Carl Jung: People would rather hang on to the old dogmas than let experience speak.

To Hans Seifert

Dear Herr Seifert, 14 October 1960

Best thanks for telling me about your interesting experience.

It is a type of experience that has become very rare nowadays. It may have appeared again because the time was favourable.

Possibly the vision was caused by the sudden appearance of a deer.

There usually is some such cause, but the important thing is what the cause triggers off. Here it is the archetypal motif of two animals fighting.

You often find it in illuminated manuscripts of the 11th and 12th centuries, and also in the capitals and friezes of Romanesque churches, where it can take the form of a man fighting an animal, or of a man between two animals.

It is not difficult to see that the stag of your vision is related to the stag of St.Hubert and St. Eustace, which is an allegory of Christ because it tramples on the serpent. (The Celtic stag-god Kerunnus holds a serpent by the neck.)

Conversely, Christ himself is the serpent hung on a pole-an indication of the identity of opposites.

The dog, or whatever it is that threatens the stag, is its opposite-white stag opposed by black dog, quarry by wolf.

The two together represent a supernatural, unitary being at war with itself.

The animal form shows that the conflict, symbolized by this paradisal being, is largely unconscious.

That is to say, you see your conflict as something personal, whereas in the vision it is produced by an extra- personal pair of opposites.

You do not produce your conflict, you are rather its unconscious victim or exponent.

The vision is more or less collective because it expresses the collective situation and not the individual will.

Your little son, who you say was furthest from the conflict, sees only something light brown, which was proba- bly the real cause of the vision.

Despite their powers of imagination, children often observe things much more accurately than grown-ups. They are naturally and instinctively adapted to reality; their next task is to find their way about in it.

Grown-ups, on the other hand, especially those approaching middle life, get around to feeling that there is still a psychic reality about which our culture knows much too little and cares less.

People would rather hang on to the old dogmas than let experience speak. According to your vision, the stag is rather dejected and worn out.
He also seems to have rubbed his horns down to stumps.

By contrast, the black dog is uncanny but much more alive.

I do not know how far you are acquainted with the psychology of the unconscious.

I won’t go into details, but would only point out that a collective vision is a phenomenon of the time, depict- ing the great problem of our day in individual form.

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 598-599

Carl Jung: It is really a bit too much that an educated person of today does not even know what an archetype communicates.

To Herbert Read

Dear Sir Herbert, 22 October 1960

I ask your pardon for bothering you again with a letter.

I have just read the review of your book The Form of Things Unknown in The Listener of September 22nd, 1960.

Alloway asks the silly question "what do the archetypes communicate?"

In case you should like to answer him I should like you to point out his remarkable ignorance.

One knows a great deal about what archetypes communicate even if one has never been inside a Catholic Church.

It is really a bit too much that an educated person of today does not even know what an archetype communicates.

It is only yesterday that I wrote to a young artist who has sent me one of his abstract pictures, which very clearly suggests the archetype of the Dragon, though a bit distorted and hollowed out to make it unrecognizable.

Thus obviously the religious views which were ejected through the front door into the street return through the back door.

Archetypes are forms of different aspects expressing the creative psychic background. They are and always have been numinous and therefore "divine."

In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them as attributes of the creator. That would explain the compelling character of such inner perceptions.

The pictures themselves would have the significance of ikons.

It is just that. No answer needed.

Cordially yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 605-606

Religions are like plants which belong to a particular soil and a particular climate.

To Patrick Whitaker

Dear Sir, 8 October 1960

Thank you very much for your kind letter of August 21st. Unfortunately my answer is late.

I have been ill in the meantime and unable to take care of my correspondence.

I have studied your "proposal"1 with much interest.

Frankly, such a plan would be quite impossible in Europe, but with reference to the "land of unlimited possibilities" one feels differently.

Your basic assumption that a Museum of Sanctuary is needed for the preservation of religious phenomena is quite correct.

Our present state of civilization becomes more and more unable to understand what a religion means. Europe has already lost half of its population to a mental state worse than ancient paganism.

There is however a grave doubt in my mind: just as the accumulation of masterworks of art threatens to kill each individual work, so the accumulation of religions in the manner of a spiritual zoo seems to be very dangerous for the spiritual life of each religion.

Without it, it is a mere curiosity.

Religions are like plants which belong to a particular soil and a particular climate. Outside of their vital conditions their existence can be maintained only artificially. Nearly all confessions are afraid of anth ropology and psychology and rightly so.

I am sure they would feel most uncomfortable finding themselves neatly classified along with Mahayana Buddhism, Zen, Voodoo, and Australian alcheringemijinas.

But even under such conditions Ellis Island would be one of the most remarkable Museums of the World.

I should be indeed quite interested to learn about the further progress of your initiative.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 597-598

We are sorely in need of a Truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt,

Dear Sir, 14 September 1960

Your letter of May 7th, 1960, is so vast that I don’t know where to begin answering you.

The way towards a solution of our contemporary problems I seem to propose is in reality the process I have been forced into as a modern individual confronted with the social, moral, intellectual, and religious insufficiencies of our time.

I recognize the fact that I can give only one answer, namely mine, which is certainly not valid universally, but may be sufficient for a restricted number of contemporary individuals inasmuch as my main tenet contains nothing more than: Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own, i.e., the true expression of your individuality.

As nobody can become aware of his individuality unless he is closely and responsibly related to his fellow be- ings, he is not withdrawing to an egoistic desert when he tries to find himself.

He can only discover himself when he is deeply and unconditionally related to some, and generally related to a great many, individuals with whom he has a chance to compare and from whom he is able
to discriminate himself.

If somebody in supreme egoism should withdraw to the solitude of Mt. Everest, he would discover a good deal about the amenities of his lofty abode but as good as nothing about himself, i.e., nothing he could not have known before.

Man in general is in such a situation in so far as he is an animal gifted with self-reflection but without the pos- sibility of comparing himself to another species of animal equally equipped with consciousness.

He is a top animal exiled on a tiny speck of planet in the Milky Way.

That is the reason why he does not know himself; he is cosmically isolated.

He can only state with certainty that he is no monkey, no bird, no fish, and no tree. But what he positively is, remains obscure.

Mankind today is dreaming of interstellar communications.

Could we contact the population of another star, we might find a means to learn something essential about ourselves.

Incidentally we are just living in a time when homo homini lupus threatens to become an awful reality, and when we are in dire need to know beyond ourselves.

The science fiction about travelling to the moon or to Venus and Mars and the lore about Flying Saucers are effects of our dimly felt but none the less intense need to reach a new physical as well as spiritual basis beyond our actual conscious world.

Philosophers and psychologists of the XIXth and XXth centuries have tried to provide a terra nova in ourselves, that is, the unconscious.

This is indeed a discovery which could give us a new orientation in many respects.

Whereas our fictions about Martians and Venusians are based upon nothing but mere speculations, the un- conscious is within the reach of human experience.

It is almost tangible and thus more or less familiar to us, but on the other hand a strange existence difficult to understand.

If we may assume that what I call archetypes is a verifiable hypothesis, then we are confronted with autonomous animalia gifted with a sort of consciousness and psychic life of their own, which we can observe, at least partially, not only in living men but also in the historic course of many centuries.

Whether we call them gods, demons, or illusions, they exist and function and are born anew with every gener- ation.

They have an enormous influence on individual as well as collective life, and despite their familiarity they are curiously non-human.

This latter characteristic is the reason why they were called gods and demons in the past and why they are un- derstood in our "scientific" age as the psychic manifestations of the instincts, inasmuch as they represent habitual and universally occurring attitudes and thought-forms.

They are basic forms, but not the manifest, personified, or otherwise concretized images.

They have a high degree of autonomy, which does not disappear when the manifest images change.

When f.i. the belief in the god Wotan vanishes and nobody thinks of him anymore, the phenomenon, called Wotan originally, remains; nothing changes but its name, as National Socialism has demonstrated on a grand scale.

A collective movement consists of millions of individuals, each of whom shows the symptoms of Wotanism and proves thereby that Wotan in reality never died but has retained his original vitality and autonomy.

Our consciousness only imagines that it has lost its gods; in reality they are still there and it only needs a cer- tain general condition in order to bring them back in full force.

This condition is a situation in which a new orientation and adaptation are needed.

If this question is not clearly understood and no proper answer given, the archetype which expresses this situ- ation steps in and brings back the reaction which has always characterized such times, in this case
Wotan.

As only certain individuals are capable of listening and of accepting good advice, it is most unlikely that any- body would pay attention to the statement of a warning voice that Wotan is here again.

They would rather fall headlong into the trap.

As we have largely lost our gods and the actual condition of our religion does not offer an efficacious answer to the world situation in general and to the "religion" of Communism in particular, we are very much in the same predicament as the pre-National-Socialistic Germany of the twenties, i.e., we are apt to undergo the risk of a further but this time worldwide “Wotanistic experiment.

This means mental epidemics and war.

One does not realize yet that when an archetype is unconsciously constellated and not consciously understood, one is possessed by it and forced to its fatal goal.

Wotan then represents and formulates our ultimate principle of behaviour, but this obviously does not solve our problem.

The fact that an archaic god formulates and expresses the dominant of our behaviour means that we ought to find a new religious attitude, a new realization of our dependence upon superior dominants.

I don’t know how this could be possible without a renewed self-understanding of man, which unavoidably has to begin with the individual.

We have the means to compare man with other psychic animalia and to give him a new setting which throws an objective light upon his existence, namely as a being operated and manoeuvred by archetypal forces instead of his "free will," that is, his arbitrary egoism and his limited consciousness.

He should l earn that he is not the master in his own house and that he should carefully study the other side of his psychic world which seems to be the true ruler of his fate.

I know this is merely a "pious wish" the fulfillment of which demands centuries, but in each aeon there are at least a few individuals who understand what man’s real task consists of, and keep its tradition
for future generations and a time when insight has reached a deeper and more general level. First the way of a few will be changed and in a few generations there will be more.
It is most unlikely that the general mind in this or even in the next generation will undergo a noticeable change, as at present man seems to be quite incapable of realizing that under a certain aspect he is a stranger to himself.

But whoever is capable of such insight, no matter how isolated he is, should be aware of the law of synchronicity.

As the old Chinese saying goes: "The right man sitting in his house and thinking the right thought will be heard a 100 miles away."

Neither propaganda nor exhibitionist confessions are needed.

If the archetype, which is universal, i.e., identical with itself always and anywhere, is properly dealt with in one place only, it is influenced as a whole, i.e., simultaneously and everywhere.

Thus an old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: "No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you."

It seems to me that nothing essential has ever been lost, because its matrix is ever-present within us and from this it can and will be reproduced if needed.

But only those can recover it who have learned the art of averting their eyes from the blinding light of current opinions, and close their ears to the noise of ephemeral slogans.

You rightly say with Multatuli, the Dutch philosopher: "Nothing is quite true" and should add with him : "And even this is not quite true."

The intellect can make its profound statement that there is no absolute Truth.

But if somebody loses his money, his money is lost and this is as good as an absolute Truth, which means that he will not be consoled by intellectual profundity.

There is a thing like convincing Truth but we have lost sight of it, owing the loss mostly to our gambling intel- lect, to which we sacrifice our moral certainty and gain thereby nothing but an inferiority-complex, which-by the way-characterizes Western politics.

To be is to do and to make.

But as our existence does not depend solely upon our ego-will, so our doing and making depend largely upon the dominants of the unconscious.

I am not only willing out of my ego, but I am also made to be creative and active, and to be quiet is only good for someone who has been too-or perversely-active.

Otherwise it is an unnatural artifice which unnecessarily interferes with our nature. We grow up, we blossom and we wilt, and death is ultimate quietude-or so it seems.
But much depends upon the spirit, i.e., the meaning or significance, in which we do and make or-in another word-live.

This spirit expresses itself or manifests itself in a Truth, which is indubitably and absolutely convincing to the whole of my being in spite of the fact that the intellect in its endless ramblings will continue forever with its "But, ifs," which however should not be suppressed but rather welcomed as occasions to improve the Truth.

You have chosen two good representatives of East and West.

Krishnamurti is all irrational, leaving solutions to quietude, i.e., to themselves as a part of Mother Nature. Toynbee on the other hand believes in making and moulding opinions.
Neither believes in the blossoming and unfolding of the individual as the experimental, doubtful and bewilder- ing work of the living God, to whom we have to lend our eyes and ears and our discriminating mind, to which end they were incubated for millions of years and brought to light about 6ooo years ago, viz. at the moment when the historical continuity of consciousness became visible through the invention of script.

We are sorely in need of a Truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt, which I have found still living with the Taos Pueblos.

Their chief of ceremonies, old Ochwiah Biano (Mountain Lake) said to me: "We are the people who live on the roof of the world, we are the sons of the Sun, who is our father.

We help him daily to rise and to cross over the sky.
We do this not only for ourselves, but for the Americans also. Therefore they should not interfere with our religion.

But if they continue to do so [by misssionaries and hinder us, then they will see that in ten years the Sun will rise no more."

He correctly assumes that their day, their light, their consciousness, and their meaning will die when destroyed by the narrow-mindedness of American rationalism, and the same will happen to the whole world when subjected to such treatment.

That is the reason why I tried to find the best truth and the clearest light I could attain to, and since I have reached my highest point I can’t transcend any more, I am guarding my light and my treasure, convinced that nobody would gain and I myself would be badly, even hopelessly injured, if I should lose it.

It is most precious not only to me, but above all to the darkness of the creator, who needs man to illuminate His creation.

If God had foreseen his world, it would be a mere senseless machine and man’s existence a useless freak. My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says "No" to it.
Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 592-597

Carl Jung: … I find it very difficult, both as a psychologist and a human being, to establish any relationship with modern abstract art.

To Heinrich Berann

Dear Herr Berann, 27 August 1960

Thank you very much for the samples you have sent me of your Paintings.

Although you may not know it, I find it very difficult, both as a psychologist and a human being, to establish any relationship with modern abstract art.

Since one’s feelings seem to be a highly unsuitable organ for judging this kind of art, one is forced to appeal to the intellect or to intuition in order to gain any access to it.

But even then most of the little signs and signals by which human beings relate to one another seem to be absent.

The reason for this, it seems to me, is that in those depths from which the statements of the modern artist come the individual factor plays so small a role that human communication is abolished.

" I remain I and you remain you"-the final expression of the alienation and incompatibility of individuals.

These strange messages are well suited to our time, marked as it is by mass-mindedness and the extinction of the individual.

In this respect our art has an important role to play: it compensates a vital deficiency and anticipates the illimitable loneliness of man.

The question that forces itself upon me when contemplating a modem picture is always the same: what can’t it express?

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 585-586.

Carl Jung: But now I am grown so old that I can let go my grip on the world,

To Jolande Jacobi

Dear Dr. Jacobi, 25 August 1960

I was very impressed and pleased to hear that my autobiographical sketches have conveyed to you something of what my outer side has hitherto kept hidden.

It had to remain hidden because it could not have survived the brutalities of the outside world.

But now I am grown so old that I can let go my grip on the world, and its raucous cries fade in the distance.

The dream you have called back to my memory anticipates the content and setting of the analysis in a miraculous way. Who knew that and who arranged it?

Who envisioned and; grasped it, and forcibly expressed it in a great dream-image?

He who has insight into this question knows whereof he speaks when he tries to interpret the psyche. With cordial greetings,
Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung, Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 585

Note: J . retold a "big dream" of hers in 1927 which had the character of an initiation.

It is reported in her The Way of lndividuation. (1967), pp. 76f.

Carl Jung: By the way: I must call your attention to the fact that I have no theory that God is a quaternity.

To the Rev. W. P. Witcutt Dear Sir, 24 August 1960

I must apologize for not having answered your Letter of July 18th.

I hasten therefore to answer this time at once.

I was very interested in your letter, as you can imagine.

Since 1924 I have done much work with the I Ching and I have discussed it with my late friend Richard Wil- helm, who had first-hand knowledge of its workings.

As you have found out for yourself, the I Ching consists of readable archetypes, and it very often presents not

only a picture of the actual situation but also of the future, exactly like dreams.

One could even define the I Ching oracle as an experimental dream, just as one can define a dream as an ex- periment of a four-dimensional nature.

I have never tried even to describe this aspect of dreams, not to speak of the hexagrams, because I have found that our public today is incapable of understanding.

I considered it therefore my first duty to talk and write of the things that might be understandable and would thus prepare the ground upon which one could later on explain the more complicated things.

I quite agree that the I Ching symbolism can be interpreted like that of dreams.

By the way: I must call your attention to the fact that I have no theory that God is a quaternity. The whole question of quaternity is not a theory at all, it is a Phenomenon.

There are plenty of quaternary symbolizations of the Deity and that is a fact, not a theory.

I would not commit such a crime against epistemology.

This is the stumbling block over which Father Victor White has fallen and many others.

I am in no way responsible for the fact that there are quaternity formulas.

Now, as to your new book, to which I am looking forward with great interest: unfortunately my doctor is strictly against too much mental work, since it increases my blood pressure.

Thus I have to omit all mental efforts.

I would have liked to write a preface to your indubitably meritorious book, but I could not do it without a careful study and digestion of your MS-not to mention the formulation of my own standpoint in these highly complicated matters.

Sunt certe denique fines-that is precisely the situation in which I find myself now.

I cannot fight the battle anymore and I refuse to produce superficial and cheap stuff.

I hope you will understand this painful confession of non possumus.

Nobody regrets this defeat through old age more than I myself.

Yours very sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 584-585

Carl Jung: I have given a good deal of attention to two great initiators: Joyce and Picasso.

To Herbert Read

Dear Sir Herbert, 2 September 1960

I have just read the words of a Man, that is, the statement of your views about m y work.

Courage and honesty have won out, two qualities the absence of which in my critics hitherto has hindered ev- ery form of understanding.

Your blessed words are the rays of a new sun over a dark sluggish swamp in which I felt buried. I often thought of Meister Eckhart who was entombed for 600 years.

I asked myself time and again why there are no men in our epoch who could see at least what I was wrestling with.

I think it is not mere vanity and desire for recognition on my part, but a genuine concern for my fellow-beings.

It is presumably the ancient functional relationship of the medicine-man to his tribe, the participation mys- tique and the essence of the physician’s ethos.

I see the suffering of mankind in the individual’s predicament and vice versa.

As a medical psychologist I do not merely assume, but I am thoroughly convinced, that nil humanum a mealienum esse is even my duty.

I am including "modern art”-and passionately though I see you indulgently smiling.

I have regretted very much not to have had the opportunity of a real talk with you about your book, which has brought back to me all my thoughts about art.

I have never been explicit about them because I was hampered by my increasing awareness of the universal misunderstanding I encountered.

As the problem is subtle, its solution demands subtlety of mind and real experience of the mind’s function- ing.

After 60 solid years of field-work I may be supposed to know at least something about my job. But even the most incompetent ass knew better and I received no encouragement.

On the contrary I was misunderstood or completely ignored.

Under those circumstances I even grew afraid to increase the chaos of opinion by adding considerations which could not be understood.

I have given a good deal of attention to two great initiators: Joyce and Picasso.

Both are masters of the fragmentation of aesthetic contents and accumulators of ingenious shards.

I knew, as it seems to me, what that crumpled piece of paper meant that went out down the Liffey in spite of Joyce.

I knew his pain, which had strangled itself by its own strength.

Hadn’t I seen this tragedy time and again with my schizophrenic patients?

In Ulysses a world comes down in an almost endless, breathless stream of debris, a "catholic" world, i.e., a universe with moanings and outcries unheard and tears unshed, because suffering had extinguished itself, and an immense field of shards began to reveal its aesthetic "values.’"

But no tongue will tell you what has happened in his soul.

I saw the same process evolving in Picasso, a very different man. Here was strength which brought about the dissolution of a work. He saw and understood what the surge of depth meant.

Almost consciously he accepted the challenge of the all-powerful spirit of the time.

He transformed his "Konnen" ( "Kunst" derives from "konnen" ) into the art of ingenious fragmentation: "It shall go this way, if it doesn’t go the other way."

I bestowed the honour upon Picasso of viewing him as I did Joyce.

I could easily have done worse by emphasizing his falsity.
He was just catering to the morbidity of his time, as he himself admits.

I am far from diagnosing him a schizophrenic. I only emphasize the analogy to the schizophrenic process, as I understand it.

I find no signs of real schizophrenia in his work except the analogy, which however has no diagnostic value, since there are plenty of cases of this kind yet no proof that they are schizophrenics.

Picasso is ruthless strength, seizing the unconscious urge and voicing it resoundingly, even using it for mone- tary reasons.

By this regrettable digression he shows how little he understands the primordial urge, which does not mean a field of ever so attractive-looking and alluring shards, but a new world after the old one has crumpled up.

Nature has a horror vacui and does not believe in shard-heaps and decay, but grass and flowers cover all ruins inasmuch as the rains of heaven reach them.

The great problem of our time is that we don’t understand what is happening to the world. We are confronted with the darkness of our soul, the unconscious.
It sends up its dark and unrecognizable urges.

It hollows out and hacks up the shapes of our culture and its historical dominants. We have no dominants any more, th ey are in the future.
Our values are shifting, everything loses its certainty, even sanctissima causalitas has descended from the throne ofthe axioma and has become a mere field of probability.

Who is the awe-inspiring guest who knocks at our door portentously?

Fear precedes him, showing that ultimate values already flow towards him.

Our hitherto believed values decay accordingly and our only certainly is that the new world will be something

different from what we were used to.

If any of his urges show some inclination to incarnate in a known shape, the creative artist will not trust it. He will say: "Thou art not what thou sayest" and he will hollow them out and hack them up.

That is where we are now.

They have not yet learned to discriminate between their willful mind and the objective manifestation of the psyche.

They have not yet learned to be objective with their own psyche, i .e., [to discriminate] between the thing which you do and the thing that happens to you.

When somebody has a happy hunch, he thinks that he is clever, or that something which he does not know does not exist.

We are still in a shockingly primitive state of mind, and this is the main reason why we cannot become objec- tive in psychic matters.

If the artist of today could only see what the psyche is spontaneously producing and what he, as a conscious- ness, is inventing, he would notice that the dream f.i. or the object is pronouncing (through his psyche) a reality from which he will never escape, because nobody will ever transcend the structure of the psyche.

We have simply got to listen to what the psyche spontaneously says to us. What the dream, which is not manufactured by us, says is just so.
Say it again as well as you can.

Quod Natura relinquit imperfectum, Ars perficiU It is the great dream which has always spoken through the artist as a mouthpiece.

All his love and passion ( his "values”) flow towards the coming guest to proclaim his arrival.

The negative aspects of modern art show the intensity of our prejudice against the future, which we obsti- nately want to be as we expect it.

We decide, as if we knew.

We only know what we know, but there is plenty more of which we might know if only we could give up in- sisting upon what we do know.

But the Dream would tell us more, therefore we despise the Dream and we are going on to dissolve ad infini- tum.

What is the great Dream?

It consists of the many small dreams and the many acts of humility and submission to their hints.

It is the future and the picture of the new world, which we do not understand yet. We cannot know better than the unconscious and its intimations.

There is a fair chance of finding what we seek in vain in our conscious world. Where else could it be?

I am afraid I never find the language which would convey such simple arguments to my contemporaries. Apologies for the length of my letter!
Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 586-592

Carl Jung: If I could not stand criticism I would have been dead long ago

To Robert C . Smith

Dear Mr. Smith, 16 August 1960

Why can’t you understand that the therapeutic performance is a vital process/ which I call the "process of in- dividuation"?

It takes place objectively and it is this experience which helps the patient and not the more or less competent or foolish interpretation of the analyst.

The best the analyst can do is not to disturb the natural evolution of this process.

My so-called views about it are only poor means of representing the very mysterious process of transforma- tion in the form of words, which serve no other purpose than to describe its nature.

The process consists in becoming whole or integrated, and that is never produced by words or interpretations but wholly by the nature of Psyche itself.

When I say "Psyche" I mean something unknown, to which I give the name "Psyche." There is a difference between hypothesis and hypostasis.
My hypothesis is that all psychic products referring to religious views are comparable on the basis of a funda- mental similarity of the human mind.

This is a scientific hypothesis.

The Gnostic, which Buber accuses me of being, makes no hypothesis, but a hypostasis in making metaphysical statements.

When I try to establish a fundamental similarity of individual psychic products and alchemistic or otherwise Gnostic noumena, I carefully avoid making a hypostasis, remaining well within the boundaries of the scientific hypothesis.

The fact that I try to make you see my standpoint could show to you that I don’t mind the criticism. I only want to defend myself against wrong premises.
If I could not stand criticism I would have been dead long ago, since I have had nothing but criticism for 6o years.

Moreover I cannot understand what my alleged incapacity to stand criticism has to do with the reproach that I am a Gnostic.

You simply add to the arbitrary assumption that l am a Gnostic the blame of moral inferiority, and you don’t realize that one could make the same subjective reproach against you.

I have accused nobody and if I am attacked I have the right to defend myself in explaining my point of view. There is no need at all to blame me under those circumstances for being intolerant.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 583-584

Carl Jung: Naturally one cannot avoid taking risks, for nothing new would happen without them.

To Pastor Werner Niederer

Dear Pastor Niederer, 13 August 1960

It is clear from your manuscript that your recommendation raises a very delicate problem.

You are risking difficulties not only with your own colleagues but-and this is more serious-also with the medical faculty. Naturally one cannot avoid taking risks, for nothing new would happen without them.

But one must ask oneself in all seriousness whether the difficulties would jeopardize the whole project, or can really be overcome.

It is quite inconceivable that all theologians, to a man, would go in for a training analysis, as you rightly de- mand that they should.

Nor is a training analysis the end of it, for in addition they would have to acquire a whole lot of technical knowledge, for which purpose, as you know, the C. G. Jung Institute was founded.

A diploma from this Institute is the minimal preparation needed for the activity you have in mind.

The mental and moral maturity you also require of the trainee is indeed commendable, but it is a postulate that cannot be carried out in practice.

Hence there are good reasons for combining psychotherapy, as a rule, either with a study of medicine, which is long and expensive and therefore offers some guarantee of the perseverance, reliability, and responsibleness of those who take up such a profession, or with a completed course of academic studies which at least ensures an all-round education.

But lay psychologists, too, are necessarily obliged to work together with doctors because the neuroses are frequently and unavoidably complicated by dangerous psychotic phenomena to which only a man who is protected by a medical diploma can and should expose himself.

So if you were to attempt such a radical breakthrough it is 1000 :1 that you will fail.

One has to be content with tentative, self-sacrificing efforts gradually to alter the marked aversion of the theological mind for psychology and transform its prejudices against the human psyche into a positive interest.

Unfortunately hardly a beginning has been made with this work in the world of theology.

The first step would be to sweep away all the various prejudices that hamper understanding.


Secondly, large numbers of theologians would have to acquire a deeper knowledge of psychology, which would be possible at first only in the realm of theory.

But nothing is gained by encouraging unprepared, prejudiced persons, however well-intentioned they may be, to take up a practical activity of whose scope, meaning, and risks they haven’t the glimmering of an idea.

They would endanger not only themselves but also the "patients" entrusted to their care.

One should first educate the educator and not hand the pupil over to an incompetent who, if he is honest, only gets his education from the pupil.

It would, however, be a delusion to assume that everyone can meet the demand for moral maturity. In my experience the opposite is generally the case.

In my opinion, therefore, it would be much more suitable if a serious attempt were made in the theological faculty, the breeding ground of theologians, to come to terms with the facts of psychology on the basis of real knowledge, and to give the student some conception of the contemporary problems he will meet with in his parish.

I would even advise you to ask a leading member of the theological faculty to give you a candid opinion of your proposal after a thorough study of your manuscript.

His reactions would show you what your chances are, and how a further modus procedendi might be worked out.

You will probably find it pretty difficult to convince any authority at all that your project is worth taking seri- ously.

It would then be up to you to prove that it is.

With kind regards,


C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 581-582

Carl Jung: The ear of wheat represented the son born of the Great Mother, the earth.

The mother holds a grain of wheat, which is exactly like the mysterious Iacchus in the Eleusinian mysteries of which I have spoken already.

It was there not only a grain of wheat, it was a whole ear of wheat which the priest showed at midnight in a ceremony containing the same underlying idea, one could say, as on the night of Christmas; the situation is the same.

The ear of wheat represented the son born of the Great Mother, the earth.

So this might be a sort of anticipation: the mother shows the grain of wheat as the anticipated result of the birth to come.

And the bird takes that grain and flies up into the air with it, we don’t know where.

This is very typical of the beginning of visions: it begins at the bottom, as it were, as if the whole world had to be built anew, or as if nothing had ever happened before; and then it carries the thought through until it reaches the stage that is not yet and that never has been: it reaches the future.

It is often as if such a series covered the whole way, as if each series extended from hell to heaven, fron the beginning to the end, as if it ware a complete cycle more or less clearly formulated.

In the beginning of, the future stage is rather dimly characterized, then later it becomes more and more clear, and the beginning gets blurred. This is a general characteristic of such visions.

I cannot tell you how far the patient has been influenced by her reading her; it is possible that she has read about the ceremony at Eleusis.

I mush verify that point.

Here is the next vision: “I beheld a horse which changed into a ram and then into a bull.” Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 142.

Carl Jung on the “Living Mystery of Life.”

To the Mother Prioress of a Contemplative Order Dear Mother Prioress, 12 August 1960

Thank you ever so much for your letter with all its information about Fr. Victor’s end.

I am most grateful to you for sending me the picture you mention.

The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words and depleted by arguments.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung, Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 581

Carl Jung: I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom.

To the Earl of Sandwich

Dear Lord Sandwich, 10 August 1960

It was a great pleasure to receive your kind letter and congratulations on my 85th birthday.

It is indeed quite a number of years since our interview in 1938, when I received an Honorary Degree at Ox- ford, while lecturing there at a Congress of Psychotherapists.

It was on the eve of war and I remember the air filled with forebodings and anxious anticipations.

I remember vividly looking at the delightful buildings and lawns · of the Universitas Oxonensis as if seeing them for the first and last time.

Although Oxford has been spared barbarous destruction I had seen it for the first and last time.

I have not been there again although I always dreamt and hoped to delve more deeply into the treasures of alchemistic manuscripts at the Bodleian.

Fate has decreed otherwise.

I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom.

Since man’s nature is temperamentally set against wisdom, it is incumbent upon us to pay its price by what seems foolish to us.

Old age is only half as funny as one is inclined to think.

It is at all events the gradual breaking down of the bodily machine, with which foolishness identifies ourselves.

It is indeed a major effort-the magnum opus in fact-to escape in time from the narrowness of its embrace and to liberate our mind to the vision of the immensity of the world, of which we form an infinitesimal part.

In spite of the enormity of our scientific cognition we are yet hardly at the bottom of the ladder, but we are at least so far that we are able to recognize the smallness of our knowledge.

The older I grow the more impressed I am by the frailty and uncertainty of our understanding, and all the more I take recourse to the simplicity of immediate experience so as not to lose contact with the essentials, namely the dominants which rule human existence throughout the millenniums.

There are two sciences in our days which are at immediate grips with the basic problems: nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious.

There things begin to look really tough, as those who have an inkling of understanding of the one thing are singularly incapable of grasping the other thing; and here, so it looks, the great confusion of languages begins, which once already has destroyed a tower of Babel.

I am trying to hold those two worlds together as long as my machinery allows the effort, but it seems to be a condition which is desperately similar to that of the political world, the solution of which nobody yet can foresee.

It is quite possible that we look at the world from the wrong side and that we might find the right answer by changing our point of view and looking at it from the other side, i.e., not from outside, but from inside.

Thanking you once more for your kind letter,

I remain, dear Lord Sandwich,

Yours very sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 579-580

Carl Jung: “…thanks for the wonderful, spirit-infused gift…”

To Cornelia Brunner

Dear Frau Prasidentin, 2 August 1960

I still owe you my express thanks for the wonderful, spirit-infused gift that flew into the house on my birth- day.

You have endowed this birthday of mine with incredible generosity, so that I stand there quite ashamed beside all the magnificence, with the painful feeling that I can no longer give the Club what would otherwise be given so willingly.

I have to adapt myself with considerable effort to the role of recipient in which I have been living for nearly fifteen years.

In this respect the wine is a great tonic, and I am very grateful for the bountiful selection. Please give my best thanks to the Club members as well!
Very sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 577-578

Carl Jung: A man’s lifework is like a ship he has built and equipped himself

To B. von Fischer 11 July 160

Please accept my most cordial thanks for your kind birthday letter, which it was both an honour and a plea- sure to receive.

I am particularly sensible of the appreciative words you have written on my life’s work, for they are a melody which one does not often hear in our dear Fatherland.

A man’s lifework is like a ship he has built and equipped himself, launched down the ramp and entrusted to the sea, steered towards a distant goal and then left like a passenger, in order to sit on the shore and gaze after it till it is out of sight.


Like all three-dimensional things it gradually sinks below the horizon. What remains is what has been.
I am, Sir,

respectfully and gratefully yours,

C.G. Jung Letters Vol. II, Page 577

Carl Jung “To be exact, I must say that, although I profess myself a Christian,…

To Pastor Oscar Nisse

Dear Pastor Nisse, 2 July 1960

It was actually through my therapeutic work that I began to understand the essence of the Christian faith.

It became clear to me that the preoccupation with anxiety in psychoanalysis, where as you know it plays a considerable part, is not to be explained by the presence of religious teaching but rather by its absence.

With Freud personally-as I saw clearly over a period of years anxiety played a great part.

It is not hard to see that in him its source was the fear of Yahweh which is always present in the unconscious, particularly of Jews.

In the Jewish mentality this imprint is so deep that the individual Jew can rarely get away from it.

That is because he is Jewish, because he belongs and has belonged for thousands of years to a people characterized by their intimate connection with Yahweh.

With the Christian this anxiety is less important thanks to the fact that it was not until the day before yesterday that he rid himself of the gods, who represented the numinous aspects of the transcendent being as a plurality.

I assure you it was precisely through my analytic work that I arrived at an understanding not only of the Christian religion but, I may say, of all religions,

The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions.

To be exact, I must say that, although I profess myself a Christian, I am at the same time convinced that the chaotic contemporary situation shows that present-day Christianity is not the final truth.

Further progress is an absolute necessity since the present state of affairs seems to me insupportable.

As I see it, the contributions of the psychology of the unconscious should be taken into account.

With highest regards,

I am, Yours sincerely,

C..G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632

Carl Jung on “..a man who was practically invulnerable even to rapier thrusts through kidney and liver.

To Stephen I. Abrams

Dear Mr. Abrams, 11 July 1960

Cases with a continuous output of positive ESP or other paranormal effects are very interesting indeed.

They were puzzling to me inasmuch as archetypal constellations are usually more or less momentary and don’t

extend over longer periods.

I have followed up a case of a man who was practically invulnerable even to rapier thrusts through kidney and liver.

His remarkable achievement lasted over several years. It was accompanied by a pious and devoted attitude. He was unselfish and idealistic.
Two bad friends succeeded in persuading him that there was money in it. The next experiment killed him.

In this case it was quite obvious that he owed his invulnerability to an intensely religious attitude which is an archetypal constellation.

It is possible also that other conditions like physical traumata, diseases and physiological constellations can maintain an abaissement of consciousness which enables unconscious effects to cross the thresh old.

I should not wonder at all if synchronistic phenomena would manifest in the form of physiological effects.

I don’t feel particularly optimistic with reference to the possibility of control and predictability.

The mathematical theory of information is beyond the reach of my understanding, but it sounds interesting nevertheless.

It is quite possible, even probable, that man has a much greater amount of ESP at his disposal than one generally supposes.

This must be so if it is true that synchronicity belongs to the basic qualities of existence (or being.) Good luck to your adventure,

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 576-577

Carl Jung: I am sick of talking to people who do not even know the psychological ABC.

Dear Mr. Burnett, 30 June 1960

Your letter and invitation1 have arrived at a moment when I find it hard to make up my mind at all.

I am tired by the work of a whole year and I could not envisage the possibility of further exertions.

I don’t want to say "no" definitely, but I should like to postpone my answer to a time when I have had my due rest.

My wish is that you would take up the problem once more in September, when I am more sure of my capacity again.

Your quite understandable proposition to confront me with an interlocutor whom I do not know personally does not simplify the situation, as I am rather frightened of my colleagues on account of so many unfortunate

experiences, i.e., unnecessary misunderstandings and prejudices.

I will mention only a few of them: archetypes are metaphysical ideas, are mystical, do not exist, I am a philosopher, have a father-complex against Freud, and so on.

It is unsatisfactory and fatiguing to deal with people who neither have read my books nor have the slightest notion of the methods I am applying and their justification.

I cannot deal any more with people who are unacquainted with the world of problems I am concerned with.

I avoid as much as possible interviews with those of my colleagues who are in need of basic information.

I also avoid people with an antagonistic attitude from the start, who only want to know their own ideas but not mine.

I consider a certain amount of open-mindedness as indispensable for an interview.

I can explain my standpoint but I refuse to fight uphill.

Such gladiator-games are good for so-called scientific congresses but are the worst obstacle to real understanding.

I have no patience any more with sheer ignorance.

If you are sure your man is open-minded, fair and willing to weigh my argument objectively, and capable of doing so, I can look forward more easily to such an interview.

I must ask for your forgiveness for these measures of precaution, because my old age has left me with a sorry remnant of my former energies.

I cannot explain and fight at the same time against ignorance and incompetence.

I have, for the sake of my health, to ask my partner first: Have you read a book I have written within the last 30 years?

And did you understand it? - If not, I shut up.

I am sick of talking to people who do not even know the psychological ABC.

There are so many people who either designate themselves as my pupils or aver that they know my "system" that I a m always a bit scared when I have to meet an unknown person.

I trust you are aware of this serious question. The whole interview depends on it.

A few years ago ( . . . ) University got an interview out of me to which they sent a Professor of Psychology who was completely ignorant and to who m one could not talk intelligently.

I had then been still strong enough to push him aside and give a free talk about some basic aspects.

I could not do that anymore.

At all events I should be much obliged to you if you would give me the chance to see my psychiatric partner before we start, so that I can get an idea of the level on which a talk would be possible.

Many apologies for my hesitations and anxieties!

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 573-574

Carl Jung: Classification did not interest me very much.

[Dr. Jung, he repeatedly made clear that his work on “Types” was not that of the “Classification of Individuals” as made quite clear in his letter to Mr. von Frange in 1960.]

Dear Mr. von Fange, April 1960

I have read your letter with great interest and I congratulate you on your attempt at further investigation in the field of typology.

It is a line of thought which I have not pursued any further, since my original tendency was not the classification of normal or pathological
individuals but rather the discovery of conceptual means deriving from experience, namely the ways and means by which I could express in a comprehensible way the peculiarities of an individual psyche and the functional interplay of its elements.

As I have been chiefly interested in psychotherapy I was always mostly concerned with individuals needing explanation of themselves and knowledge of their fellow-beings.

My entirely empirical concepts were meant to form a sort of language by which such explanations could be communicated.

In my book about types I have given a number of examples illustrating my modus operandi.

Classification did not interest me very much.

It is a side-issue with only indirect importance to the therapist.

My book, as a matter of fact, was written to demonstrate the structural and functional aspect of certain typical elements of the psyche.

That such a means of communication and explanation could be used also as a means of classification was an aspect which I was rather afraid of, since the intellectually detached classifying point of view is just the thing to be avoided by the therapist.

But the classifying application was-1 almost regret to say-the first and almost exclusive way in which my book was understood, and everybody
wondered why I had not put the description of the types right at the beginning of the book instead of relegating it to a later chapter.

Obviously the tendency of my book has been misunderstood, which is easily understandable if one takes into account that the number of those people who would be interested in its practical psychotherapeutic application is infinitely s mall in comparison with the number of academic students.

I admit that your statistical line of research is perfectly legitimate but it certainly does not coincide with the purpose of my book, which in my humble opinion aims at something far more vital than classification.

Though I have expressed my therapeutic views most emphatically only very few of my readers noticed them.

The possibility of classification seems to be far more attractive.

By this rather longwinded peroration I am trying to explain to you why I am more or less unable to give you any helpful suggestions in your specific enterprise, since my thoughts do not move on this line at all.

I am even sceptical in this respect.

I hold the conviction that for the purpose of any classification one should start with fundamental and indubitable principles and not
with empirical notions, i.e., with almost colloquial terms based upon mere rules of thumb .

My concepts are merely meant to serve as a means of communication through colloquial language.

As principles however I should say that they are in themselves immensely complicated structures which can hardly fulfil the role of scientific
principles.

Much more important are the contents conveyed by language than their terms.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 550-552.

Carl Jung: Many thanks for your kind suggestion that I write a commentary on my Bollingen symbols.

To Ignaz Tauber

Dear Dr. Tauber, 13 December 1960

Many thanks for your kind suggestion that I write a commentary on my Bollingen symbols. Nobody is more uncertain about their meaning than the author himself.

They are their own representation of the way they came into being.

The first thing I saw in the rough stone was the figure of the worshipping woman, and behind her the silhouette of the old king sitting on his throne.

As I was carving her out, the old king vanished from view.

Instead I suddenly saw that the unworked surface in front of her clearly revealed the hindquarters of a horse, and a mare at that, for whose milk the primitive woman was stretching out her hands.

The woman is obviously my anima in the guise of a millennia-old ancestress.

Milk, as lac virginis, virgin’s milk, is a synonym for the aqua doctrinae one of the aspects of Mercurius, who

had already bedeviled the Bollingen stones in the form of the trickster. The mare descending from above reminded me of Pegasus.

Pegasus is the constellation above the second fish in Pisces; it precedes Aquarius in the precession of the equinoxes.

I have represented it in its feminine aspect, the milk taking the place of the spout of water in the sign for Aquarius.

This feminine attribute indicates the unconscious nature of the milk.

Evidently the milk has first to come into the hands of the anima, thus charging her with special energy.

This afflux of anima energy immediately released in me the idea of a she-bear, approaching the back of the anima from the left.

The bear stands for the savage energy and power of Artemis.

In front of the bear’s forward-striding paws I saw, adumbrated in the stone, a ball, for a ball is often given to bears to play with in the bear-pit.

Obviously this ball is being brought to the worshipper as a symbol of individuation.

It points to the meaning or content of the milk.

The whole thing, it seems to me, expresses coming events that are still hidden in the archetypal realm.

The anima, clearly, has her mind on spiritual contents.

But the bear, the emblem of Russia, sets the ball rolling. Hence the inscription: Ursa movet molem.

There’s not much more I can tell you, but as a sign of the times I would like to cite the opinion of one of my critics.

He accuses me of being so uneducated that I don’t even know that the sun moves into Pisces from Aquarius and not the other way round!

Such is the level of my public.

With best greetings to you and your wife,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 615-616