeared in the London Sunday Times on July 17, 1960, nine days before his 85th birthday. It is reprinted in C. G. Jung Speaking, a collection of his interviews edited by William McGuire and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, 1977). This is the list in his words:

1. Good physical and mental health.
2. Good personal and intimate relations, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
3. The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.
4. Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
5. A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

Two words may need explaining. A “faculty” is an ability. “Vicissitudes” are the ups and downs of life, the changes for better or worse that nobody can avoid. So the fifth point means a way of seeing life that helps you through hard times.

Some websites give this list a different date and source. The wording above comes from the printed collection of his interviews, which is the most reliable record we have.

What is missing from the list?

Wealth, fame and success are not on it. Jung asked for “reasonable” standards of living, not high ones. He then added that the standard of living and the work both depend on how reasonable your expectations are. He also said that extravagance, meaning spending far beyond your needs, can cause happiness and unhappiness alike.

This fits a modern finding. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the same group of men since 1938, and later their children too. Its researchers report that the quality of close relationships predicted health and happiness in old age better than social class, IQ or genes. Money and fame did not stand out. The study only shows a connection, not a cause, and its first participants were all men. Still, it points in the same direction as Jung’s second item.

Jung also added a condition to the fifth item. A philosophy or a religion, he said, must come with a practical morality, meaning a way of acting. Without that, he called both “mere make-believe”. A view of life only helps if you live by it.

Why did Jung refuse to promise happiness?

Right after the list, Jung took away any guarantee. He said that a list of the things that cause unhappiness would be much longer. He said that nobody can reach happiness through ideas planned in advance, and he called it “a gift of the gods” that comes and goes. Then he went further:

All factors which are generally assumed to make for happiness can, under certain conditions, produce the contrary.

His example was boredom. Good health, money and a calm family life cannot protect you against deep boredom. Jung said such boredom can be so heavy that a person would almost welcome a mild illness, just for the change.

When Young asked whether he still believed that happiness was possible, Jung pointed to the year. There are as many nights as days, he said. Even a happy life has some darkness, and the word “happy” would lose its meaning without sadness. Then came his most practical advice. The more you deliberately chase happiness, he said, the more sure you are not to find it. It is better to take things as they come, with patience and calm.

So the five conditions are not a recipe. They make a happy life more likely, but they cannot decide what happens to you.

Why does the fifth condition carry the most weight?

The first four conditions can all be lost. Health fails, people die, work ends. The fifth condition is the one that helps when the other four are in trouble. That is why it is the key to the whole list.

Earlier in the same interview, Jung explained what he meant. He talked about old ideas that people in many cultures have shared, such as God, life after death and free will. Nobody can prove whether these ideas are true, he said, so truth is the wrong test. The right test is whether a person lives a more complete and meaningful life with them or without them. Jung did not tell anyone what to believe. He told them to check whether their beliefs actually help them live.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the book about his life that appeared after his death in 1961, Jung was just as careful. He wrote that the world is cruel and also beautiful. Whether meaning or meaninglessness wins, he wrote, is a matter of temperament, and probably both are true. He did not claim that life has a clear meaning. He hoped that meaning would win.

What did Jung say about the second half of life?

The same interview contains a part that is rarely quoted. Jung said that school prepares young people for the first half of life, up to about 35 or 40. After that, many people look back and ask whether their dreams came true. Many then keep living in the same way, only “more and better”, even though their old goals no longer move them. Jung said that life then becomes routine and stops renewing itself.

His answer was self-knowledge. In the second half of life, he said, looking outward has to turn into looking inward. You have to find out what you really are, including the parts that do not fit your plans. He wanted “schools for adults” for exactly this, because nobody teaches people what life after forty requires.

This connects to the list. The fifth condition, a view of life that carries you, is not something you get once. In Jung’s view it has to grow with you as your life changes.

How useful is the list today?

The list is useful as a check, not as a goal. You can ask which of the five conditions you neglect. Many people put almost all their energy into the fourth, work and income, and very little into the second or the third. Jung’s list makes that imbalance easy to see.

The list also has clear limits. It comes from a friendly newspaper interview, not from a study. Jung gave it at 84, from the life of a famous and wealthy man in a peaceful country. Several items, like health, are only partly in your hands. And the list says nothing about how to build any of the five.

In our judgment, the most valuable part is the warning after the list. Jung named good conditions, and then he said that even perfect conditions guarantee nothing. In his view, a fulfilled life still contains suffering. What makes it fulfilled is a way of seeing things that lets you go through suffering and still find meaning. That is also why the Stoic idea in What Is the Dichotomy of Control? is a good companion to Jung’s fifth point. Both ask what you can do when the outer conditions fail.