Carl Jung: If you feel a resistance against the unconscious, you resist yourself.

To Fanny Bowditch Katz

Dear Madam, 30 July 1918

I think such an important and delicate question cannot be solved by medical advice only.

The main question is your psychological attitude towards this problem.

From a purely medical standpoint you have the opinion of the competent gynaecologists, according towhich the physical possibility seems to exist.

But this statement doesn't solve the question.

There is a most important psychological side to this problem.

If the unconscious is with your conscious decision, or if there is a very positive hint from the unconscious concerning a real child, then you can be sure that the powers of nature also are with you and will help you in a successful overcoming of the strain of gravidity and childbirth.

But if your dreams should show a considerable amount of resistance against a real child, then I would say that pregnancy is not advisable, for the time being at least.

Because, if you act against the tendency of the unconscious, you will be counteracted by the unconscious, which is always a most important obstacle.

You should be absolutely at one with yourself, if you want a real child.

It must be a fate, and not a personal wish, if you want to have all guarantees that the child should be as sound as possible.

The factor of inheritance has to be considered as a serious point in the discussion of the problem, but not as an absolute counter-argument.

The quality and disposition of the whole family and of the ancestors play a much greater role in the creation of the child's disposition than the individual disposition of father or mother.

I was astonished not to find an allusion to the unconscious material in your letter.

In such a serious problem you should be aware of the standpoint of the unconscious.

If you feel a resistance against the unconscious, you resist yourself.

If the unconscious agrees with your conscious standpoint, then the child seems to be required, no matter whether the enterprise will be hard or not.

Under such circumstances you have the guarantee that, in so far you and your husband are concerned, the child will be all right-all right as far as ancestral inheritance and physical conditions allow it.

I am not astonished that Dr. Katz as well as yourself come to such a conclusion, and I wouldn't wonder if you really would give birth· to a child.

This problem is absolutely on the way, as I had the honour to foretell it once to Dr. Katz.

Only be careful in examining your own attitude, so that you know that you fully agree or disagree.

Yours sincerely,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 34-35