The letters of C. G. Jung to Sabina Spielrein (Translated from the German by Barbara Wharton)
Dr. C. G. Jung, Burghölzli-Zürich Lecturer in Psychiatry 20.6.08
My dear Miss Spielrein,
You have managed well and truly to grasp my unconscious with your sharp letter. Such a thing could only happen to me.
On Monday I am engaged all day with Dr. Jones.1 However, I am coming into town on Tuesday morning and would like to meet you at 11 o’clock at the steamer landing stage on the Bahnhofstrasse.
So that we can be alone and able to speak undisturbed, we’ll take a boat out on to the lake.
In the sunshine, and out on the open water, it will be easier to find a clear direction out of this turmoil of feelings.
With affectionate greetings from your friend.
Zürich, 30.6.08
My dear friend,
I must tell you briefly what a lovely impression I received of you today.
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.
As a result there awakens in me a feeling of beauty and freedom which has once more bathed the world and its objects in a fresh lustre.
You can’t believe how much it means to me to hope I can love someone whom I do not have to condemn, and who does not condemn herself either, to suffocate in the banality of habit.
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.
I look forward to seeing you again on Friday.
With warmest greetings, your friend.
4.7.08
My dear friend,
What we discussed yesterday had a really releasing effect on me.
The very belief that there are people who behave as they think, and who think only good things, is a relief which is so great that it compensates for many disappointments.
Inwardly I feel calmer and more free.
I would very much like to speak to you again next week, before you go to Walensee.3
Or if you are going to Weesen soon,4 we could perhaps meet in Rapperswyl.
May I ask you to write and tell me when you are going to W?
Warmest greetings from your friend.
6.7.08
My Dear,
I found your letter yesterday evening on my return from Sch.
I have to go into town on Tuesday morning to the district prosecutor’s office, and could use this opportunity to meet you in the outer area of the Uto Quay at 10.30; from there you could come with me to the Burghölzli.
In any case I shall be walking along the lake shore as far as Zürichhorn from 10.30 onwards.
Unfortunately I have no time in the afternoon.
Affectionate greetings
22.7.08
My Dear,
Please do come to see me next Friday at 5.30. Unfortunately it is impossible for me to free a whole afternoon.
Last week I had to attend two weddings and the chief5 was spitting venom about it.
So I am deeply upset. I have to work endlessly.
Affectionate greetings and goodbye till Friday, your friend.
Dr C. G. Jung, Lecturer in Psychiatry Burghölzli-Zürich, 12.8.08
My dear friend,
Your letter gave me much pleasure and set my mind at rest. I was rather worried on account of your long silence.
I was afraid something had happened to you, or that somehow the devil had had a hand in it.
There are lovely things in your letter. I must admire your parents’ truly great broadmindedness.
For a mother, that is really a high achievement and one hardly to be expected.
Tell your mother that I admire her for that.
It will be easier for your father, for new outlooks and new life values come more readily to a man of ideas than to the natural conservatism of a woman.
As you say, everything is fine and good; I rejoice at your happiness.
This way your long desired and long feared stay in Russia will be easy.
With me everything is trembling like a volcano: one minute everything is golden, the next everything is grey.
Your letter came like a ray of sunshine through the clouds.6
But your mother is quite right: you should get better notepaper; you do know that I dislike the ‘botany tin’ style because of its lack of beauty. Even ugly clothes give me pain.
You have given that up now, thank God.7a
Don’t be angry with me for writing to you about such things again.
I want you to be beautiful both inwardly and outwardly, for such a thing alone is natural.
No one who is not inwardly defective in feeling can love what is ugly and tasteless, and you are certainly not that!
Your letter had a good effect on me; I realize how much more attached I am to you than I ever thought.
I happen to be terribly suspicious, and always think other people are trying to exploit and tyrannize me.
It is only with great difficulty that I can muster a belief in man’s natural goodness, which I so often proclaim.
That certainly does not apply to my feelings about you, however!
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!
All last week I was not really well, rather hysterical, and a convenient cold set in which sent me off to bed for a day.
There your letter had a very good effect on my mood, so that since then my energy has significantly increased.
How do you like being in your home country again? Are you going into the steppes? And what did your old nurse say to you? Was she pleased to see how
pretty you have become?
We’re reading here in the newspaper that cholera is rife in Rostov.
Don’t drink any unboiled water and don’t eat any salad; you must be careful with uncooked fruit too because of the bacilli.
At the moment one of my patients is living at no. 6 xxxstrasse; Miss xxx7b, a Polish woman. So be careful!
Recently I have had a great deal to do.
Last week two American professors were with me, one from New York, the president of the Lunacy Commission of New York State.8
In addition a doctor from the Tübingen psychiatric clinic has been with me for three weeks9 to get to know me, that is, my views and my methods.
On 23 August I am going on holiday.
It will be best if you continue to send your letters to the Burghölzli; someone will send them on to me from there.
I am urgently in need of a rest.
First I’m going for a week to the Toggenburg10 and will be walking with Riklin,11 then a further six days to Schaffhausen to my wife and child.
When I return from holiday Prof. Freud will be coming for a few days.12
On 28.9.1909 I have to go on military service for five weeks.
At present Prof. Bleuler is on holiday; so I have a lot to do, but I don’t always do it with
A suitable educational present for a five year old.’
Here the meaning seems to be ‘parsimonious’, ‘useful’ in a negative sense, ‘merely functional’.pleasure.
I haven’t got round to any scientific work at all recently. I hope that will improve in the winter.
Write to me again soon, so that I can see that you are happy and at peace.
I received the money safely.
Thank you!
With an affectionate kiss from your friend.
2.9.08
My Dear,
I like the small photograph best. You look your best in that one. So I will keep it, with many thanks.
In the meantime you will probably have received my last letter.
The holidays were not favourable for long letters.
One has literally to steal time from oneself to write.
Your detailed descriptions of your life delighted me very much.
You write in a truly Russian way.
I’ve now finished my tour in the mountains13 and had glorious weather for it.
Now the weather has turned really bad so that I’m having to postpone my planned bicycle trip from one day to the next.
Don’t stay too long in Russia, avoid everything mentally taxing, so that you can return to your studies with fresh energy.
With warmest greetings from your friend.
Brugg, 28.9.08
Dear friend,
You can see from my mistake14 that I often think of you.
You will perhaps have thought of this or that reason for the fact that I have not written to you again for so long.
However, you already know the reason: Prof. Freud was here for quite a long time.15
At this meeting I really had an opportunity for the first time to see this great man in my world, out of his own milieu, and thus to understand him much more deeply than before.
He 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.
You are right on that point.
If I have previously only admired this man from a distance, now I have really come to love him.
You will understand that I used the time with Freud to good effect.
I clarified many areas for myself. In brief, it did me good.
At present I am on military service in Brugg for five weeks, that is, I am on service until 31 October.
My address is still Burghölzli, however, for I shall be staying in Brugg only a few days; later we are going to French-speaking Switzerland where the new fortifications are being built.
I am hoping to have a thorough rest.
How are you? Are you living a peaceful life? What are you thinking about your future? I often worry about you now because of […]
4.12.08
My Dear,
I regret so much; I regret my weakness and curse the fate that is threatening me.
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?
You will laugh when I tell you that recently earlier and earlier childhood memories have been surfacing, from a time (3–4th year) when I often hurt myself badly, and when, for example, I was once only just rescued from certain death by a maid.16
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?
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.
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.
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, nd 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.17
What on earth is to be done for the best?
I do not know and dare not say, because I do not know what you will make of my words and feelings.
Since the last upset I have completely lost my sense of security with regard to you. That weighs heavily on me.
You must clear up this uncertainty once and for all. I should like to talk to you again at greater length.
For example, I could speak with you next Tuesday morning between 9.15 and 12.00.
Since you are perhaps less inhibited in your apartment, I am willing to come to you.
Should Tuesday morning not suit you, write and tell me, otherwise I will come in the hope of getting some clarity.
I should like definite assurances so that my mind can be at rest over your intentions.
Otherwise my work suffers, and that seems to me more important than the passing problems and sufferings of the present.
Give me back now something of the love and patience and unselfishness which I was able to give you at the time of your illness. Now I am ill […]
[Probably 1908]
Dear friend,
Tomorrow, Thursday, I shall be going to the Theater landing-stage by boat around 6.40. Since I have no idea where Scheuchzerstrasse is, I would be grateful if you would come with me.
Will you wait for me at the Bellevue, that is at the tram-stop, at this time?
Then we’ll go straight there by tram or on foot, whichever suits you better.
I hope the book reached you safely.
With best wishes.
[Probably 1908]
My Dear,
Unfortunately I am busy on Wednesday until 7 o’clock.
However, I am free at 6 o’clock on Thursday and on Friday from 5.30 onwards.
If you send me no further word, I shall assume you will come on Friday.
Affectionate greetings from your friend.
Küssnach b/Zürich, 12.9.10.
Dear friend,
Although I have not yet finished your paper18 I have already found passages in it which filled me with delight.
The great trouble you took with the case has been richly rewarded by the outcome.
I am somewhat critical of the presentation, in that your demands on the reader’s attention and understanding are too high. The wine symbolism is thoroughly historical/mythical.
On that point I must decidedly congratulate you. Laokoon is marvellous.
You know the Laokoon monument, don’t you? Deeply symbolic.
Until the next time, affectionate greetings and good wishes!
Your friend.
[Probably 9.1910]
My Dear,
Sincere thanks on behalf of my wife for the flowers. That was very sweet of you.19
Affectionate greetings.
[Probably 9/10.1910]
Dear friend,
I too have just recovered from a very severe attack of influenza.
I was in bed from last Thursday. I am better now, but everything is an effort.
Today I went back to work, but am still quite exhausted.
Nevertheless I do have the strength to wish you a good recovery from the bottom of my heart.
I am free on Thursday morning 9–11. On Friday 9–12 I have appointments which I cannot change. On Saturday 9–11 I am free again.
Please let me know whether you will be coming on Thursday or on Saturday.
With affectionate greetings and best wishes for your recovery,
yours.
[Probably December 1910]
Dear friend,
Last Wednesday of course it did not cross my mind that you were already doing examinations20 and so I waited for you.
When you did not come I thought you were well and truly caught up with examination nerves.
So I will expect you next Wednesday at 9.00.
With affectionate greetings, your friend.
[Probably July 1911]
My Dear,
Your detailed letter interested me very much, and I am very, very sorry that you have happened on an old swine who cannot distinguish between human and animal.
That is too bad. One can see what stops men understanding psychoanalysis.
Please get in touch with Dr Seif,21 the nerve specialist. 21/1 Franz Josephstrasse, Munich.
He is the president of the psychoanalytic society there.
There you will be better received. Forgive me for keeping you waiting for my reply.
At the moment everything has had to wait as I had to finish writing an article by the end of June.22
I hope you will have a good reception there.
By the same post you will receive separately the corrections of your paper,23 which you can keep.
The corrections have already been taken care of. I am excited about your new project.24
With affectionate greetings, yours very sincerely,
Jung.
Dr C. G. Jung, Küsnach-Zürich Lecturer in Psychiatry Seestrasse 1003 8.8.11
My Dear,
I have unfortunately not yet been able to finish reading your comprehensive study25 as the presence of Dr Seif, who is currently staying with me, has kept me from it.
Nevertheless I have read so far with care that I can permit myself a provisional judgement.
I am surprised at the abundance of excellent thoughts which anticipate various ideas of my own.
But it is good that others see things the same way as I do.
Your thinking is bold, far-reaching, and philosophical.26
Hence the Jahrbuch will hardly be the right place for its publication.
Either you can make a small independent book of it, or we could try to include your work in Freud’s ‘Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde’ (journals on applied psychology).
That would be the right place.27
Various points of detail still need to be filled out.
I hope grandfather Freud will have the same joy as I have over this fruit of your spirit.
Your stay in Munich does now seem to have been satisfactory in every respect.
Meanwhile I congratulate you most heartily on your paper.
With affectionate greetings,
yours very sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
Tomorrow morning I am going away for three weeks.28 My address remains Küsnach.
Dr. C.G. Jung [Probably 17/18.8.1911] Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zurich, Seestrasse 1003
My Dear,
I can answer you only briefly as I am just at home between two trains and am going away again immediately.
Please get in touch with Dr. Seif regarding the invitation to the Congress.
I have sent the provisional programmes first to the sections.
You should receive your invitation after Sep.1.
Once again you are grumbling too soon.
Regarding accommodation apply to Dr K. Abraham,30 Rankestrasse 24, Berlin W.
Best wishes for your sea-voyage.
Your friend.
Hotel Erbprinz, Weimar 1911 [Probably 21/22.9]
My Dear,
The enormous workload which running the Congress has meant must give you a good idea why I have not replied until today.
I see your situation clearly.
I can hardly think that there is anything organically wrong with your foot, for the psychological situation is too powerfully and traumatically significant.
Something in you was searching for a reason not to go to Weimar.
In other words, you wanted to come with a certain phantasy/ wish which you had to repress.
You ought to have come in spite of that, however, for life demands sacrifices and self-denial, the subordination of stubbornness and pride to the rules of devoted love.
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.
To be sure, this bitterness did not come from your work, – for there is nothing in that which would be personally disagreeable to me – but from earlier, from all the inner anguish I experienced because of you – and which you experienced because of me.
I truly wish you happiness from my heart, and it is with this feeling that I want to think of you.
But never forget that under no circumstances must you retreat from an immediate goal which your heart considers good and reasonable.
Each time that will mean a sacrifice of selfishness, of pride and of stubbornness, and it will seem to you as if you were losing yourself in the process … Only in the course of this mysterious self-sacrifice
you will gain yourself in a new and more beautiful form and you will also as a result become a blessing and a source of happiness for other people.
So you should not have given up attending the Congress under any circumstances; you made a grave error by doing so for which you immediately punished yourself.
You ought to have sacrificed yourself.
Your dissertations31 were distributed as far as was possible.
Get well again now! Freud will certainly accept you.
He has spoken several times of your dissertation, the best indication that it has made an impression on him.
You do not need my recommendation.32
Approach him as a great master and rabbi, then all will be well.
With affectionate greetings and wishes,
yours.
Dr. med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zurich [Probably beginning November 1911]
My Dear,
In these circumstances I must send you the paper33 back immediately; I am sorry about it, since I have not finished it yet.
In fact I was detailed to an exercise in the mountains34 so that I lost all the time I had set aside for your work.
Please send me back your paper immediately, when you have made the necessary use of it.
I must certainly study it thoroughly, for there are so many important thoughts in it; I must be completely quiet in order to understand it
all properly.
Until now I have not had a moment’s peace.
My dear, you are not to think that I retain any hard feelings towards you.
I’m just waiting for a few days’ peace in order to read your work again at one sitting.
If I am disturbed once more in the middle of it, I shall never reach a clear and conclusive understanding.
I beg your forgiveness. Your work is on its way to you registered as a valuable package35 by immediate post.
Your news from Vienna is interesting – and distressing. Stekel36 is enraptured and unscientific. Klages must have been impressed.37
Why does he go to Vienna? Apart from Freud, Rank38 and Sachs39 there is little there that is serious.
Please don’t betray me.
Your ever devoted friend.
Dr C. G. Jung Küsnach-Zürich Lecturer in Psychiatry Seestrasse 1003 13.11.11
My Dear,
At last I can send you the manuscript.
When I went to send you the letter I suddenly realized that I did not have your address. (It was not on your last letter.) I received all your earlier letters while I was on military service.40
Let me just say, by the way, that you can safely send your letters to me with the usual postage.
I would ask you again to send me the paper back straight away.
In Part 2 of my work (have I sent you an offprint of the first part?) I have made frequent references to your ideas.41
I should like to do so with your new paper too. So that we are in harmony.
With affectionate greetings and apologies, your very devoted friend.
Dr med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich 24.11.11
My Dear,
Your news is very valuable to me.
You partly confirm what I suspected.
On the question of phylogenetic reproductions Freud will soon come over to my side, even if on certain more general philosophical questions he stands his ground.
The difference between Vienna and Zürich will be clearly brought to light in Part 2, where I develop a genetic theory of libido.42
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.
If you will not betray me, I will show you a little snapshot: it reveals Freud in a spontaneous act which suggests the underlying cause of the fact that he has not gathered the best people around him in Vienna: A person (whom I also know) came to Freud.
He had had endless affairs with women and was also neurotic.
Freud said of him: ‘X.Y. is interesting theoretically because he is really not entitled to have a neurosis.’ (Because he is living out his sexual instincts as is well known.)
There is an unspoken expectation that it is a fact that neurosis comes only from repressed sexuality.
From this expectation Stekel was born. But here in Zürich we think that neurosis is a conflict, however one lives it out.
You understand that this expression of opinion on Freud’s part was a completely momentary act, which he would never raise to the level of theory: he is much too conscientious in his research for that.
But the remark indicates a certain latent expectation.
The fact that you think that you are not working along the right lines if I am not recognized means that you are still too closely bound up with me: you cannot judge my value or lack of value accurately.
You do not yet see who I am, in the sense that you are not yet able to free your intuition from your personal prejudice.
You will be set free only when you have completely cleansed your judgement.
If you need to ask me anything about that, I will give you an answer.
I look forward to receiving your paper.
With best wishes, your friend.
Dr C. G. Jung Küsnach-Zürich Lecturer in Psychiatry Seestr. 1003 11.12.1911
My Dear,
Don’t be so downcast.
Your paper will go into the Jahrbuch if Prof. Freud wishes it.43
I heartily congratulate you on your success.
The Jahrbuch for the second half of 1911, which went to print in the autumn, is complete.
You will go to print in January, in the first issue of the 1912 edition.
There you will appear in company with Frl. Grebelskaja’s dissertation44 and with my Part 2,45 which I was unable to finish in time for the 1911 second issue.
In addition, a very nice paper by Dr Nelken will be published.46 I hope that the proofs will reach you promptly in February.
Have you met Silberer?47 What is he like?
His papers are good. If only Steckel would not imagine himself to be a genius.
His book on
the language of dreams48 is astonishing as far as the dream material he brings.
The theoretical part however is thoroughly weak.
Moreover I am in an embarrassing position, as I was to bring out a discussion of it in the Jahrbuch but Freud does not want anything to do with it.
As soon as I have finished correcting the last paper for the Jahrbuch, which will soon be the case, you will be next.
With best wishes and greetings, your devoted friend.
Freud has told me some very good things about you.
Dr C. G. Jung Küsnach-Zürich Lecturer in Psychiatry Seestr. 1003 23.12.11
My Dear,
According to your wish, the work was despatched to you a short time ago as a registered packet. Deadline is 31 Jan.1912.
I would prefer it if you could prepare the paper so that it is ready for printing.
Then give it first to Prof. Freud so that he can give his opinion of it.
After that I will look through it and do any corrections that are necessary.
With regard to your lecture I will let you have my advice in print: ask Rank for my lectures at Clark University;49 there you will find how I basically set things out.
The word association forms will be sent to you shortly. Prof. Freud has spoken very flatteringly of you in his letters.50
I congratulate you on this success, although there are other successes which I would wish for ou much more.
With best wishes for the winter solstice, your devoted friend.
Dr med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich 18.3.12
My Dear,
I did not know that Frl. Grebelskaja is in such difficult circumstances.
She telephoned me recently to say that she was going away in a few days.
I had to give her a certificate showing that her work is at the printers.51
Her work is in press.
Unfortunately I do not have the power to hurry the typesetter.
As I read your paper I find uncanny parallels with my own new work appearing in it which I did not suspect, for until then I had always read your title incorrectly: ‘distinction’ instead of ‘destruction’, and was puzzled about it.
Now I find considerable parallels which show the results one gets if one goes on thinking logically and independently.
Your work will be published before mine in the Jahrbuch.
Your destruction wish is certainly correct. We desire not only the ascent but also the descent and the end.
This thought is developed beautifully by Nietzsche and I say a lot about it too. (Stekel says that a death wish appears in all (?) dreams too.
Certainly this wish is much more frequent than we think.) Stekel however has no overall conception.
He is merely an interpreter. Do you not want to read his book? You would certainly enjoy it enormously!52
As a matter of fact I was involved in the formulation of the lay association in Zürich. Until now it has been a thriving concern.
I received your postscript.
With best wishes,
your friend.
P.S. With regard to the word ‘complex’, this word is found in an old psychological work of Bleuler in the sense of a ‘mass of images, feelings’ etc. which, for example, constitute the ‘I’. That definition however has nothing in common with the present meaning of the concept which I have introduced into psychology. (cf. Diagnostic Association Studies and Psychology of Dem. Praec.).54
Dr. med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich 25.3.12
My Dear,
You are upsetting yourself unnecessarily again.
When I said there were ‘uncanny’ similarities, you again took that much too literally.
I was intending it much more as a compliment to you.
Your study is extraordinarily intelligent and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours.55
The death tendency or death wish was clear to you before it was to me, understandably!
I am progressing only slowly with the manuscript since I am correcting style and expression at the same time.
I express myself so differently from you in my work that no one could imagine that you had borrowed in any way from me.
There is no question of it at all.
With regard to the hidden interpenetration of thought, there are more lofty questions here which do not come into consideration in public life and of which, in any case, we know too little to be able to reckon seriously with them.
Perhaps I borrowed from you too; certainly I have unwittingly absorbed a part of your soul, as you doubtless have of mine.
What matters is what each of us has made of it. And you have made something good. I am glad that you are representing me in Vienna.
The new work will certainly be misunderstood.
I hope you will be able to represent my new ideas.
With affectionate greetings, your friend.
Dr Med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse
Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich
11.4.13
Dear friend,
Owing to a lack of material, I have never worked on the associations of morphine addicts. Have you much material of this kind?
One case alone would hardly be typical.
I have just returned again from America.56
It is for that reason that I am rather late answering your letter. I had no idea you were ill and am glad to hear that you have recovered.57
I have not heard of Frl. Aptekmann.58
I am pleased to hear that Krauss59 has found something good in my association studies.
I cannot of course wait for the recognition of these men, but have meanwhile progressed further with the work.
I have left your long letter on the subject of my work unanswered, for I felt it would have needed half a book to reply to it.
I could not manage that as I was then quite exhausted.
So I did not reply at all. I was completely discouraged at that time because everyone was attacking me,60 and in addition I was certain that Freud would never understand me and would break off his personal relationship with me.
He 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.61
For that reason he ascribes to a complex everything I do which does not fit the framework of his teaching.
That is how he sees it, but I never recognize it.
At the meeting in Munich I saw clearly that Freud is lost to me.62
My inner struggles at that time absorbed me so much that I did not answer your letter.
It is not that I am not open to criticism – but I know only too well that it is too extensive a matter for me to be able to explain it to you in detail.
Too much has changed in me since I last saw you.
I wish you all the best.
I remain ever your friend.
Dr. Med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in Psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich 24.8.13
Dear friend,
I read your letter with much interest and am glad to know how things are with you.63
I wish you much happiness from the bottom of my heart.
If you really love your child then certainly everything will be well. And why should you not love your child?
Where work is concerned, we are always in need of more careful analyses of Dem. praec. However, that is something beyond your reach, at least for the present.
What would be useful would be the analysis of literary characters such as I did in my libido work with Hölderlin, Nietzsche, etc.
But it’s difficult!
A complete bibliography of the psychoanalytic literature from 1909 onwards.
For that the following would have to be researched:
Centralblatt for psychoanalysis.
International journal for medical psychoanalysis.
Jahrbuch.
Imago.
Journal for sexual science.
Journal of abnormal psychology and various other English and American
periodicals.
English and American papers.
L’Encéphale.
Archives of neurology.
Journal for neurology and psychiatry.
Archive for general psychology.
Psychotherapia (Russian).
Psiche (Italian).
It would be necessary to write to Holland, and also to various authors in different countries.
Journal for medical psychology and psychotherapy.
A huge task to collect all this material!
I would be glad if someone could do that carefully.
With best wishes and greetings, yours sincerely,
Jung.
[Probably end Dec. 1913]
I congratulate you most warmly on the happy event!
DR. MED. C. G. JUNG KÜSNACHT/ZÜRICH
Private letter to Dr S. Spielrein-Scheftel 2 bis, rue St. Léger. Genève, Chez Mme Roche
Dr. med. C. G. Jung LL.D 1003 Seestrasse Lecturer in psychiatry Küsnach-Zürich 15.4.1465
Dear friend,
Very many thanks for your friendly letter.
Your fine ideas on ethics may be sure of general applause.66
With regard to my resignation as editor of the Jahrbuch,67 it is the result of so many painful experiences that I do not wish to speak of it.
From the tone of the attacks that have been directed at me you may see what kind of tendencies are at work against me.
The comparison with Stekel is a perfidious invention on the injustice of which the publisher Deuticke68 can be most informative.
I am pleased that your little daughter is well.
Long may she continue to thrive.
I wish your work every success.
The tone of your letter touched me to the quick, for I can see that you too despise me.
Respect for the human personality and its motives should not be undermined by psychoanalysis.
Because I fight for that I suffer much.
Yours sincerely,
Jung.
Dr med. C. G. Jung LL.D 228 Seestrasse Küsnacht-Zürich 31.5.16
Dear doctor,
The inductive method draws up laws based on a comparison of a series of facts.
The deductive method infers the relationship of a fact to a general law.
The introvert uses both methods.
The extravert does so too, in so far as he can think.
In that respect he is lacking, for his principle function is feeling, not thinking.
He thinks according to the feeling principle, the introvert feels according to the thinking principle.
It is very gratifying to know what a kind welcome my writings receive with you.
With collegial greetings,
Dr. Jung.
Internment of prisoners of war in Switzerland The commandant of the English region 13 Sept. 1917
Dear doctor,
Unfortunately it is hardly possible for me to select a suitable case for you as I have a great deal to do.
Your dream:
I am still a figure in your unconscious, that is, I represent a dimension in your unconscious which keeps hieroglyphs and such like at your disposal, that is, clearly symbolic expressions which you have to decipher.
You know perhaps that I distinguish a personal unconscious (the domain of the repressed personal contents) from an absolute or ‘collective’ unconscious.
The latter contains the primal images, that is, the developmental and historical deposits. The hieroglyphs are symbols of those.
The new development that will come announces itself in an old language, in symbolic signs.
I must frankly urge you to observe this language of signs in yourself.
You can derive a special insight from that, which can be of universal value, if the deciphering is successful!
I have long been occupied with this question of the psychic contents of the collective and have found so many interesting things that they have kept me awake at night.
With best wishes,
Dr. Jung.
Dr. C. G. Jung 228 Seestrasse Küsnach-Zürich
Dear doctor,
With your hieroglyphs we are dealing with phylogenetic engrams of an historical symbolic nature.
As it is a matter not of intellectual, but of irrational, symbolic dimensions, your intellect suppresses and devalues these disturbing engrams which now try to reproduce themselves in compensation for a too
one-sided intellectual attitude.
You instinctively suspect (without knowing it?) these parts of your unconscious.
I cannot tell you any more about it in an intellectual sense.
I could only express myself irrationally and symbolically on the subject, and for that you would punish me with disdain because that wisdom would appear to you as ridiculous.
Thus in your dream you fall victim to German technical intellectualism and its brutal power, and you must cry in vain for the sun, for the sun’s golden magic, the greenness of noon, and the scent of the earth.
With what contempt people have treated the libido work and intellectually torn it to shreds!
They have bombarded it intellectually, but it is nevertheless quite clear that a gothic cathedral and a library of old manuscripts are nothing in the face of the thoroughly decisive power of a 28-cm. shell.
Yes, my most respected lady, I have been slandered and mocked and criticized enough; that is why I am clinging to my runes and to all the pale skimpy little ideas at which I hinted in my libido work until people realize that they are sitting in a prison without air and without light – in a prison which, however, is perfectly satisfactory while they can snatch a breath of fresh air daily in the yard and find the sun filtering through the blinds sufficient.
Now you really do want the sun and eternal beauty and the secret of the earth, you even demand it.
But I mistrust your arguments, as one mistrusts Germany’s pacifist ideas when it has been worshipping the god of war for years on end.
I will not hand over my secret to see it trampled under foot by those who do not understand.
A thick high wall has now been built round this garden, and I assure you that there is nothing behind it but those old familiar paltry ideas and ‘superficial allegories’ which were hinted at from a distance in the libido book.
You see, Freudian theory goes much deeper, right into the glands, it is the most profound statement that can ever be made about human psychology.
One cannot go any deeper than back to the mother’s body.
It is from there that the world is best explained.
Everything else is superficial and ‘unscientific’, a symbolic swindle built on repressed anal eroticism.
You just have to know that ultimately everything comes from the mother’s body, and that it is nothing but sexuality and its lamentable repression.
Everything else is nothing but that.
As a supporting hypothesis anti-semitism is worth recommending, and some more minor slanders.
I am sending you by the same post a short paper69 which is based on nothing and contains a string of arbitrary assertions which have arisen from a misunderstanding of Freud’s teaching.
With best wishes,
Dr. Jung.
30.11.17
Dear doctor,
Your comments [see Spielrein’s letter to Jung, 27 November 1917, in Carotenuto 1982, pp.50ff.] are quite correct from the point of view of the psychology of instincts.70
You are proceeding from the outset, in accordance with your type, on the view that there is only the instinct for the preservation of the species and for self-preservation, that is to say simply the instinct for the preservation of the species.
That is a biological supposition which has a certain average empirical truth.
With this assumption, however, you do violence to the psychology of the subject, that is, that psychology which is orientated more or less exclusively towards the ego (Adler!).71
It is inadmissible.
We cannot allow a psychology based on biology simply to cut the throat of a psychology of the ego.
An orientation towards the ego precludes an orientation towards instincts, and an orientation towards instincts precludes an orientation towards the ego.
A psychology of the ego has nothing at all to do with the self-preservation instinct for it is not a psychology of instincts but really a ‘will to power’.
You must read Adler or Nietzsche.
Nietzsche for example, according to Freud’s theory, would be nothing but repressed sexuality, whereas of course he is genuine.
Is there any poet or thinker at all whose creativity did not spring from repressed sexuality?
But the individuality of Nietzsche cannot be encompassed by contrasting him with, for example, Goethe.
Thus Freud’s theory is to that extent altogether incapable of understanding the subject. In fact it is suitable only for objects, not for active subjects.
It is merely ‘empirical’, finding only moving objects, but no living subjects.
It was this latter aspect that Adler perceived, but only this.72
With friendly greetings, yours sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
Dr C. G. Jung 228 Seestrasse
Küsnach-Zürich
18.12.17
Dear doctor,
You have grasped the elements of type theory except for the problem of feeling73 [see Spielrein’s letters to Jung dated 3 December, 4 December & 15 December 1917 in Carotenuto ibid., pp.53ff.].
You define feelings one-sidedly and arbitrarily as something conscious.
If there are unconscious thoughts, there are also unconscious feelings (‘so to speak!’).
The feelings of the introvert are infantile/archaic/symbolic, because they are mainly of an unconscious nature.
The extravert’s own thoughts are similar.
You are an intuitive extravert type.
Your conception of the unconscious seems arbitrary to me.
It is not clear how you can practically distinguish between a side-conscious, a preconscious, a subconscious and an unconscious.
Where do dreams come from?
Freud recognizes the psychology of the ego in the same way as Adler recognizes sexuality, but that is all. Adler is not to be ranked alongside Freud, otherwise you do violence to both.
With friendly greetings,
yours sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
Dr. C. G. Jung 228 Seestrasse Küsnach-Zürich 28.12.17
Dear doctor,
You are perceiving the unconscious as wishes and thoughts that are not capable of consciousness [see Spielrein’s letters to Jung dated 20 & 21 December 1917, in Carotenuto ibid., pp.62ff.].
But if these wishes are not capable of consciousness, how do you know about them?
Moreover there are very many people to whom these wishes are by no means unconscious. In certain circumstances they are, like the rest, just below the surface.
Freud’s unconscious, as you correctly state, consists of the ‘repressed’: when the censorship is lifted, that is, when the repression is analysed, is there no longer an unconscious?
Just a subconscious? I would make different distinctions:
1. a personal unconscious,
consisting of repressed personal material, and
2. a collective unconscious, consisting of common archaic residues and recent combinations of these which represent ‘possible’ future contents of consciousness.
As long as a personal censorship operates, the principles of repression psychology are valid.
If the censorship is lifted, however, the energy valency of the psychic contents comes into play.
Then the unconscious contents rise to the vicinity of consciousness in accordance with their energy valency.
The right interpretation (analytical or constructive, cf. The Content of the Psychoses, 2nd Edit.)75 of a symbol is the one that brings out the greatest value for our life (a pragmatic view).
Theoretically the symbol has debased as well as elevated meaning.
For example, the Last Supper can be interpreted as a union in the spirit of Christ, and as archaic cannibalism (cf. Silberer: Probl. Der Mystik [The Problem of Mysticism]).76
As long as personal repressions continue, so that we are not aware of our incompatible wishes, we must continue to analyse in a
What I designate as the collective unconscious is completely overlooked by Freud, that is, he interprets it as wholly personal, as merely repressed contents which could be got out of the way by understanding.
Thus he remains completely rationalistic and biological and misses a quite essential part of real psychology.
For that reason he conceives of morals as coming from outside the person, whereas human morality springs from an inner urge.
Moreover he has never understood what is meant by a split in the libido itself.
There is no excuse for interpreting the opposition of a – z in such a way that a is nothing other than the negation of z. a is something in and for itself, and so is z. Libido as energy always assumes the opposite.
Without an opposition (high and low) there is no energy at all, and so every energetic process (and that includes the dynamism of the psychic) assumes the a priori existence of the opposites and is itself bipolar because it immediately brings with it two different states.
Energy always strives to cancel itself out, and at the same time presses to manifest itself.
But a manifestation is at the same time its own means of cancelling itself.
Your conception of symbol formation seems correct to me, although there are at times conscious influences in it.
With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
Dr. C. G. Jung 228 Seestrasse Küsnach-Zürich 21.1.18
Dear doctor,
You are touching on something which belongs to the foundations of our culture [see Spielrein’s letters to Jung of 6 January, 7 January, & 19 January 1918, in Carotenuto ibid., pp.68ff.].
I find it very understandable that you cannot understand me, in spite of the fact that your dream is coming to your assistance.77
I am underlining all the passages in your letter where you are thinking concretely and, typically, misunderstanding the symbol.
Do not think that I am speaking against your music.
Perhaps you are more a musician than a doctor.
I don’t want to argue in any way against your becoming a musician.
But that question has nothing to do with the question of symbolism.
Your dream gives you the German as a representation of a person who acts in a concrete way and whose attitude is completely fixed on reality.
Your earlier Russian attitude is that of an inactive dreamer.
But with this later attitude a christification has taken place.
Thus you are sandwiched between the German and the Russian attitudes, between the real and the unreal.
That is precisely where the symbolic is found, as a common function of both.
You probably live the symbol to a large extent without being conscious of it.
For that reason your dreams think of bright spaces and green meadows.
In relation to this world you have to be real, either a musician, or a doctor, or a wife and mother.
But your task is not completed when you do that. Those are mere functions. You have not thereby become yourself.
You are something different from those functions.
You are always trying to drag the Siegfried symbol back into reality, whereas in fact it is the bridge to your individual development.
Human beings do not stand in one world only but between two worlds and must distinguish themselves from their functions in both worlds. That is individuation.
You are rejecting dreams and seeking action.
Then the dreams come and thwart your actions.
The dreams are a world, and the real is a world.
You have to stand between them and regulate the traffic in both worlds, just as Siegfried stands between the gods and men.
Do you understand that?
With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
[Probably January 1918]
Dear doctor,
‘Nebbich’ as ‘too bad’, ‘on the left’ in a flippant tone is a contrasting association to the rest of the symbolic content; it follows that unconscious contents always contain pairs of opposites and consequently always express themselves in opposite forms.
Valuable through worthlessness, or something connected with worthlessness.
Do not forget that the Jew also had prophets.
There is a part of the Jewish soul which you are not yet living, because you still have your eye too much on the outside.
That is – ‘unfortunately’ – the curse of the Jew: the aspect of his psychology which belongs to him most deeply he calls ‘infantile wish fulfilment’, he is the murderer of his own prophets, even of his Messiah.78
On the 6th floor instead of on the 4th means: higher up, a higher standpoint.
Gegensätzlich [opposite] = 6 = ‘sex’, as Freud understands it.
You are orientating yourself by everything around you, by the visible world, so the inner world is chaotic.
The inner world however comes with irresistible force and will take possession of you.
You will experience a remarkable transformation.
I have just recovered from influenza.
With best wishes,
Jung.
[see Spielrein’s letters to Jung of 27–28 & 28 January 1918 in Carotenuto ibid., pp.82ff.]
The Commandant of the xxx xxx Region, Château-d’Oex 29 Nov. 1918
Dear doctor,
‘Oore’ certainly means ‘ora’=pray.
‘nabich’ as an anagram of ‘Sabina’ is quite probable.
The meaning is: ‘pray to yourself’, for your soul needs you to concentrate all your devotion on the central point of your being in order to find your one right path, the ‘way’.
You like to go away from yourself and lose yourself by doing so.
It is to this strong tendency to look to the outside that ‘cannabis’ relates’79
That is of course ‘cannabis indica’, hemp, hashish, a narcotic which the orientals take to produce inner visions.
Do you understand that?
With best wishes, yours sincerely,
D.r Jung
Dr. med. C. G. Jung LL.D 228 Seestrasse Küsnach-Zürich
19.3.1919
Dear doctor,
Your dreams have a threatening character and show a murderous tendency because your conscious attitude is of a materialistic kind which kills the spirit.
However the spirit will not let itself be killed but changes into an unconscious force which can have murderous effects of a magical kind on all around.
You should recognize the divine spirit and not deny it in that rationalistic way.
You should acknowledge what you hold to be true and not speak the opposite; otherwise if you speak against your own conscience you are cursed.
I hope it is not too late.
Yours sincerely
Dr. Jung.
P.S. A sum of 260fr has arrived at my address from a Mr Seidmann in Berlin. I do not know where the money has come from.
I think it belongs to you. I am sending it to you today by mandate.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Jung.
I wish your little daughter a swift return to health.
C. G. JUNG. MD.LL.D
Seestrasse 228, KÜSNACHT-ZÜRICH 3.4.1919
Dear doctor,
Mistrust disturbs most the person who mistrusts himself.
I do not know whether you mistrust yourself. My mistrust is aroused by the fickleness of the female spirit and its vain and tyrannical presumption.
What you are calling ‘killing Siegfried’ is to me a rationalistic and materialistic razing to the ground.
This razing to the level of banality belongs to the most amiable qualities of the female spirit.
Your little daughter is quite safe when you do not want to kill the ‘strange being’ whom you call Siegfried.
For this being produces a harmful effect onlywhen it is not accepted as a divine being but just as ‘phantasy’.
You have this being to thank for your suggestive influence.
Your influence will be good and rich in blessing if you accept this being and worship it inwardly.
I wish your child everything that is good.
But I wish too that you would learn to accept ‘Siegfried’ for what he is.
This is important as much for your child’s sake as for your own. How you must accept Siegfried I cannot tell you. That is a secret.
Your dream can help.
Dreams are compensatory to the conscious attitude.
Reality and the unconscious are primary.
They are two forces that work simultaneously but are different.
The hero unites them in a symbolic figure.
He is the centre and the resolution.
The dream contributes to life, as does reality.
The human being stands between two worlds.
Freud’s view is a sinful violation of the sacred.
It spreads darkness, not light; that has to happen, for only out of the deepest night will the new light be born.
One of its sparks is Siegfried. This spark can and will never be extinguished.
If you betray this, then you are cursed. What has Liebknecht to do with you?81
Like Freud and Lenin, he disseminates rationalistic darkness which will yet extinguish the little lamps of understanding.
I kindled a new light in you which you must protect for the time of darkness.
That must not be betrayed externally and for the sake of external arguments.
Surround this inner light with devotion, then it will never turn into danger for your little daughter.
But whoever betrays this light for the sake of power or in order to be clever will be a figure of shame and will have a bad influence.
With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Dr Jung.
Dr med. C. G. Jung LL.D 228 Seestrasse Küsnach-Zürich
1 Sept. 1919
Dear doctor,
I have not replied until now as I have been in England for some time.
The love of S. for J. made the latter aware of something he had previously only vaguely suspected, namely of a power in the unconscious which shapes one’s destiny, a power which later led him to things of the greatest importance.
The relationship had to be ‘sublimated’, because otherwise it would have led to delusion and madness (a concretization of the unconscious).
Sometimes we must be unworthy to live at all.
With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Dr. Jung.
Dr med. C. G. Jung LL.D. 228 Seestrasse Küsnacht-Zürich 7.10.19
Dear doctor,
I congratulate you on your brother’s success.
That is very gratifying.
I cannot answer your question about types.
I would have to write a book about it. Actually it has already been written.
Your questions are answered there in detail.
When I wrote it I had to cancel out the fundamental identity of extraversion and feeling, and of introversion and thinking.
That was wrongly conceived and came from the fact that introverted thinking types and extraverted feeling types are the most conspicuous.
Now I distinguish a universal introverted or extraverted attitude.
Bleuler has an extraverted attitude.
His most differentiated function is thinking. His feeling is introverted and archaic, relatively unconscious.
The schema is thus:
With regard to Freud I am not quite sure, as I don’t know him well enough personally.
His neurotic tendency accords with the schema however.
It cannot be seen from the schema whether a person is introverted or extraverted, because it focuses on other aspects.
Bleuler and Freud are extravert. Nietzsche and Jung introvert. Goethe is intuitive and extravert. Schiller is intuitive and introvert.
In general men are on the outer circle:
Probably you used to be much more extraverted than you are now.
Perhaps the schema will mean something to you.
With friendly greetings,
yours sincerely, Dr. Jung.
N.B.!
In the libido book82 you will find a lot of material on the question of the transformation of libido; similarly in Silberer,
Problems of Mysticism83 who took up my ideas and worked further on them independently.
Reference
Carotenuto, A. (1982). A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud. New York: Random House.
Notes
1. Ernest Jones (1879–1958), English psychoanalyst, biographer of Freud. For the visit to Jung mentioned here, see references in Freud/Jung Letters, ed. William McGuire, Hogarth Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, (12.7.08, 18.7.08, & 11.8.08, p. 163, p. 164, & p. 166).
2. Free spirit.
3. Mountain lake between the cantons of Glarus and St. Gallen.
4. Place on the Walensee.
5. P. Eugen Bleuler; cf. Note 16, letters from S. Spielrein to C. G. Jung (in Carotenuto, A., A Secret Symmetry, New York [1982]: Pantheon Books.
6. S. Spielrein quotes this sentence in her letter to Freud of 10/20 June 1909 (section dated 11 June) (in Carotenuto 1982).
7a. Cf. also a passage quoted to Freud by S. Spielrein from a letter to Jung, and her remarks referring to this in her letter to Freud of 10/20 June 1909 (section dated 13
June) (in Carotenuto 1982)
7b. At the request of the Jung family the name and address of the person in question have been omitted in order to safeguard her anonymity.
8. One of the guests from New York was Adolf Meyer from NY State Pathological Institute, who was also Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University Medical School. Jung mentions this visit in his letter to Freud of 21.8.08 (Freud/Jung Letters, p. 169f. and footnote 1, ibid.)
9. Wolf Stockmayer (1881–1933), analytical psychologist, at that time Assistant at the Tübingen University Clinic (Freud/Jung Letters, 12.7.08, p. 164 & fn. 4).
10. A region in the canton of St. Gallen.
11. Franz Riklin (1878–1938), Swiss psychiatrist; worked at the Burghölzli from 1902 to 1904 and together with Jung published ‘The associations of normal subjects’ in 1906
(in C. G. Jung, CW 2).
12. See Note 15.
13. See previous letter to S. Spielrein.
14. The mistake in the salutation cannot be completely explained: the ‘n’ in the middle of the word ‘Freundin’ [‘friend’] has been added and in all probability was written over
another letter no longer visible.
15. According to the note in the Freud/Jung Letters 23.9.08, p. 172 fn., Freud was a guest of Jung from 18 to 21 September. During this visit Jung demonstrated to him the famous case of Babette (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé. Fontana, 1963, p. 149; cf. also Carotenuto, ibid., chap. 4).
16. cf. MDR p. 24f.
17. S. Spielrein quotes this passage in her letter to Freud of 10/20 June 1909 (section dated 13 June; in Carotenuto, ibid.).
18. S. Spielrein’s dissertation ‘On the psychological content of a case of schizophrenia (dementia praecox)’.
19. S. Spielrein had probably sent her congratulations on the birth of Jung’s third daughter, Marianne.; cf. the last entry in her diary for September 1910 (in Carotenuto, ibid.).
20. The first examinations took place on 9 and 15 December 1910, and the last in the middle of January 1911 (see diary entries of 8 and 14 December 1910 and of 15 and 19 January 1911; in Carotenuto, ibid.).
21. See Note 8, letters of S. Spielrein to C. G. Jung (in Carotenuto, ibid., p. 220).
22. cf. Freud/Jung Letters, 12.6.11, 426.
23. This must refer to corrections related to the publication of her dissertation which appeared in the Jahrbuch 3,1 (August 1911).
24. The reference is to the paper ‘Destruction as the cause of coming into being’, which S. Spielrein completed during her stay in Munich, according to her diary entry of 7.1.1912 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 40). The paper was published in English translation in The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 39, 2, April 1994.
25. See Note 24.
26. This remark, together with other comments made to S. Spielrein about ‘Destruction as the cause of coming into being’ (see letters of beg. Nov. 1911, 13.11.11, 18.3.12, & 25.3.12), is in marked contrast to the statement made by Jung in his letter to Freud of 1.4.12 (Freud/Jung Letters, p. 498).
27. The work did finally appear in the Jahrbuch, in the first half-year issue of Vol. 4 (Sep. 1912); cf. also S. Spielrein’s comment in her diary, 7.1.1912 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 41).
28. See Freud/Jung Letters, 19.7.11, p. 435.
29. S. Spielrein wanted to attend the Third International Psychoanalytic Congress in Weimar, 21–22 Sep. 1911.
30. See Note 6, letters from Freud to S. Spielrein (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 226).
31. See Note 18.
32. Cf. S. Spielrein’s letter to Jung, early 1911 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 48).
33. S. Spielrein had sent Jung the manuscript of her paper on destruction in August. She probably needed it now to prepare her lecture for the Wednesday meeting on 29 Nov. 1911, at which she referred to a section of it (see minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, ed. Herman Nunberg & Ernst Federn, Vol. 3, 1910–1911, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1979, pp. 314–20).
34. Cf. Freud/Jung Letters, 30.10.11, p. 452.
35. As is implied in Jung’s next letter, there was a delay.
36. See Note 10, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 220f).
37. Cf. Note 4, letters from Freud to S. Spielrein (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 226).
38. See Note 18, letters from Freud to S. Spielrein (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 227).
39. See Note 19, letters from Freud to S. Spielrein (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 227).
40. Refers to the period from the end of September to 31 October 1911 (cf. Freud/Jung Letters, 4.10.11 & 30.10.11, p. 444 & 452).
41. Jung refers to Part 2 of Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, which appeared in the Jahrbuch 4, 1 in 1912, and in which numerous references to S. Spielrein’s dissertation appear. (cf. Carotenuto, ibid., Part 2, Chapter 2, Note 11).
42. With the differences alluded to here, cf. Jung’s numerous comments in the Freud/ Jung Letters from November 1911 onwards on Part 2 of the libido work, and his later The letters of C. G. Jung to Sabina Spielrein 197 statement about the role of Transformations and Symbols of the Libido in his confrontation with Freud (MDR, pp. 187–91).
43. Cf. Jung’s letter of the same date to Freud (Freud/Jung Letters, 11.12.1911, p. 470).
44. ‘Psychological analysis of a paranoid patient’, Jahrbuch 4, 1 1912, pp. 116–40.
45. Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Part 2.
46. ‘Analytical observations on the phantasies of a schizophrenic’, Jahrbuch 4, 1, 1912, pp. 504–562.
47. See Note 26, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid. p. 223).
48. See Note 10, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid. p. 220).
49. ‘The association method’, three lectures (1909). Two of the lectures (‘The association method’ and ‘The family constellation’) are published in CW 2, one (‘Psychic conflicts in a child’) in CW 17.
50. See letters of 12. & 30.11, and 17.12.1911 (Freud/Jung Letters, pp. 457ff, p. 468, & p. 472).
51. See Jung’s letter to S. Spielrein of 11.12.1911 and Note 44 above.
52. Cf. letter from S. Spielrein to Jung of late March 1911 (Carotenuto, ibid., pp. 47–8).
53. In February 1912 a lay association for psychoanalytic endeavour was founded in Zürich (see Jung’s communication to Freud of 15.2.12 (Freud/Jung Letters, p. 483 & fn. 1).
54. Diagnostische Associationsstudien: Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychopathologie, 2 volumes, Leipzig 1906 and 1909 (in CW 2), Über die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox: Ein Versuch (in CW 3).
55. cf. S. Spielrein’s diary entry of 26.11.1910 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 35).
56. See Freud/Jung Letters, 3.3.13, p. 545 & fn. 1).
57. Cf. Freud’s letter to S. Spielrein, 30 Jan. 1913 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 118).
58. Cf. entry for September 1910 and Note 8, diary of S. Spielrein (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 17 & p. 218).
59. The reference must be to Friedrich Kraus who worked at the Charité (see Note 10, letters of Freud to S. Spielrein, in Carotenuto, ibid., p. 226); S. Spielrein had informed Freud of Kraus’s approach to psychoanalysis (cf. Freud’s letter to S. Spielrein, 9.2.1913, in Carotenuto, ibid. p. 119, and Freud’s letter to Karl Abraham, 14.2.13 and Abraham’s reply 3.3.13, in Freud/Abraham Briefe 1907–1926).
60. MDR p. 191f.
61. Cf. Carotenuto ibid., part 2, chapter 6, and the Foreword by J. Cremerius to the German edition of Carotenuto’s book (Tagebuch einer heimlichen Symmetrie, Freiburg, Kore, 1986 also K.R. Eissler, Psychologische Aspekte des Briefwechsels zwischen Freud und Jung, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Beiheft 7, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1982), passim.
62. Cf. letter from Jung to Freud of Nov. 1912 referring to the presidents’ conference in Munich (Freud/Jung Letters 15. Nov. 1912, p. 520).
63. S. Spielrein was expecting a child.
64. Birth of Sabina Spielrein’s daughter, Renata; cf. Freud’s letter to S. Spielrein, 29 Sep. 1913 (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 121).
65. On the back of this letter is the fragmentary outline of a letter from S. Spielrein to Freud.
66. S. Spielrein had probably sent Jung the text of her lecture ‘On ethics and psychoanalysis’, which she had given in March 1914 to the Berlin group of the International Psychoanalytic Society (see Zeitschrift 2, 1914, p. 410).
67. Jung had resigned from the editorship of the Jahrbuch in October 1913 (see Freud/Jung Letters 27.10.13, p. 550).
68. Franz Deuticke among others published the Jahrbuch and the series Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde (Papers on applied Psychiatry) edited by Freud.
69. See Note 17, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 222) [The reference is to Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse (Zürich 1917, the first edition of ‘On the psychology of the unconscious’, in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7)].
70. Cf. letter from S. Spielrein to Jung, 27.11.1917 (Carotenuto, ibid., pp. 50–3).
71. See Note 18, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (,Carotenuto, ibid., p. 222).
72. Cf. letter from S. Spielrein to Jung, 3.12.1917 (Carotenuto ibid., pp. 53–6).
73. Cf. letter from S. Spielrein to Jung, 15.12.1917, only parts of which have survived.
74. Cf. S. Spielrein’s letter of 20.12.1917 (Carotenuto, ibid., pp. 62ff).
75. Jung, The Content of the Psychoses, Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 3, Vienna & Leipzig: Deuticke, 2nd Edition 1914 (in CW 3).
76. See Note 26, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 223).
77. Cf. letters from S. Spielrein to Jung, 6.1.1918 & 19.1.1918 (Carotenuto, ibid., pp. 68–78, & pp. 79–82).
78. Cf. letter from S. Spielrein to Jung, 27/28.1.1918 (Carotenuto, ibid., pp. 82–8).
79. Kannabich was also the name of a Russian psychoanalyst who was known to S. Spielrein. (See ‘Russische Literatur’ in Bericht über die Fortschritte der Psychoanalyse (Report on the Advances in Psychoanalysis) 1914–1919, Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1921, p. 356).
80. Cf. the statement in S. Spielrein’s letter to Jung, 6.1.1918. In this letter, and in the letter of 27/28.1.1918, S. Spielrein develops a discussion of the theme ‘Siegfried – a threat to Renata’, subsequently taken up by Jung.
81. The leader of the communist Spartacus League was murdered on 15.1.1919 together with Rosa Luxemburg.
82. Transformation and Symbols of the Libido, Part 1, Jahrbuch 3.1. (1911), pp. 120–227, Part 2, Jahrbuch 4.1 (1912), pp. 162–464.
83. See Note 26, letters from S. Spielrein to Jung (Carotenuto, ibid., p. 223).
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2001, 46, 173–199
0021–8774/2001/4601/173 © 2001, The Society of Analytical Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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