Dear Professor Freud, 29 November 1910
I had a faint suspicion that your present attitude to the divergent tendencies of Stekel and Adler is not exactly a simple one.
There is in any case a noticeable analogy between Adler and Bleuler: the same mania to make the terminology as different as possible and to squeeze the flexible and fruitful psychological approach into the crude schematism of a physiological and biological straitjacket.
Bleuler is another one who fights against shrivelling in your shadow.
Last Sunday, at the Meeting of Swiss Psychiatrists in Bern;' he spoke about ambivalence, i.e., pairs of opposites.
It was dreadfully superficial and schema tic. It looks as though biology were taking all the spirit out of psychology.
Now for Bleuler's letter!
Another masterpiece of tortuosity and "diplomatic vagueness."
It is quite evident that his ratiocinative faculties have gone bankrupt.
He was unable to advance a single reason when talking with me.
There is no doubt at all that it is not you or the statutes or Stekel or anything else that is the cause of his negativism but simply and solely myself, ostensibly because of the Isserlin affair.
But this is merely a pretext.
The real and only reason is my defection from the abstinence crowd.
After I had broken down his cover-resistances through the last dream-analysis, the following dreams came out at the party, accompanied by venomous asides (he told them to me in front of the company, all unsuspecting-as if to prove how little he understands dream-analysisl}: He was the guest of the German Kaiser, who 'looked like a fat grocer, sodden with drink.
In a second dream he was summoned to Berlin in order to analyse the Kaiser.
But he didn't get round to that, for the Kaiser locked him in the cellar.
Bleuler would like more than anything to pick a quarrel with me about the reasons for my defection.
He won't do that for the sake of discretion, instead he refuses to join OUT crowd.
However, it still seems to me that he will come along once the smoke. from the first shots has cleared away.
Regretfully I must share your view that, if you came to Zurich, you would have to grit your teeth and lodge with him.
Bleuler is extremely touchy, loudly proclaiming that it doesn't matter a hang to him.
This would be so miserable for us that I must 'counsel you to get together with Bleuler in Munich.
You can't possibly spend a whole day alone with him; he is thoroughly exhausting because he is quite inhuman.
Furthermore, the situation being so uncertain, you would accomplish just as much or as little in Zurich as in Munich.
I would therefore not stake too much on this card but rest content with a meeting in Munich; after 2-3 hours Bleuler's arguments have long since petered out and he turns nasty, i.e., then comes the barrage of “why’s”.
So it would be best to spend 4-5 hours with him one evening," let us say from 6 or 7 until the departure of the night train for Zurich.
The evening Bleuler departs I shall arrive in Munich and hope very much to spend the next day with you.
There is no need whatever for you to sacrifice any more time.
I now have" sufficient contact with Bleuler to hold him to our cause.
The gaggle of assistants can be lopped off.
Once more I recommend my plan "chaleureusernent."
It should meet all the requirements.
It is a good thing we know this about Friedlander.
The man really is a damned swine.
If ever he comes again I really shall kick him out.
Thank God I guessed what kind of skunk had crawled in under my roof and treated him as I did: I am now more than ever convinced that these hogs have every reason to oppose us.
I shall not consort with them in the future either.
This technique pays off.
With us everything is going ahead nicely.
In Bern the whole interest centred on psychoanalysis in that Society it has made a lasting abode for itself.
Have you read Bleuler's apologia?
With many kind regards,
Most sincerely yours,
JUNG
We hope you will pay us a fleeting visit in the spring. ~Carl Jung, Freud Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 374-375
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