Carl Jung: It would all look hopelessly haphazard and pretty flimsy

Dear Dr. Rhine, September 18, 1945

Your letter has been a great joy to me.

I have often thought of you in these last years and I also often mentioned your name and your experiments to many people.

I wish I could fulfill your wish but having a scientific conscience I feel very hesitant about it since, being a doctor, my observations are all of a clinical kind, which means that they are unavoidably subjective to a certain extent and never systematic in as much as they are all isolated cases and facts which form a rather incoherent mass, which would look like a collection of anecdotes.

I despise such a way of dealing with this matter and I would much prefer to be in a position to deal with a coherent material collected along certain scientific lines.

Of course I have had quite a number of noteworthy experiences, but you know how it is: circumstances and persons involved, though indispensably important for the explanation of the facts, cannot be described in a way that would convince the outsider.

It would all look hopelessly haphazard and pretty flimsy.

As you assume, I have thought a great deal about parapsychological facts and I tried to establish certain connections, but I always refrain from talking publicly about such matters for the above mentioned reasons. (pp. 378-379) ~Carl Jung, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 18.