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