Carl Jung: Religious ideas and convictions from the beginning of history had the aspect of the mental pharmakon.

To Father David

Dear Father David, 11 February 1961

After 6o years of experience I can wholeheartedly confirm my former dictum about the healing of neurosis.

As a neurosis starts from a fragmentary state of human consciousness, it can only be cured by an approximative totality of the human being.

Religious ideas and convictions from the beginning of history had the aspect of the mental pharmakon. They represent the world of wholeness in which fragments can be gathered and put together again.

Such a cure cannot be effected by pills and injections.

I thank you for your kind letter, which I appreciate all the more as I am not very popular either with theolo- gians or my own guild.

It is astonishing and not astonishing.

I remain, dear Father David,

Yours very sincerely,

C.G. Jung

D . asked if Jung still adhered to his words in "Psychotherapists or the Clergy" (orig. 132) that "among all my patients in the second half of life . . . none . . . has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook" (CW 11, par. 509 ) Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 625