Memories, Dreams, Reflections

"Well, it’s difficult to choose which book of Jung’s underlines why he is such an important commentator on the sun. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is really his intellectual autobiography. He can be daft, as, I’m afraid a lot of the great psychoanalysts can be, in some of the more outlandish theories he had. But in revealing that man had an unconscious, and his ideas of the collective unconscious, he put forward ideas which have been accepted as obvious today – mainstream. And one of the things he writes about wonderfully well is how important the sun is to us in our conscious and our unconscious lives. He writes about how man has a yearning for light which is unstoppable. It’s one of the most basic needs in human beings. He went to Mexico in his early 40s and talked to some of the tribespeople there. He talks to an old leader of the tribe who says, we get up every morning and pray to the sun because if we didn’t do that it might not appear the next day. And Jung realises that, but this is just one of the many important myths about the sun, and it may not be true, but it underlines something which is true: man’s great need to feel that he has some kind of power over the sun even as the sun has its great power over us. For a start, the sun makes us feel good. I was amazed when just two years ago the prestigious newspaper The Independent had as its front page lead, ‘Scientists Discover the Sun is Good For You’. It was all about vitamin D and our need to have that vitamin in our lives. Not having vitamin D can lead to rickets. Women in some countries like Saudi Arabia and so on, wearing the protective clothing they do, often suffer from lack of sun. In Chasing the Sun I’ve got a chapter which goes into seasonal affective disorder and the extent to which lack of sun can lead to depression of varying degrees. It can either be seasonal affective disorder, which can be a terrible disorder, to just things which we call winter blues, which is far more minor. But most people feel better under the light and it’s not just a matter of feeling better. Many people feel more inspired. Again, I’ve got a whole chapter on the history of not just sunbathing but whether we want to be brown or black or white, and normally whatever colour skin you have, you want the other type. The Ancient Greeks wanted to keep out of the sun because they felt that to have pale skin was the most aristocratic, and that continued on and off through the centuries. Certainly in Stuart times – Charles I, Charles II – their courts would want to have really white skin. And the women of court would treat themselves with things which we now would find astounding – preparations which were made from lead or arsenic, and the arsenic would eat away at their faces. In Charles II’s time there were two rival beauties who died through arsenic poisoning trying to make sure their faces were the right colour. But then, after the Industrial Revolution, rather than showing that you were well off and didn’t have to go out on to the land to work, the reverse applied. If you could have an all-year-round tan it showed that you were a person of means and leisure. Well, the discovery of the Riviera at the turn of the 20th century was a revolution in habits. And although one thinks it was a literary circle, it was the moneyed set who went to southern France and northern Italy, and made it their home. That was taken up in the literature of the time and became part of the new culture."