Carl Jung: The toad that appears in your book generally signifies...

To Wilhelm Laiblin

Dear Herr Laiblin, 16 April 1936

The toad that appears in your book generally signifies an anticipation of the human being on the level of the coldblooded
creatures, and actually stands for the psyche associated with the lower spinal cord.

Like the snake, it is a symbol of the creative unconscious.

What interested me most in your letter1 was that you as the Ergriffener look at the situation more from the feminine side.

This
fits exactly, because the Ergreifer is the man and the Ergriffener is the woman.

But the Ergriffener whose Ergreifer one does not see is taken for the Ergreifender and also functions as such ( i.e., dangerously).

The counterpart of sentimentality is as we know brutality.

Wotan's inner meaning, represented by his lost eye, is Erda, the Magna Mater.

I understand perfectly why you feel the German phenomenon differently.

It would be the same with me, but I am caught in my outsiderness and dare not let myself see it too exclusively from the inside.

That would also rob me of the capacity to make the German character comprehensible to the non-German world.

The West knows too much about sentimentalities to believe in them.

With best regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 213