Gregg Furth held a Diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich.  He studied with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross at Ohio State University after working in the Peace Corps in the West Indies.  His work with Kubler-Ross introduced him to a lifelong interest in the expressions of the unconscious during process of dying and death, especially with child patients and their spontaneous drawings and art.  Dr. Furth contributed a chapter in Kubler-Ross’s book LIVING WITH DEATH AND DYING in 1981, entitled “the Use of Drawings Made at Significant Times in One’s Life”.   In Zurich he worked and studied with Susan Bach, learning to interpret the unconscious content of spontaneous art.  He wrote his well-known and widely used THE SECRET WORLD OF DRAWING:  HEALING THROUGH ART, A JUNGIAN PERSPECTIVE in 1988.  Dr. Furth served on the faculties of California State University and John F. Kennedy University, lectured and trained therapists and hospice workers around the world, and kept an analytic practice in New York city until 2004.

Gregg met Robin Jaqua during their training in Zurich, and they became lifelong friends.  In the Fall of 2004 Gregg contacted the Jung Library in Eugene to offer his personal collection of books to the library, as he had fallen ill and was closing his practice and moving to London.  Around Christmas of 2004 the first shipment of books arrived, and we designed a bookplate with the image of a Monarch butterfly to honor Dr. Furth’s generous gift.  The butterfly signifies Dr. Furth’s tremendous respect for the workings of psyche in the world.  When speaking of synchronicity he would tell the story of a patient who was sitting near an open window in his office, relating a dream of a Monarch butterfly landing on her arm.  As he listened he was astonished to watch a large Monarch fly in the window, settle on the patient’s shoulder, and stay there until she finished recounting the dream.  When she finished, the butterfly flew out the window and away.  Reminiscent of Jung’s story of the scarab, this experience struck Dr. Furth with its numinous quality.

Dr. Furth joined the training faculty of the Pacific Northwest Jung Institute to present three lectures which are now part of the videotape collection THE FOUNDATIONS OF C. G. JUNG'S ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY. In his introduction to one of the lectures he describes his work with spontaneous images in art as following Jung’s guidelines for working with dreams, exploring the material from “the other side—or shall we say the dark side, the side that we usually are not living—how to bring this content forward, bringing it up into consciousness so that we live a more full, whole life.”  We are grateful for the generous gift of over 500 volumes in the Gregg Furth Collection, as well as the videotaped lectures featuring Dr. Furth and his work on typology and interpreting images from the unconscious.  Dr. Furth died in June of 2005, a loss to his friends and family, the Jungian community, and the world.