8 November 2026 | 7 pm GMT (2 pm EST | 11 am PST)
Approx: 1hr 30
Testing Epilepsy: Jung, Joseph M., and the Origins of Experimental Psychopathology
A presentation by Martin Liebscher
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This lecture examines the origins of C. G. Jung’s 1905 study “Analysis of the Associations of an Epileptic Patient” and its historical context. The starting point is Jung’s own childhood experience of a feigned “traumatic epilepsy,” which he later regarded as a decisive turning point in his early life. After joining the Burghölzli Clinic in 1900, Jung worked closely with Alfred Ulrich, senior consultant at the Swiss Institute for Epileptics. Together they conducted association tests with 158 patients, producing one of the earliest psychological-experimental investigations of epileptic thought processes. These studies were carried out at roughly the same time as the experiments that formed the basis of Experimental Research into the Association in Healthy Subjects (1904).
The lecture focuses on the case of the epileptic Joseph M., whose identity and biography can now be reconstructed. It also explores wider developments in the treatment of epilepsy around 1900, including scientific advances, the role of Christian welfare institutions, and the emergence of pharmacological therapies.
Martin Liebscher (M.A., Ph.D.) is Associate Professor of German Studies at University College London, editor and translator of the works of C. G. Jung for the Philemon Foundation, and editor of the Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung. His publications include Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (with A. Nicholls; Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Libido und Wille zur Macht: C. G. Jungs Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche [Libido and Will to Power: C. G. Jung’s Reading of Nietzsche] (Schwabe, 2011). For the Philemon Foundation he edited Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence between C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann (Princeton University Press, 2015), Psychology of Yoga and Eastern Meditation: Jung’s Lectures at the ETH Zurich, 1938-1939 (Princeton University Press, 2021), and Jung on Ignatius of Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises”: Jung’s Lectures at the ETH Zurich, 1939-1940 (Princeton University Press, 2023). He also collaborated on the translation of Jung’s Black Books. Experimental Psychopathology: Jung at the Burghölzli Asylum, 1904-1905, Volume 3 of the Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung, edited by Martin Liebscher, is scheduled for publication in 2028.
