Carl Jung: My exterior is in strange contrast to my spirit.

Dear Mrs. N., 4 January 1929

There is some likeness in the upper storey but the ensemble is not satisfactory.

Have you got some of the many snapshots Mrs. X. got of me through her niece?

They might be helpful.

My exterior is in strange contrast to my spirit.

When I am dead, nobody will think that this is the corpse of one with spiritual aspirations.

I am the clash of opposites.

That makes it so frightfully difficult to get me right.

Should my portrait be the reconciling symbol of your own contradictions?

The very best wishes for a happy New Year,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 59

Carl Jung: It seemed to me that my spookery struck you as altogether too stupid...

To Sigmund Freud

Dear Professor Freud, Burgholzli-Zurich, 2 April 1909

Worry and patients and all the other chores of daily life have beset me again and quite got me down for the first 2 days.

Now I am slowly coming to the surface and beginning to bask in the memory of the days in Vienna.

I hope you will have received my offprints in good time for Wednesday evening.

12.IV. After a 10-day interruption I have at last succeeded in continuing my letter.

From this interlude it appears that the above complaint was premature, because, as usual, worse was to follow.

Today I have put the last bad day behind me.

All during the Easter holidays, when other people were out walking, I was able to snatch only one day's breath of air.

On 15.IV I shall wrench myself free without fail and start my bicycle tour.

Since Vienna all scientific work has been out of the question.

But in my practice I have accomplished much.

At the moment a madly interesting case is stretching me on the rack.

Some of the symptoms come suspiciously close to the organic borderline (brain tumour?), yet they all hover over a dimly divined psychogenic depth, so that in analysing them all one's misgivings are forgotten.

First-rate spiritualistic phenomena occur in this case, though so far only once in my presence.

Altogether it makes a very peculiar impression. The patient is a man-slaying Sara, Raguel's daughter.

The case I told you about-evil eye, paranoiac impression-was cleared up as follows.

She was abandoned by her last lover, who is altogether pathological (Dem. praec.?); abandoned also by an earlier lover-this one even spent a year in an asylum.

Now the infantile pattern: hardly knew her father and mother, loving instead her brother, 8 years older than she and at 22 a catatonic.

Thus the psychological stereotype holds good.

You said the patient was merely imitating Dem. praec.; now the model has been found.

When I left Vienna I was afflicted with some sentiments d'incompletude on account of the last evening I spent with you.

It seemed to me that my spookery struck you as altogether too stupid and perhaps unpleasant because of the Fliess analogy. (Insanity!)

Just recently, however, the impression I had of the last-named patient smote me with renewed force.

What I told my wife about it made the deepest impression on her too.

I had the feeling that under it all there must be some quite special complex, a universal one having to do with the prospective tendencies in man.

If there is a "psychanalysis" there just also be a "psychosynthesis" which creates future events according to the same laws.

(I see I am writing rather as if I had a flight of ideas.)

The leap towards psychosynthesis proceeds via the person of my patient, whose unconscious is right now preparing, apparently with nothing to stop it, a new stereotype into which everything from outside, as it were, fits in conformity with the complex.

(Hence the idea of the objective effect of the prospective tendency!)

That last evening with you has, most happily, freed me inwardly from the oppressive sense of your paternal authority.

My unconscious celebrated this impression,with a great dream which preoccupied me for some days and which I have just finished analyzing.

I hope I am now rid of all unnecessary encumbrances.

Your cause must and will prosper, so my pregnancy fantasies tell me, which luckily you caught in the end.

As soon as I get back from Italy I shall begin some positive work, first of all for the Jahrbuch.

I hope you had a good Easter holiclay and feel the better for it.

N. Ossipow, head physician of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Moscow, has published a fine report on our affairs.

They seem to be working along our lines.

I have heard that Abraham with some others has issued a "psychanalytical questionnaire."

Let's hope it's a canard!

Cordial greetings,

Gratefully, JUNG ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 8-10

Carl Jung: What is needed at present is only the loose organization of a national group.

To Alphonse Maeder

Dear friend, 22 January 1934

I am writing to you about the organization of a Swiss national group in the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy.

In consequence of the revolutionary changes in Germany the Germans have been compelled to form a national group under a "leader."

This group has to pledge loyalty to the National Socialist State and is obliged to adhere most strictly to political guidelines within its organization.

The leader is Professor Dr. M. H. Goring (Platzhoffstr. 26, Wuppertal-Elberfeld).

Through the resignation of Professor Kretschmer, for whom things evidently got too "complicated," I have been pushed forward from the position of vice-president to that of president.

I
would never have accepted this doubtful pleasure had not the Germans particularly insisted on having a foreign president for the International Society.

The secretary-general is Dr. W. Cimbal (Allee 87, of Altona).

Essentially it is simply a question of someone taking the initiative and bringing together all those doctors in Switzerland who are interested in psychotherapy with a view to getting them to join the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy.

What is needed at present is only the loose organization of a national group.

Of course it would be desirable if this group could decide to hold one or two meetings annually, though this is not necessary since the International Society will also meet only once a year.

I would be very gratified if you organized this national group and took over its presidency.

I am in the midst of similar negotiations with Bjerre in Stockholm.

The Dutch want to wait until they see what happens in other countries.

I am convinced that if such groups were formed in Sweden and Switzerland, Holland would agree to do something along these lines.

Under the present political conditions probably nothing can be arranged with Austria, moreover the psychotherapists there are practically all Jews.

It seems that many people are afraid to go along with Germany because of the existing regime.

But with the Germans, as I know from experience, it is just the other way round.

Prof. Goring himself wrote me that foreigners should take a psychotherapeutic view of the present German situation.

The position of German science is really not to be envied.

Hence I think it necessary for outside neutrals, by founding a broad organization as a framework, to give it an opportunity to make international connections.

Germany is spiritually more cut off at present from the outside world during the war and is therefore in particular need of spiritual contact.

I don't want to interfere with the practical arrangements.

I will only tell you how I think of them.

The founding of the gn, could be done by a circular letter which would simply need sign.

Membership fees could be kept low since we are not bound by German statutes.

Nevertheless it would be a good thing if you get in touch with Dr. Cimbal for further information.

(Particularly in Rega).

to subscriptions to the Zentralbatt, more favourable terms might be reached for subscriptions in large numbers.

In case anything is still unclear to you, I am ready to give you more
information.

A personal meeting is probably not necessarily at present.

Best thanks for kindly sending me the two offprints, one of which I knew already.

~With friendly greetings,

Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 136-138

Carl Jung: You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father.

Anonymous

Dear Mrs. N., 20 May 1940

This is just the kind of experience you needed.

You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father.

But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being.

It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man’s purposes.

Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her.

She is like the needle of the compass pointing to the North, which is most useful when you have a good manmade ship and when you know how to navigate.

That’s about the position.

If you follow the river, you surely come to the sea finally.

But if you take it literally you soon get stuck in an Impassable gorge and you complain of being misguided. The unconscious is useless without the human mind.

It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny.

Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious.

I am actually in the mountains with my family and all the little grandchildren avoiding the dangers of Zurich.

We all hope and pray for a British victory over the Antichrist. Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.

Carl Jung: Hence my typology aims, not at characterizing personalities...

To Hans Schaffer

Dear Dr. Schaffer, 27 October 1933

Sincerest thanks for your friendly and interesting letter.

Your individual attempt at a typization shows that the typological problem can be approached from any number of angles, and usually with considerable advantage for the inventor of the scheme in question.

Your attempt is essentially characterological, which I cannot assert of my own typology.

Nor was it ever my intention to characterize personalities, for which reason I did not put my description of the types at the beginning of the book; rather I tried to produce a clear conceptual scheme based on empirically demonstrable factors.

Hence my typology aims, not at characterizing personalities, but at classifying the empirical material in relatively simple and clear categories,
just as it is presented to a practising psychologist and therapist.

I have never thought of my typology as a characterological method and have never applied it in this sense.

For any such application it would be much too general and therefore much too scanty.

As you very rightlyobserve, one needs 27 categories and probably a few more besides in order to give an adequate characterization of mentally differentiated persons.

For the psychologist, who has to deal with people in practical terms, a characterological diagnosis of the patient is of secondary importance; for him it is far more important to have a terminology in which at least the crassest differences between individuals can be formulated.

Your characterological aim is to sketch an adequate picture of a person's character.

My typology aims at elucidating conceptually the empirical psychological material presented by any one individual and thus subordinating it to general points of view.

This intention of mine has often been misunderstood, for the simple reason that the layman can form absolutely no conception of the peculiar material the psychotherapist is confronted with.

In practical dealings with people it is certainly of the greatest importance to know with whom one is dealing.

For the therapist this is a matter of indifference, since he has to deal with him anyway and the patient's psychology is such that the only thing to do is change it.

Consequently, categories like "sensitivity," "good-naturedness," "intellect," etc. can be considered only as more or less pleasant concomitants.

I should like to add, however, that your findings may well be of great importance biographically and are obviously an extremely valuable contribution to our knowledge of contemporary personalities.

With collegial regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130

Carl Jung: In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him.

To S. Malkinson

Dear Sir, 12 June 1933

I'm afraid there will be little hope in the future as I have to reducemy time spent on the treatment of patients next October.

The reason is that I have to give lectures here and in Germany and this occupation will take a great deal of my time.

It is true, I don't deny my sympathy to suffering humanity, but I am only one man against a host of patients and it is just impossible that one man can do the whole job.

It is a mistake when you think that only the authority in this field could help you.

You have a mind just as well as any other human being and you can use it if you only know how to apply it.

Any of my pupils could give you so much insight and understanding that you could treat yourself if you don't succumb to the prejudice that you receive healing through others.

In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127

Carl Jung: He is still in a sorry condition, for Hades is a gloomy place.

To Count Hermann Keyserling

Dear Count, 25 August 1928

The negative relationship to the mother is always an affront to nature, unnatural.

Hence distance from the earth, identification with the father, heaven, light, wind, spirit, Logos.

Rejection of the earth, of what is below, dark, feminine.

Negative relationship to material things, also to children.

Flight from personal feelings.

On the subjective level the "father" is an imago: the image of your relationship to the father and to everything he stands for.

In your dream this imago is dark, on the point of disappearing; that is to say a different attitude to the father imago is brewing (and to everything it stands for).

Your one-sided spiritual tendency is probably meant, for anyone whose stature requires the size of a continent is not so very far away from Father Heaven (Zeus).

This is too much for our human stature.

It is an inflation by the universal, supra-personal spirit.

(Originally this was forced on you by the negative attitude of your mother.)

This spiritual inflation is compensated by a distinct inferiority of feeling, a real undernourishment of your other side, the feminine earth (Yin) side, that of personal feeling.

Hence your feeling appears in negative form, as an obsessive symptom == fear of starvation. Symptoms are always justified and serve a purpose.

Because of your negative relation to the earth side there is a danger of actual starvation; you arouse enmity because you give out no warm feeling but merely autoerotic emotions which leave other people cold, also you are ruthless and tactless in manner.

But your inferior feeling is genuine, hence anyone who sees behind your heavenly cloak with its ten thousand meteors has confidence in you. (There aren't many
of them.)

By having too much libido in the father imago you give the spirit of your father too much blood, therefore he cannot get out of the chthonic shadow world into non-spatiality (eternal rest) as he would like to.

c

One shouldn't attach the dead to the living, otherwise they both get estranged from their proper spheres and are thrown into a state of suffering.

Yours very sincerely,

Jung, ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 52-53

Carl Jung: I do my own cooking and chop my own wood and raise my own potatoes.

To Father Victor White

Dear Father White, 13 April 1946

I was very pleased with your letter and I hasten to answer it at once.

It is a nice idea of yours that you want to come out to Switzerland between July and September.

The time that would suit me best would be between the 12th and 27th of August.

I should like you to consider yourself as my guest during your stay here.

I shall be in the country, on the upper part of the lake of Zurich, where I have a little country place.

If you are a friend of the simple life you will have all the comfort you need.

If your tastes should be too fastidious you would find it a bit rough.

To give you an idea: I do my own cooking and chop my own wood and raise my own potatoes.

But you have a decent bed and a roof over your head and we shall have plenty of time to discuss anything under the sun.

As to clerical garments, you need no disguise whatever, since we shall be in a Catholic country, not very far from the famous monastery of Einsiedeln.

But I warn you to bring something old and disreputable with you so that you spare your good clothes, and a pair of light shoes for occasional sailing on the lake.

In alchemy you find many references to the homo quadratus, which is always an allusion to mercurius quadratus, i.e., the hermai.

The quadratura is a symbol for totality.

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 419-420

Carl Jung across the web:

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3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

Carl Jung: Am I particularly stupid? Or is it the style?

To Sandor Ferenczi

Dear Colleague, 25 December 1909

I consider it impossible to keep up our analytical relationship by correspondence.

One simply hasn't the time for so many and such long letters.

Now and then, as you say, a sign of life and no diplomatics when we meet-that is possible.

I am very pleased to welcome you among the collaborators, this time for the second volume.

Sadger tells me that for the 1st half of vol. II he is contributing a case in which he too will expatiate on homosexuality.

I am looking forward to comparing your findings.

Incidentally, your paper on "Introjection" made a great impression here, as also did your previous paper on "Actual" (etc.)

The latter particularly on Pfister.

At present I am once again in terminological difficulties.

The reason why this ahvays seems to happen only to me lies in my teaching activity.

Recently I took issue with Binswanger about Freud's concept of regression, as to whether it included the infantile element or not. Now it turns out that the concept crops up in two variants.

When Adler demonstrates repressed homosexuality in the dreams of a prostitute, there is a distinct collision with the clinical concept of homosexuality as it actually exists.

In this sense homosexuality is the dominance of this same component in overt acts because of a permanent cathexis, and for that reason it differs from the temporary
cathexis of the homosexual component due to displacement of the heterosexual component.

These and similar difficulties make teaching unspeakably tiring and lead to everlasting misunderstandings.

Freud's paper on obsessional neurosis is marvellous but very hard to understand. I must soon read it for the third time.

Am I particularly stupid? Or is it the style?

I plump cautiously for the latter.

Between Freud's speaking and writing there is "a gulf fixed" which is very wide.

Most of all I have disputed with Freud the "symptom of omnipotence" ( ! ) because the term is too clinical.

Naturally he is right, and the term is artistic too.

But if you have to teach that kind of thing in a systematic context, you get goose pimples and take to swearing.

With best greetings,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 13-14

Carl Jung: Gnosticism has renewed its vitality with me recently...

[Carl Jung: … Gnosticism has renewed its vitality with me recently…]

To Father Victor White

Dear Victor! May 1948

Finally I am able to write to you.

I thank you very much for your excellent lecture on Gnosticism.

I much admire your balanced judgment and your just evaluation of a subject that has been so often represented in a wrong light and misunderstood by all sorts of comprehensible and incomprehensible prejudices.

Your presentation of the Pistis Sophia is excellent.

Among the patristic writers about Gnosticism I missed Hippolytos, the most thorough and the most intelligent of all.

Epiphanius, who shares the former's lot, does not deserve much praise.

Your paper has made me think: Have I faith or a faith or not?

I have always been unable to produce faith and I have tried so hard that I finally did not know any more what faith is or means.

I owe it to your paper that I have now apparently an answer: faith or the equivalent of faith with me is what I would call respect.

I have respect for the Christian Truth.

Thus it seems to come down to an involuntary assumption in me that there is something to the dogmatic truth, something indefinable to begin with.

Yet I feel respect for it, although I don't really understand it.

But I can say my life-work is essentially an attempt to understand what others apparently can believe.

There must be-so I conclude-a rather strong motive-power connected with the Christian Truth, otherwise it would not be explicable why it influences me to such an extent.

My respect is-mind you-involuntary; it is a "datum" of irrational nature.

This is the nearest I can get to what appears to me as "faith."

There is however nothing specific in it, since I feel the same kind of respect for the basic teachings of Buddhism and the fundamental Taoist ideas.

In the case of the Christian Truth one would be inclined to explain this a priori respect through my Christian education.

Yet the same cannot be said in the case of Buddhism, Taoism and certain aspects of Islam.

Hindu theology curiously enough never had the same appeal, although it has gripped my intellect at times quite powerfully.

Gnosticism has renewed its vitality with me recently, as I was deeply concerned with the question of how the figure of Christ was received into Hellenistic nature-philosophy and hence into alchemy.

A little book has grown out of such studies within the last months.

It will be, I am afraid, a shocking and difficult book.

It has reduced me to a most curious attempt to formulate the progress of symbolism within the last two thousand years through the figure of quaternities based upon 2 quaterniones of the Naasenes as mentioned by Hippolytos.

The first one is the so-called Moses-quaternio.

Well, it is a mad thing, which I cannot explain here but it seems hellishly important in so far as it winds up with the physical time-space quatemio.

The whole seems to be logically watertight.

I feel reasonably well and hope you do the same.

You must have had an interesting time.

A Jesuit professor of theology at Louvainis coming to see me next week.

They begin to sit up.

Looking forward to the summer, when I hope to see you again at Bollingen,

Yours cordially, C.G. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 501-503

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3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

4. Lance S. Owens The Gnosis Archives http://gnosis.org/welcome.html

Carl Jung: Things that are neither useful nor beautiful usually have at least a meaning.

To Hans Welti

Dear Dr. Welti, 23 December 1932

Best thanks for kindly sending me the photograph of your hieroglyphic object.

As an utter dilettante I am of course completely nonplussed by it.

It would be a lie if I said I liked it, because it does not move me aesthetically in the least.

On the other hand it has something that intrigues me, although this, as I have sometimes found,often appear absurd to the artist-I look for the meaning.

Things that are neither useful nor beautiful usually have at least a meaning.

Why, for instance, does this thing not have three, five, or more prongs but precisely four?

Why, when you photograph it, does it cast such a deep shadow?

Why is its base corrugated like that?

If I find such an object in the hut of a primitive, I know at once that it is ju-ju,1 i.e., medicine, and thus has a meaning.

A fetish is as a rule neither useful nor beautiful, but it has meaning, magical meaning.

This analogy helps me to gain some understanding of these things.

From the artistic standpoint, I have thoroughly understood your article in the N.Z.Z., but for all that I cannot approve of modern art, i.e., find it beautiful.

I find it perfectly frightful.

The reason for this, it seems to me, is that art, without being aware of it, has invaded the realm of the mind and is trying to work out the unconscious meaning pictorially.

I can understand modern works of art only as idols from the underworld, and they become accessible to me only through a knowledge of the psychology of the unconscious.

They do not affect me aesthetically.

It may very well be that my attitude is that of a Philistine, but God knows I can't find them beautiful.

Perhaps other centuries will, in which case I am thankful to the Creator that man doesn't live for 200 years, otherwise he would suddenly find himself in an age in which he would choke to death.

As to your concluding question, phenomena of decay naturally occur in all epochs, but in some they pile up.

High points are the decline of antiquity, and the 12th and 16th centuries.

With best regards,

Yours sincerely, c. G. JUNG ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 114-115

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2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/

3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

4. Lance S. Owens The Gnosis Archives http://gnosis.org/welcome.html

Carl Jung: I have some insight into Indian psychology and have also analysed a Parsee,

To J. Wilhelm Hauer

Dear Professor Hauer, 7 June 1937

Excuse my long silence, but I am so busy at present that I have practically no time to attend to my correspondence.

I have considered your suggestion and welcome the idea of a meeting.

A seminar on comparative religion would be particularly valuable to us.

But as I don't know how you would take to this idea, please tell me what you think about it.

The connection between race and religion, which you have in mind, is a very difficult theme.

Since the anthropological concept of race as an essentially biological factor remains completely unclarified, to demonstrate a connection between religion and this scarcely definable factor seems to me almost too bold an undertaking.

I myself have personally treated very many Jews and know their psychology in its deepest recesses, so I can recognize the relation of their racial psychology to their religion, but it would be quite beyond me to relate Islam or the ancient Egyptian religion to its devotees as I lack any intimate knowledge of Arab and Egyptian psychology.

I would be just as incapable of establishing a real connection between the non-Semitic Berber race and the Aryan Mohammedan population of India.

I have some insight into Indian psychology and have also analysed a Parsee, but would not be able to relate Parseeism, which is essentially different from the Indian religion, to what I know of the racial psychology of the Indians.

I see enormous scientific difficulties in this field which could hardly be dealt with in a seminar.

Hence I would rather suggest to you a theme on comparative religion and would ask you to let me know your opinion.

With best regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 233

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3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

Carl Jung: And it was Brigitta of Sweden (1303-1373) who helped me to gain insight.

To Hans Schmid


Dear friend, 6 November 1915

In the meantime, and after long reflection, the problem of resistance to understanding has clarified itself for me.

And it was Brigitta of Sweden ( 1303-1373) who helped me to gain insight.

In a visionshe saw the devil, who spoke with God and had the following to say about the psychology of devils:

"Their belly is so swollen because their greed was boundless, for they filled themselves and were not sated, and so great was theirgreed that, had they but been able to gain the whole world, they would gladly have exerted themselves, and would moreover have desired to reign in heaven. A like greed is mine. Could I but win all the souls in heaven and on earth and in purgatory, I would gladly snatch them."

So the devil is the devourer. Understanding= comprehendere =1..Aap.,/3av£w, and is likewise a devouring.

Understanding swallows you up.

But one should not let oneself be swallowed if one is not minded to play the hero's role, unless it be that one really is a hero who can overpower the monster from within.

And the understander in turn must be willing to play the role of Fafner and devour indigestible heroes.

It is therefore better not to "understand" people who might be heroes, because the same fate might befall oneself.

One can be destroyed by them.

In wanting to understand, ethical and human as it sounds, there lurks the devil's will, which though not at first perceptible to me, is perceptible to the other.

Understanding is a fearfully binding power, at times a veritable murder of the soul as soon as it flattens out vitally important differences.

The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which is snuffed out when it is "grasped."

That is why symbols want to be mysterious; they are not so merely because what is at the bottom of them cannot be clearly apprehended.

The symbol wants to guard against Freudian interpretations, which are indeed such pseudo-truths that they never lack for effect.

With our patients "analytical" understanding has a wholesomely destructive effect, like a corrosive or thermocautery, but is banefullv destructive on sound tissue.

It is a technique we have learnt from the devil, always destructive, but useful where destruction is necessary.

But one can commit no greater mistake than to apply the principles of this technique to an analysed psychology.

More than that, all understanding in general, which is a conformity with general points of view, has the diabolical element in it and kills.

It is a wrenching of another life out of its own course, forcing it into a strange one in which it cannot live.

Therefore, in the later stages of analysis, we must help people towards those hidden and unlockable symbols, where the germ lies hidden like the tender seed in the hard shell.

There should truly be· no understanding in this regard, even if one were possible.

But if understanding is general and manifestly possible, then the symbol is ripe for destruction, as it no longer conceals the seed which is about to break from the shell.

I now understand a dream I once had, which made a great impression on me: I was standing in my garden and had dug open a rich spring of water that gushed forth.

Then I had to dig another deep hole, where I collected all the water and conducted it back into the depths of the earth again.

So is healing given to us in the unlockable and ineffable symbol, for it prevents the devil from swallowing up the seed of life.

The menacing and dangerous thing about analysis is that the individual is apparently understood: the devil eats his soul away, which naked and exposed, robbed of its protecting shell, was born like a child into the light.

That is the dragon, the murderer, that always threatens the newborn divine child.

He must be hidden once more from the "understanding" of humanity.

True understanding seems to be one which does not understand, yet lives and works.

Once when Ludwig the Saint visited the holy Aegidius incognito, and as the two, who did not know each other, came face to face, they both fell to their knees before each other, embraced and kissed-and spoke no word together.

Their gods recognized each other, and their human parts followed.

We must understand the divinity within us, but not the other, so far as he is able to go by himself and understand himself.

The patient we must understand, for he needs the corrosive medicine.

We should bless our blindness for the mysteries of the other; it shields us from devilish deeds of violence.

We should be connivers at our own mysteries, but veil our eyes chastely before the mystery of the other, so far as, being unable to understand himself, he does not need the "understanding" of others.

[UNSIGNED] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 30-32

Carl Jung: Theology and the Church do not embarrass me in the least.

To Paul Maag

Dear Colleague, 1 June 1933

Many thanks for kindly confirming my expectations.

You are, ofcourse, quite right: I have not yet given up struggling for a philosophy of life and I very definitely hope that this struggle will not come to an end too soon, for I cannot see that possessing the absolute truth is a state in any way to be envied.

I would therefore rather not make any specific prognoses about the future, since the modest share of the light of knowledge that has been vouchsafed me does not enable me to see whither and to what goals the tortuous paths of fate are wending.

Theology and the Church do not embarrass me in the least.

On the contrary, I am indebted to both for extraordinarily valuable insights.

It was kind of you to recommend Martensen's Jacob Bohme's Leben und Autorenschaft. Bohme's writings have long been familiar to me.

As you have observed, I am also well aware of the difference between myth and revelation, having concerned myself solely with myths and never with revealed truths.

Hence I found it exceedingly odd that you should amiably take me for an atheist.

You must surely have noticed that my principal concern is psychology and not theology.

So when I treat of the concept of God I am referring exclusively to its psychology and not to its hypostasis.

I have voiced this scientifically necessary epistemological proviso many times in my writings.

I must also confess that I have never yet been taken for an atheist by my readers, because for educated people today the principles of the theory of knowledge have already become pretty much part of their flesh and blood.

Certainly in Kant's time1 there were still a few theologians who cherished the regrettable error that Kant was an atheist, but even then there was a bigger educated public who were capable of distinguishing between criticism of the concept of God and belief in God.

I think you do me an injustice when you hold the view that I have not mastered even the elements of gnoseology.

If you would submit the epistemological statements in my Psychological Types to a well-disposed examination, you could clearly discern my philosophical position.

You would also see that nothing is further from my mind than to deny the contents of religious experience.

With collegial

regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 123-124

Carl Jung: I would ask you to find the little book a discreet resting place in your writing desk.

To Alphonse Maeder

Dear friend, 19 January 1917

Please permit this more intimate form of address!

I have the need to tell you once again of the special joy I felt yesterday evening when I saw how close we are in spirit to one another in our different ways.

This impression was a great satisfaction to me after the tiresome experiences of last week.

Allow me to give you personally the enclosed little present-a fragment with far-reaching associations.

I deserve no credit for it, nor does it want or pretend to be anything, it just is-simply that.

Hence I could not presume to put my name to it, but chose instead the name of one of those great minds of the early Christian era which Christianity obliterated.

It fell quite unexpectedly into my lap like a ripe fruit at a time of great stress and has kindled a light of hope and comfort for me in my bad hours.

Of course it won't mean anything more to you than what I mean by it: a token of my joy over Our wordless understanding yesterday evening.

I would ask you to find the little book a discreet resting place in your writing desk.

I don't want a profane hand to touch my memory of those limpid nights.

With cordial greetings,

Very sincerely,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 33-34

Carl Jung across the web:

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Great Sites to visit:
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3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

Carl Jung: I have read your brilliant account of the Kore figure with the greatest interest.

To Karl Kerenyi

Dear Professor Kerenyi, 26 July 1940

Many thanks for kindly sending me your MS "Kore."

I have read your brilliant account of the Kore figure with the greatest interest.

When you say that an ethnologist can scarcely imagine with what feelings a classical philologist will read his material, I can say the same of the psychologist who is permitted to enjoy this lively object-lesson concerning a figure which so often crops up in his practice.

Were I not so busy at present with urgent work I could hardly resist the temptation to add a psychological commentary.

I don't know what you intend to do with this essay.

Will you have it published soon, or will it be some time before it goes to the printer?

In the latter case I would consider whether it would be possible to say something suitable, provided that such a suggestion is acceptable to you.

I am keeping your essay a while longer.

But if you want it back I can send it to you at any time.

Yours sincerely,

C. G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 284

Carl Jung across the web:

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Great Sites to visit:

1. Jenna Lilla's Path of the Soul http://jennalilla.org/

2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/


3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

Carl Jung: I have fallen foul of contemporary history.

To E. Beit von Speyer

Dear Frau von Speyer, 13 April 1934

As you have probably noticed, your letter has not been answered.

The reason is that I was away from home and found it only on my return.

I am very sorry this has happened, but it was holiday time.

Thank you very much for your interesting picture.

It is a correct representation of your basic psychic attitude.

It is characteristic that the four functions are represented by four animals.

This means that the principles of these functions still have an instinctive form.

There are possibilities of further development.

I have fallen foul of contemporary history.

From abroad one can hardly have anything to do with Germany without becoming politically suspect on one side or the other.

People now think I am a blood-boltered anti-Semite because I have helped the German doctors to consolidate their Psychotherapeutic Society and because I have said there are certain differences between Jewish and so-called Aryan psychology which are mainly due to the fact that the Jews have a cultural history that is 2,000 years older than the so-called Aryan.

There has been a terrific shindy over this.

It is no pleasure to be well known.

You are then like a city on a mountain and cannot remain hidden.

With cordial greetings,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 157

Carl Jung: As you know, the angel of death has struck me down too and almost succeeded in wiping me off the slate.

Eleanor Bertine has already given me the news of your illness in a letter I received a few days ago.

I wish I could talk to you personally, but one is so far from each other and it is such a long time we are separated from the rest of the world that one feels quite hopeless about a communication.

We don’t trust even our letters to be capable of jumping over the abyss which yawns between us and the wide world.

Still I hope that a good star conveys my letter to you.

As you know, the angel of death has struck me down too and almost succeeded in wiping me off the slate.

I have been practically an invalid ever since, recovering very slowly from all the arrows that have pierced me on all sides.

Fortunately enough my head has not suffered and I could forget myself in my scientific work.

On the whole my illness proved to be a most valuable experience, which gave me the inestimable opportunity of
a glimpse behind the veil.

The only difficulty is to get rid of the body, to get quite naked and void of the world and the ego-will.

When you can give up the crazy will to live and when you seemingly fall into a bottomless mist, then the truly real life begins
with everything which you were meant to be and never reached.

It is something ineffably grand.

I was free, completely free and whole, as I never felt before.

I found myself 15,000 km. from the earth and I saw it as an immense globe resplendent in an inexpressibly beautiful blue light.

I was on a point exactly above the southern end of India, which shone in a bluish silvery light with Ceylon like a shimmering opal in the deep blue sea.

I was in the universe, where there was a big solitary rock containing a temple.

I saw its entrance illuminated by a thousand small flames of coconut oil.

I knew I was to enter the temple and I would reach full knowledge.

But at this moment a messenger from the world (which by then was a very insignificant corner of the universe) arrived and said that I was not allowed to depart and at this moment the whole vision collapsed completely.

But from then on for three weeks I slept, and was wakeful each night in the universe and experienced the complete vision.

Not I was united with somebody or something—it was united, it was the hierosgamos [the sacred marriage], the mystic Agnus [lamb].

It was a silent invisible festival permeated by an incomparable, indescribable feeling of eternal bliss, such as I never could have imagined as being within reach of human experience.

Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it.

But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to
return.

As a matter of fact, during the first month after my first vision I suffered from black depressions because I felt that I was recovering.

It was like dying.

I did not want to live and to return into this fragmentary, restricted, narrow, almost mechanical life, where you were subject to the laws of gravity and cohesion, imprisoned in a system of 3 dimensions and whirled along with other bodies in the turbulent stream of time.

There was fullness, meaning fulfillment, eternal movement (not movement in time). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I,
Pages 357-358

Carl Jung: As a psychotherapist I cannot be indifferent to the future of psychotherapy.

To Max Guggenheim

Dear Colleague, 28 March 1934

I realize that it is very disquieting when one sees somebody in my position having anything to do with the conformed ["gleichgeschaltet"] Germany.

But you should not forget that "Gleichschaltung" in Germany is a political fact which, however, does not get rid of the other fact that there are human beings in Germany.

You may be sure that if I had done for Russia what I have done for the Germans I would undoubtedly have been condemned as a Bolshevist, for everything there is just as politicized and thoroughly conformed.

But the work of Nansen and the Quakers continues nevertheless and no one would assert that the Quakers are Bolshevists.

If you disregard the persecution of the Jews in Germany, you must admit that there is a medical Society there which is very important for us in Switzerland.

It is therefore not a matter of indifference what happens to psychotherapy in that country.

At critical moments I had to look behind the scenes and what I saw has prompted me to intervene, not least because I was thinking of what will happen in Switzerland in the future.

You will perhaps have noticed that we Swiss are not very inventive, but in many of our innovations are influenced in the highest degree from abroad.

So if I have attempted to forestall certain developments in Germany, I have done so at the source from which sooner or later it is quite sure that effects will flow into Switzerland.

As a psychotherapist I cannot be indifferent to the future of psychotherapy.

Its development in Germany will also be crucial for us. Freud once told me, very rightly: "The fate of psychotherapy will be decided in Germany."

To begin with it was doomed to absolute perdition because it was considered wholly Jewish.

I have broken this prejudice by my intervention and have made life possible not only for the so-called Aryan psychotherapists but for the Jewish ones as well.

What with the hue and cry against me it has been completely forgotten that by far the greatest number of psychotherapists in Germany are Jews.

People do not know, nor is it said in public, that I have intervened personally with the regime on behalf of certain Jewish psychotherapists.

If the Jews start railing at me this is shortsighted in the extreme and I hope you will do what you can to combat this idiotic attitude.

The existence of the Society for Psychotherapy, which has very many Jewish members, is now assured, also the membership of Jewish doctors.

Actually the Jews should be thankful to me for that, but it seems that the-as you say-paranoid attitude prevents them from seeing clearly.

Also the Zentralblatt has now been placed on a secure footing and I have successfully ensured that the Jewish editor of the review section, Allers in Vienna, can do his work as before.

During the war people moaned that the Allies used the hunger blockade against Germany.

The understandable opposition of the Jews to the Hitler regime now makes it quits: everything German is outlawed, regardless of whether people are involved who are entirely innocent politically.

I find that shortsighted too.

With collegial regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 155-156

Carl Jung: The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

To Linda Gray Oppenheim

Dear Mrs. Oppenheim, 12 August 1933

A year ago I heard through a friend of Mr. Oppenheim' s most unexpected death.

Yes, it is true, such a death and such suffering seem to be pointless if one assumes that this life is the acme of all existence.

I have seen quite a number of people who died when they had reached the most they could.

Obviously then the measure of their life was fulfilled, everything said and everything done and nothing remained.

The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127

Carl Jung across the web:

Blog: http: http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/

Google+: https://plus.google.com/102529939687199578205/posts

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WordPress: https://carljungdepthpsychology.wordpress.com/

Great Sites to visit:

1. Jenna Lilla's Path of the Soul http://jennalilla.org/

2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/

3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

4. Lance S. Owens The Gnosis Archives http://gnosis.org/welcome.html