Friday, May 12, 2017

Carl Jung: The adventure with "Schottlander" is marvellous; of course the slimy bastard was lying.




Dear Professor Freud, 2 June 1910

I was amazed by your news.

The adventure with "Schottlander" is marvellous; of course the slimy bastard was lying.

I hope you roasted, flayed, and impaled the fellow with such genial ferocity that he got a lasting taste for once of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis.

I subscribe to your final judgment with all my heart.

Such is the nature of these beasts.

Since I could read the filth in him from his face I would have gone for his throat.

I hope to God you told him all the truths so plainly that even his hen's brain could absorb them.

Now we shall see what his next coup will be.

Had I been in your shoes I would have softened up his guttersnipe complex with a sound Swiss thrashing.

Hache did indeed declare us ripe for the madhouse.

Stockmayer was there and has told me about it.

The lecture fell into the well-known pattern: charges of mysticism, sectarianism, arcane jargon, epidemic of hysteria, dangerousness, etc. Isolated clapping.

Nobody protested.

Stockrnayer was quite alone and hadn't the gumption.

Even Gaupp and Hache's faithful henchmen Bumke" and Spiel meyer found the tone not quite to their liking.

But not one of the 125 people present raised a murmur.

This report turned my stomach. I don't know what to say except Foul! Foul Foul!"

We have now constituted a branch society here with ca. 15 members.

The president hasn't been elected yet for lack of suitable candidates.

Only 2 of the younger assistants from Burgholzli have joined.

Bleuler and Maier are hanging back.

Frank too, mercifully.

The Zurich foundation was a difficult birth.

One more such victory - I enclose Honegger's last letter from Territet.

With intent to delay his return, I have written him that in my view he could very well work on his dissertation there under his own steam.

I would like to make him my assistant publicly only when he has earned his doctor's degree or finished his dissertation.

But I have promised to ask for your grandfatherly opinion first, so that no injustice be done him because of my private opinion.

For I do have my opinions in the matter of work discipline.

He reads too little and "works" too much by flashes of genius. In Territet he would have all the time he needs for working and especially for reading, a particularly big lacuna in his case.

His continual dependence on stimulation seems to me a cloak for lack of self-reliance.

I don't like that sort of thing; altogether 1 am very much against such shiftlessness.

One really cannot let work depend entirely on the "rabbit," as Spitteler says.'

Maybe I am judging too harshly, seeing that I myself often have great trouble in pinning my stubborn Konrad" to the writing-table.

All the same, my greatest joy is in work and I am happy when I have enough time for it.

My mythology swirls about inside me, and now and then various significant bits and pieces are thrown up.

At the moment the unconscious "interest-draughts'" centre entirely on the inexhaustible depths of Christian symbolism, whose counterpart seems to have been found in the Mithraic mysteries. (Julian the Apostate, for instance, reintroduced them as being the equivalent of Christianity.)

The "nuclear complex" seems to be the profound disturbance-caused by the incest prohibition-between libidinal gratification and propagation.

The astral myth can be solved in accordance with the rules of dream interpretation: Just as the sun mounts higher and higher after the winter, so will you attain to fruitfulness in spite of the incest barrier (and its odious effects on your libido).

This idea is expressed very clearly in the Song of Tishtriya (Zendavesta).

Twice the white horse (Tishtriya == Sothis) tries to drive the demonic black horse Apaosha from the rain-lake.

Finally he succeeds with the help of Ahura-Mazda.

You will soon get the material where all this is described.

Many kind regards,

Most sincerely yours,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 325-326

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