Carl Gustav Carus

Carl Gustav Carus (1789 to 1869) was a German physiologist and painter, born in Leipzig, who played many roles during the Romantic era. A friend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, he was a doctor, naturalist, scientist, psychologist and landscape painter who studied under Caspar David Friedrich. He graduated as a doctor of medicine and of philosophy in 1811, and in 1814 was appointed professor of obstetrics and director of the maternity clinic at the medical and surgical teaching institution in Dresden. In 1844 he accompanied the King of Saxony to Britain as his personal physician and published a journal of the tour. He is best known to scientists for originating the concept of the vertebrate archetype, and his book Psyche of 1846 influenced later thought, with Carl Jung crediting him with pointing to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche.