Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein Quotations

Your image has changed completely, and I want to tell you how very, very happy it makes me to be able to hope that there are people who are like me, people in whom living and thinking are one; good people who do not misuse the power of their mind to dream up fetters but rather to create freedoms. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.

How great would be my happiness to find that person in you, that ‘esprit fort’ who never descends into sentimentality, but whose essential and innermost prerequisite for life is her own freedom and independence. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.

I often think that the happiness that I want to give other people is begrudged me, or is returned to me in the form of hidden hostility, which is what has so often happened to me! Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, July 22, 1908

At this meeting I really had an opportunity for the first time to see this great man [Freud] in my world, out of his own milieu, and thus to understand him much more deeply than before. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

He [Freud] is truly a great and good man who, by virtue of his wonderful knowledge of humankind and his experience of life, sees incomparably further than I do. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

If I have previously only admired this man [Freud] from a distance, now I have really come to love him. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

I fear for my work, for my life’s task, for all the lofty perspectives that are being revealed to me by this new Weltanschauung as it evolves. How shall I, with my sensitive soul, free myself from all these questions? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

My mind is torn to its very depths. I, who had to be a tower of strength for many weak people, am the weakest of all. Will you forgive me for being as I am? For offending you by being like this, and forgetting my duties as a doctor towards you? Will you understand that I am one of the weakest and most unstable of human beings? And will you never take revenge on me for that, either in words, or in thoughts or feelings? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

I am looking for someone who understands how to love, without punishing the other person, imprisoning him or sucking him dry; I am seeking this as yet unrealized person who will manage to separate love from social advantage and disadvantage, so that love may always be an end in itself, and not just a means to an end. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

It is my misfortune that I cannot live without the joy of love, of tempestuous, ever-changing love. This daemon stands as an unholy contradiction to my compassion and my sensitivity. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

When love for a woman awakens within me, the first thing I feel is regret, pity for the poor woman who dreams of eternal faithfulness and other impossibilities, and is destined for a painful awakening out of all these dreams. Therefore if one is already married it is better to engage in this lie and do penance for it immediately than to repeat the experiment again and again, lying repeatedly, and repeatedly disappointing. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 4, 1908

Sincere thanks on behalf of my wife for the flowers. That was very sweet of you. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. [?] 1910

Your thinking is bold, far-reaching, and philosophical. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, August 8, 1911.

I can hardly think that there is anything organically wrong with your foot, for the psychological situation is too powerfully and traumatically significant. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

Only when you seek the happiness of the other, will your own happiness be granted. I allow myself to write to you so frankly and to admonish you because, after long and solitary reflection, I have eliminated from my heart all the bitterness against you which it still harboured. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

But never forget that under no circumstances must you retreat from an immediate goal which your heart considers good and reasonable. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

He [Freud] has spoken several times of your dissertation, the best indication that it has made an impression on him. You do not need my recommendation. Approach him as a great master and rabbi, then all will be well. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

I am rather worried about how Freud will take the corrections I am introducing into the theory of sexuality. The more I write in my own style, the greater becomes the danger of misunderstandings, for inwardly I am quite alien to the spirit of the Viennese school, though not to the spirit of Freud. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 24, 1911

Your study is extraordinarily intelligent and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 23, 1912

He [Freud] wants to give me love, while I want understanding. I want to be a friend on an equal footing, while he wants to have me as a son. For that reason he ascribes to a complex everything I do which does not fit the framework of his teaching. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.

At the meeting in Munich I saw clearly that Freud is lost to me. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.

Respect for the human personality and its motives should not be undermined by psychoanalysis. Because I fight for that I suffer much. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, April 1915.