James Kirsch: Open Letter to the Palestinian Public

For the Palestinian Public 8 June 1934

When one presents to the Jewish public a topic fraught with as many sensitive aspects as the Jewish question in psychotherapy, one has to reckon with a multitude of complex reactions.

So it is no wonder that Jung - and I, too – have had the experience that our writing is not read correctly.

Thus I must attempt the following corrections.

L

I have never said a single word against Jung's assertion that the Jew has a particular tendency and ability to perceive the negative, the shadow.

On the contrary, in my essay I expressly cited and relied on Jung's words regarding the human shadow side:

"In many cases it is exceedingly salutary to confront human beings with their own most unpleasant truths"

! Indeed, in every case in a daily practice, it is urgently necessary to shine light on the shadow side, the negative side of the unconscious.

Obviously, this insight does not only apply to individual Jewish patients but to the entire Jewish situation of our time.

Recognizing and valuing the Jewish shadow in this way, I wrote that among the Jewish people a thorough and bitter analysis has recently broken out ( e.g. Mauschel96 by Theodor Herzl).

No matter how I try, I cannot detect any "sugar-coating" here.

The great contribution of Jung ( and this is clearly expressed in the essay in question) is that he has declared that the unconscious is also the creative foundation of the soul, and that he thus sees both aspects, the negative and the positive.

IL

The terms genotype and phenotype are borrowed from biology.

The genotype describes the hereditary possibility existing in the germ plasma, while the phenotype is the individual manifestation transformed by experience and thus taking visible form.

This clearly defines the contrast between essence and appearance.

Whoever ventures to follow the phenotype of the Jew into his darkest abyss, that person cannot be accused of escaping into a non-existing image of a
Jew.

More likely one could conclude that this person is intent on penetrating into the essence of the Jew by way of individual manifestations.

III.

When Jung expressed his views concerning the current situation of psychotherapy, he had to clarify to what extent Freud's particular Jewish attitude to the unconscious influenced all of modern psychology and psychotherapy.

He does not, however, need to raise the question whether we Jews can acknowledge Freud as the genotype of the Jews.

May we then - as it has already been hinted among Jews – regard Freud as a Jewish prophet?

The prophet is legitimized by God's calling, i.e. on the positive foundation of the unconscious. (See e.g. Isaiah chap. 6).

Freud, however, unequivocally rejects the positive aspect of the unconscious (see The Future of an Illusion).

We are therefore bound to continue working with and appreciating not only the negative but also the positive aspect, if we are to come out of our
current spiritual situation of godlessness and homelessness.

In this we are also justified to consider Freud, without detracting from his courageous discoveries, as a figure determined by the Galut1 (the Galut phenotype), rather than as a timeless manifestation of the Jewish essence.

IV.

It is surely correct that the Jew is better able than the Teuton to endure "living with his shadow side in a friendly spirit of tolerance."

Without doubting Jung's specific statement, I am (in contrast to Jung) of the opinion that it is particularly damaging and dangerous for us to destroy the connection with the unconscious as our creative original foundation.

I emphasize this connection with the original foundation because the timeless type of the Jew has always expressed even the negative on the basis of his connection with the Eternal.

Freud tried to strike a fatal blow against the religious life of the soul in The Future of an Illusion.

To overcome this attitude of godlessness and homelessness, we need Jung's revelations about Freud and about the corresponding distortion of Jewish psychology, and Jung's way - in contrast to Freud's - in order to arrive at the positive aspect of the unconscious through accepting the shadow as fully as possible.

For that reason the final sentence of my essay was as follows: "In Jung's personality as well as in his psychology and psychotherapy, something is contained which speaks to the depth of the ailing Jewish soul and which may lead to its liberation." ~James Kirsch-Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 54-56

Carl Jung on the creation and future of Freudian, Adlerian and Jungian philosophies.

Stephen Black: Professor Jung, could you tell me how it came about that psychological medicine came to be divided so sharply in the first half of this century into Freudian and Adlerian and Jungian philosophies?

Dr. Jung: Well, that is so.

Always in the beginning of a new science, or when a new problem is tackled in science, there are necessarily many different aspects, particularly in a science like psychology, and particularly so when an absolutely new factor

has been brought into the discussion. Stephen Black: Which was that?

Dr. Jung: In this case, it was the unconscious—the concept of the unconscious.

It has been a philosophical concept before—in the philosophy of Carl Gustav Carus and then his follower Ed- uard von Hartmann.

But it was a mere speculative concept.

The unconscious was a kind of philosophical concept at first, but through the discoveries by Freud it became a practical medical concept, because he discovered these mechanisms

or connections. . . . He made of it a medical science. This is empirical.

An empirical medical science.

That was an entirely new proposition.

And naturally quite a number of opinions are possible in the beginning, where one is insufficiently acquainted with the phenomena.

It needed many experiments and experiences until one could establish a general terminology, for instance, or even a doctrine.

Now, I never got as far as to produce a general doctrine, because I always felt we don’t know enough.

But Freud started the theory very early and so did Adler, because that can be explained by the human need for certainty.

You feel completely lost in such an enormous field as psychology represents.

And there you must have something to cling to, some guidance as it were, and that is probably the reason why this kind of psychology set out with almost ready-made theories.

At least, the theories were conceived in a moment when one didn’t know enough about the role of the psychology of the unconscious.

That is my private view, and so I’ve refrained from forming theories. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Inter- views and Encounters, Pages 252-267.

Stephen Black: What in your view will be the final outcome of this kind of scientific quarrel between the various schools of medical psychology?

Dr. Jung: For the time being it is certainly a sort of quarrel, but in the course of time it will be as it always has been in the history of science.

You will see that certain points will be taken from Freud’s ideas, others from Adler’s ideas, and something of my ideas.

There is no question of victory of one idea, of one way of looking at things.

Such victories are only obtained where it is a matter of pretension, of convictions, for instance, philosophical or religious convictions.

In science there is nothing of the kind, there is merely the truth as one can see it. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 252-267.

Carl Jung: I hope you won't be angry with me for my bold criticism and wishes.

Dear Professor Freud, 14February 1911

First of all I am very glad to hear you are well again.

Couldn't anyone smell the gas?

From a very discreet source a little of your son's "complex" story has come to my ears.

Is Martin his mother's favourite? I am sure you know the rest as well as I do.

I am thinking of having all Adler's publications reviewed in extensor and discussed in Zurich. Putnam is a real brick.

Even before your letter arrived I had written him that in agreement with you I would advance the date of the Congress so that he might leave Genoa on September 28th.

He will meet you in Zurich at my place; you could then give the seminar instead of me, for Putnam personally, of course.

He will be here for 2-3 weeks, working.

An amazing man, a natural aristocrat.

Yes, I do have some wishes in regard to the third edition of your Interpretation of Dreams: I have criticized Morton Prince's "Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams" very sharply and in detail, and have also drilled my seminar students in the most rigorous Freudian usage.

Now, I have noticed that my students (and I myself) take exception to the following passages: p. 92 (2nd edn.)

"The dreams of young children ... quite uninteresting compared with the dreams of adults.">

This sentence is objectionable in terms of Freudian dream interpretation; likewise p. 94: "though we think highly of the happiness of childhood.?" etc., objectionable in terms of the Freudian sexual theory.

The 'children's dreams on pp. 92 and 93 seem to me insufficiently interpreted; the interpretation uncovers only a superficial layer of the dream, but not the whole, which in both cases is clearly a sexual problem whose instinctual energy alone explains the dynamism of the dreams.

But you may have reasons (didactic?) for not revealing the deeper layer of interpretation, just as in the preceding dreams (your own).

I also miss a specific reference to the fact that the essential (personal) meaning of the dream (e.g., Irma," uncle," monograph," etc.) has not been given.

I insist on my students learning to understand dreams in terms of the dynamics of libido; consequently we sorely miss the personally painful element in your own dreams.

Perhaps this could' be remedied by your supporting the Irma dream with a typical analysis of a patient's dream," where the ultimate real motives are ruthlessly disclosed, so that the reader will realize (right from the start) that the dream does not disintegrate into a series of individual determinants, but is a structure built around a central motif of an exceedingly painful nature.

In my seminars we always concentrate for weeks on “The Interpretation of Dreams”, and I have always found that inadequate interpretation of the main dream-examples leads to misunderstandings and, in general, makes it difficult for the student to follow the argument since he cannot conceive the nature of the conflicts that are the regular sources of dreams.

(For instance, in the monograph dream the crucial topic of the conversation with Dr. Konigstein," which is absolutely essential if the dream is to be understood properly, is missing.)

Naturally one cannot strip oneself naked, but perhaps a model would serve the purpose.

I also wish there could be a supplementary bibliography" of the literature concerned 'with your work.

I hope you won't be angry with me for my bold criticism and wishes.

There's a tremendous lot of work to do before I can get the Jahrbuch together.

This time I wanted to write something for it myself.

Many kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

J UNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 391- 394

Carl Jung: You are quite right: on the whole I was unfair to Stekel's book. But only to you.

Dear Professor Freud 21 August 1908

I am eagerly looking forward to your visit, which you are going to extend by several days.

We shall have plenty to talk about-you may be sure of that.

I shall be at home again from September 8th to the 28th.

Come any time you like during those 20 days.

I shall banish all intrusions that might encroach upon our sessions, so we can count on being undisturbed.

Prof. Bleuler has nothing against your visit, how much he has for it no one knows, least of all himself.

So there is no need for further worry.

He is extremely well-behaved and obliging at all times and will put himself out to provide benevolent background.

(The unmistakably venomous tone of these sentences refers to certain happenings of an internal nature which justify my feelings.)

You are quite right: on the whole I was unfair to Stekel's book. But only to you.

The other side will emerge in my review.

Just now I am treating a case of anxiety hysteria and see how far from simple the matter is and how many difficulties are glossed over by Stekel's optimism.

Apart from that I am fully aware of the value at his book.

Recently I had a visit from Prof. Adolf Meyer - of the State Pathological Institute in New York.

He is very intelligent and clear-headed and entirely on our side in spite of the toxin problem in Dementia praecox.

In addition he's an anatomist.

A while ago I received some offprints from Sir Victor Horsley and from a third party the news that he is interested in our work.

My holiday starts tomorrow evening, thank God.

I intend to make the best of it by fleeing into the inaccessible solitude of a little Alpine cabin on Mount Santis,

I am very glad you are coming as there are all sorts of things to clear up.

Please give Ferenczi my very cordial regards.

He is highly deserving of your goodwill.

If you should write again in the near future, please send the letter to the usual address; everything will be forwarded.

With best regards,

Most sincerely yours,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 169-170

Carl Jung: Your last letter upset me.

Dear Professor Freud, 18 April 1908

Your last letter upset me. I have read a lot between the lines.

I don't doubt that if only I could talk with you we could come to a basic understanding.

Writing is a poor substitute for speech.

Nevertheless I will try to offer some rather incoherent explanations.

1. Lecture to laymen.

The point was to make the public aware of the psychological connections that are found in psychosis.

Hence the strong emphasis on the psychogenic factor.

There was no reason to talk about the actual aetiology.

2. Aetiology of Dem. ptaec.

The aim here was to set out our conception of the aetiology.

From lack of analytical experience Bleuler stresses the organic side, I the other.

I think very many cases of Dem. praec. are due exclusively to purely psychological conflicts.

But besides these there are undoubtedly not a few cases where a physical weakness of some kind precipitates the psychosis.

One would have to be a spiritualist to believe in an exclusively psychogenic aetiology here.

I never have; for me the "constitution" has always played a fairly significant role.

That is why I was actually rather relieved when I saw that you had modified your earlier view of the genesis of hysteria.

As you have observed, in discussing the aetiology one gets entangled in the most hopeless difficulties, all of which seem to me to have one point of
origin: our totally mistaken conception of the brain's function.

Everywhere we are haunted by psyche == substantia, playing on the brain ala piano.

The monistic standpoint-psyche == inwardly perceived function-might help to lay this ghost.

But I won't go on philosophizing.

You yourself will have thought out the logical consequences long ago.

The whole question of aetiology is extremely obscure to me.

The secret of the constitution will hardly be unveiled from the psychological side alone.

3. Amsterdam report.

Here I have done bad work, as I am the first to admit. In spite of this I shall be grateful for any criticism. It's nonsense about my forbidding you to speak of it! I can only learn from your criticism.

The chief drawback is its brevity.

I had to do a lot of cutting.

A second and more important drawback is the elementary approach that was forced on me by the ignorance of the public.

Child hysteria must fall outside the formula applicable to adults, for whom puberty plays a large role.

A specifically modified formula must be established for child hysteria.

All the rest I have written as my conscience dictated.

I am really no propagandist; I merely detest all forms of suppression and injustice.

I am eager to hear of my errors, and hope to learn from them.

Binswanger has now got married' so is no longer in Jena.

His address is: Kreuzlingen, Canton Thurgau.

Best thanks for the offprints? which arrived during my absence.

I haven't read them yet for lack of time.

I too hope very much that we can snatch an hour in Salzburg for a talk on some of the things that are still hanging in mid-air.

With best regards,

Most sincerely yours,

JUNG

I may be wrong but it seems to me that this letter has an oddly dry tone.

It is not meant that way, for a man can also admit his bad mood with a smile.

Unfortunately the smile doesn't come through the style -an aesthetic fault that has already driven me to pen a P.S.

~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 138-139

Carl Jung and a case of "Catalepsy."

Dear Professor Freud, 17 April 1907

Many thanks for your news!

Unfortunately I must tell you at once that we have no room at all in the Clinic at present, which is most regrettable.

We are once again in a period of fearful overcrowding.

At the same time I would like to remind you that our in-patient department, being a State institution, is not prodigally luxurious and caters only for the general public.

The board for foreigners amounts only to 10·12 fr. a day at the maximum.

The charge for a private attendant is a little more than 2 fr. a day.

Cheap and middling to good, therefore.

As I said we are inundated at present, so it is quite impossible for us to take your patient.

I hope, however, that this will not set a precedent, for I would dearly like to investigate a case with which you too are thoroughly acquainted.

It may be that in a few weeks we shall have enough room again.

I can understand how repugnant it must be for you to get into cock fights, for that is exactly how the public looks at it and satisfies its sublimated blood lust.

Since I am not so deeply committed and am not defending my own brain-children, it sometimes tickles me to venture into the arena.

The identification with you win later prove to be very flattering; now it is honor cum onere.

Your case is most interesting.

The attacks look more hysteriform than catatonic.

The voices are highly suspicious, indicating a very deep split and a brittleness of the niveau mental.

I have often had cases that passed with apparent smoothness from hysteria or obsessional neurosis straight into D. pr. [Dementia Praecos]

But I don't know what to make of them.

Were they already D. pr., but unbeknownst to us?

We still know far too little, in fact nothing, about the innermost nature of D. pr., so it may well fare with us as it did with the old doctors who assumed that croupous pneumonia occasionally passed over into TB.

We only see how at a certain period in the development of various interrelated complexes the rapport with the environment comes to a partial or total stop, the influence of the objective world sinks lower and lower and its place is taken by subjective creations which are hypertoned vis-a-vis reality.

This state remains stable in principle, fluctuating only in intensity.

There are even cases who actually die of autoerotism (acute condition, no post-mortem findings).

I saw one again only recently. [Symbolic death?']

If in such cases there are no grave anatomical anomalies, we must assume "inhibition."

But this is accompanied by a positively hellish compulsion to autoerotism (manifested in other cases too), going far beyond all known limits; perhaps
a compulsion due to some organic malfunctioning of the brain.

Autoerotism is so consummately purposeless-suicide from the start-that everything in us must rebel against it.

And it happens nevertheless.

This "nevertheless" reminds me that not long ago an educated young catatonic drank up half the chamber-pot of a fellow sufferer, with obvious relish.

He is an early masturbator, and enjoyed premature sexual activity with his sister.

Catatonic since puberty.

Hallucinates the said sister, who occasionally appears as Christ (bisexuality).

Then deterioration set in, intense hallucinations, partly unidentifiable, partly concerned with the sister. Mounting excitement, masturbates
incessantly, sticks his finger rhythmically into mouth and anus alternately, drinks urine and eats stool.

A very pretty autoerotic homecoming, is it not?

The following things have struck me in several cases: feelings of sexual excitement frequently get displaced in (female) D. pr. patients
from their original site towards and round the anus.

Recently I saw a case where they were localized in the pit of the stomach.

Frequent anal masturbation in D. pr.

Does the pit of the stomach also belong to the infantile sexual theory?

I have not yet observed displacements towards other parts of the body.

Catalepsy is uncommonly frequent in the acute phases of catatonia.

In hysteria I have observed only one case where a cataleptically stiffened arm was a penis symbol.

But what is the general stiffness and flexibilitas cerea in catatonia?

Logically it too should be psychologically determined.

It goes together with the severest symptoms of the deepest phase, when the crassest autoerotisms are wont to appear.

Catalepsy seems to be more common among women; at any rate it is more common among persons of both sexes who fall ill early, just as, in general, their disintegration apparently goes much deeper and the prognosis is correspondingly worse than with those who fall ill late, and who usually stop short at delusional ideas and hallucinations (Lugaro's hypothesis}.'

Bleuler is leaning more and more towards autoerotism but in theory only.

Here you have your "verite en marche."

Can you lay hands on The Journal of Abnormal Psychology?

In Vol. I, No. 7 Sollier" reports "troubles cenesthesiques" at the onset of D. Pr., associated with alteration of the personality.

He claims to have observed the same thing in hysteria at the moment of "personality restitution" (transposition?): storms of affect, throbbing of

the blood vessels, fear, explosions, whistlings, acute pains in the head, etc.' Have you seen anything like it? Excuse my barrage of questions!

Gratefully yours,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 35-

Carl Jung: For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes...

Dear Professor Freud, 8 May 1911

It is bad of me to have kept you waiting again so long.

The reason is that I came down last week with an atrocious attack of influenza, caught from my children, so that I could do only the most urgent
work with a fearful effort.

I hadn't the strength for anything else.

Today I am sufficiently recovered to give you at least a sign of life.

First I must tell you about Stuttgart.

It wasn't all that important.

Still, it was interesting to observe how psychiatry is beginning to cast sidelong glances at causation-the physical 'side, of course.

Bonhoeffer' (Dresden) reported on psychogenic disturbances.

Naturally he didn't say a word about WA, but in an unguarded moment he dropped a remark about wish-fulfilment, and in conversation afterwards I took
the greatest pleasure in rubbing his nose in it.

Kraepelin's lecture was utterly sterile and dull and antiquated.

His appearance is incredibly plebian.

In the evening he gave a very waggish address which started off with "complexes," etc.

He toasted the speakers, with the exception of himself, of course, for which he deserves the diagnosis "autoerotic megalomania."

I almost called out "Hear, hear."

I mention as a curiosity a privatdocent of psychiatry from Giessen who has never set eyes on anything from the Freudian school.

All unsuspecting he fell into my hands, and this provided some fun for a couple of hours.

I was no longer annoyed by anything but simply had to laugh an awful lot.

I was in good company-Seif, Binswanger, Stockmayer.

The New York group has now come into being, and Seif has successfully founded one in Munich.

Pleasant news!

My Australian article is finished too.

It's about "The Doctrine of Complexes,"! a stupid thing you had better not see.

It will interest you to hear that Stockmayer is taking up a post in Binswanger's sanatorium.

I think I have already told you that Frau Prof. 1--is coming to me for treatment.

As to my intellectual activities, I am at the moment working up some popular small talk on 'itA 'which a literary magazine, the Zurcher

Jahrbuch, has wrung out of me." I am trying to be popular again-not
to my advantage, as you will see.

Then I am plagued by all those poor devils who have "pissed out" excruciating dissertations on me (to speak in the basic language").

Besides the psychology of religion and mythology, the "manifest forms of unconscious fantasies" are eating me alive.

I have made remarkable discoveries some of which I am thinking of using at the Meeting of Swiss Psychiatrists on June 16, and also at Weimar. (Concerning the date of the Congress, or suggestions for it, see the forthcoming Bulletin.)

The meeting in Munich is still very much on my mind.

Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer' with the aid of the libido theory, it seems to me.

At the moment I am looking into astrology, which seems indispensable for a proper understanding of mythology.

There are strange and wondrous things in these lands of darkness.

Please don't worry about my wanderings in these infinitudes.

I shall return laden with rich booty for our knowledge of the human psyche.

For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious.

Finally and in confidence: Pfister is now in analysis with Riklin.

He has obviously had enough of being roasted over a slow fire by his complexes.

Kindest regards,

Most sincerely yours,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 424-425

Jung’s Appraisal of Freud’s Structural Concepts: Id, Ego, and Super-Ego

Dr. Evans: Going still further into the development of Dr. Freud’s theory, which you acknowledge as a significant factor in the development of
many of your own early ideas, Dr. Freud, of course, talked a great deal about the unconscious.

Dr. Jung: As soon as research comes to a question of the unconscious, things becomes necessarily blurred, because the unconscious is something which is really unconscious!

So you have no object—nothing.

You only can make inferences because you can’t see it; and so you have to create a model of this possible structure of the unconscious.

Now Freud came to the concept of the unconscious chiefly on the basis of the same experience I have had in the association experiment;
namely, that people reacted—they said things—they did things—without knowing that they had done it or had said it.

This is something you can observe in the association experiment; sometimes people cannot remember afterward what they did or what they said in a moment when a stimulus word hits the complex.

In the word association reproduction experiment, you go through the whole list of words.

You see that the memory fades when there is a complex reaction or block.

That is the simple fact upon which Freud based his idea of the unconscious.

There is no end of stories, you know, about how people can betray themselves by saying something they didn’t mean to say at all; yet the
unconscious meant them to say just that thing.

That is what we can see, 􀢢me and again, when people make a mistake in speech or they say something which they didn’t mean to say; they just make ridiculous mistakes.

For instance, when you want to express your sympathy at a funeral, you go to someone and you say, "I congratulate you"; that’s pretty painful, you know, but that happens, and it is true.

This is something that goes parallel with Freud’s whole idea of the psychopathology of everyday life.

In Paris there was Pierre Janet who worked out another side of the understanding of unconscious reactions.

Now, Freud refers very little to Pierre Janet, but I studied with him while in Paris and he very much helped form my ideas.

He was a first class observer, though he had no systematic, dynamic psychological theory; his is a sort of physiological theory of the unconscious phenomena.

There is a certain depotentation of the tension of consciousness; it sinks below the level of consciousness and thus becomes unconscious.

That is Freud’s view too, but he says it sinks down because it is helped; it is repressed from above.

That was my first point of difference with Freud.

I think there have been cases in my observations where there was no repression from above; those contents that became unconscious had withdrawn all by themselves, and not because they were repressed.

On the contrary, they have a certain autonomy.

They have discovered the concept of autonomy in that these contents that disappear have the power to move independently from my will.

Either they appear when I want to say something definite; they interfere and speak themselves instead of helping me to say what I want to say; they make me do something which I don’t want to do at all; or they withdraw in the moment that I want to use them.

They certainly disappear! Dr. Evans: And this then is independent of any of the, you might say, pressures on the consciousness as Freud suggested?

Dr. Jung: Yes.

There can be such cases, sure enough, but besides them, there are also the cases that show that the unconscious contents acquire a certain independence.

All mental contents having a certain feeling tone that is emotional have the value of an emotional affect—have the tendency to become autonomous.
So, you see, anybody in an emo􀢢on will say and do things which he cannot vouch for.

He must excuse himself of a mistake; he was non compos mentis.

Dr. Evans: Dr. Freud suggested that the individual is born under the influence of what he called the Id, which is unconscious and undeveloped, a collection of animal drives. It is not very easily understood where all these primitive drives—all these instincts—come from.

Dr. Jung: Nobody knows where instincts come from.

They are there and you find them.

It is a story that was played millions of years ago.

Their sexuality was invented, and I don’t know how this happened; I wasn’t there!

Feeding was invented very much longer ago than even sex, and how and why it was invented, I don’t know.

So we don’t know where the instinct comes from.

It is quite ridiculous, you know, to speculate about such an impossibility.

So the ques􀢢on is only—where do those cases come from where instinct does not function.

That is something within our reach, because we can study the cases where instinct does not function.

Dr. Evans: Could you give us some rather specific examples of what you mean by cases where instinct does not function?

Dr. Jung: Well, you see, instead of instinct, which is a habitual form of activity, take any other form of habitual activity.

Consider a thing that is absolutely controlling which fails to function; then it’s worse, and suddenly we can’t think of any other thing.

For instance, a man who writes fluently suddenly makes a ridiculous mistake; then his habit hasn’t functioned.

Also, when you ask me something, I’m supposed to be able to react to you; but certainly if I am pushed beyond, or if you succeed in touching upon one of my complexes, you will see that I become absolutely perplexed.

Words fail me.

Dr. Evans: We haven’t seen you very perplexed yet, Dr. Jung.

Dr. Jung: I am a good example of psychology, you know, a fellow who knows his stuff quite well—the professor asks him and he cannot say a word.

Dr. Evans: To continue, another part of Dr. Freud’s theory, of course, that became very important, to which we have already alluded, was the idea of the conscious; that is, out of this unconscious, instinctual "structure," the Id, an Ego emerges. Freud suggested that this ego resulted from the organism’s contact with reality, perhaps a product of frustration as reality is imposed on the individual. Do you accept this conception of the ego?

Dr. Jung: If man has an ego at all, that is your question.

Ah, that is again such a case as before; I wasn’t there when it was invented.

However, in this case, you see, you can observe it to a certain extent with a child.

A child definitely begins in a state where there is no ego, and about the fourth year or before, the child develops a sense of ego—"I, myself."

There is, in the first place, a certain identity with the body.

For instance, when you ask primi􀢢ves, they emphasize always the body.

When you ask—who has brought this thing here—the Negro will say "I brought it," no accent on the "I," simply "brought it."

Then if you say—why have YOU brought it—he will say, you know, ME, ME, Yes, I, MYSELF, this given object, this thing here.

So the iden􀢢ty with the body is one of the first things which makes an ego; it is the spatial separateness that induces, apparently, the concept of an ego.

Then, of course, there are lots of other things.

Later on there are mental differences and other personal differences of all sorts.

You see, the ego is continuously building up; it is not ever a finished product—it builds up.

You see, no year passes when you do not discover a new little aspect in which you are more ego than you have thought.

Dr. Evans: Dr. Jung, there has been much discussion about how certain experiences in the early years influence the formation of the ego.

For example, one of the most extreme views concerning such early influences was advanced by Otto Rank.

He spoke
of the birth trauma and suggested that the trauma of being born would not only leave a very powerful impact on the developing ego, but would have residual influence throughout the life of the individual.

Dr. Jung: I should say that it is very important for an ego that it is born; this is highly traumatic, you know, when you fall out of heaven.

Dr. Evans: However, do you take literally Dr. Otto Rank’s position that the birth trauma has a profound psychological effect on the individual?

Dr. Jung: Of course it influences you.

If you believe in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, you say, "it is a hellish trauma to be born."

Well, there is a Greek saying that "it is beautiful to die in youth, but the most beautiful of all things is not to be born."

Philosophy, you see.

Dr. Evans: But you don’t take this as a literal psychic event?

Dr. Jung: Don’t you see, this is an event that happens to everybody that exists—that each man once has been born.

Everybody who is born has undergone that trauma, so the word has lost its meaning.

It is a general fact, and you cannot say "it is a trauma"; it is just a fact, because you cannot observe a psychology that hasn’t been born —only then you could say what the birth trauma is.

Until then, you cannot even speak of such a thing; it is just a lack of epistemology.

Dr. Evans: In his later writing, in addition to the ego, Freud introduced a term to describe a particular function of the ego. That term was the Super-Ego. Broadly speaking, the super-ego was to account for the "moral restrictive" function of the ego.

Dr. Jung: Yes, that is the super-ego, namely that codex of what you can do and what you cannot do.

Dr. Evans: Built-in prohibitions which Freud thought might be partly acquired and partly "built-in."

Dr. Jung: Yes.

However, Freud doesn’t see the difference between the "built-in" and the acquired.

You see, he must have it almost en􀢢rely within himself; otherwise, there could be no balance in the individual.

And who in Hell would have invented the Decalogue? That is not invented by Moses, but that is the eternal truth in man himself, because he checks himself. Carl Jung Conversations Evans, Pages 14-16.

Carl Jung: Relating to Freud, Adler, and Rank

Dr. Evans: Dr. Jung, many of us who have read a great deal of your work are aware of the fact that in your early work you were in association
with Dr. Sigmund Freud, and I know it would be of great interest to many of us to hear how you happened to hear of Dr. Freud and how you
happened to become involved with some of his work and ideas.

Dr. Jung: Well, as a matter of fact, it was the year 1900, in December, soon after Freud’s book about dream interpretation had come out, that
I was asked by my chief, Professor Bleuler, to give a review of the book. I studied the book very attentively, and I did not understand many
things in it, which were not clear to me at all; but from other parts I got the impression that this man really knew what he was talking about.

I thought "this is certainly a masterpiece—full of future."

I had no ideas then of my own; I was just beginning. It was just when I began my career as assistant in the psychiatric clinic. And then I began with experimental psychology or psychopathology. I applied the experimental association methods of Wundt, the same that had been applied in the psychiatric clinic in Munich, and I studied the results and had the idea that one should go once more over it.

So I made use of the association tests, and I found out that the important thing in them has been missed, because it is not interesting to see that there is a reac􀢢on—a certain reaction—to a stimulus word. That is more or less uninteresting. But the interesting thing is why people could not react to
certain stimulus words, or only react in an entirely inadequate way.

Then I began to study these places in the experiment where the attention, or the capability of this person apparently began to waver or to
disappear, and I soon found out that it was a ma􀂂er of in􀢢mate personal affairs people were thinking of, or which were in them, even if they
momentarily did not think of them when they were unconscious with other words; that the inhibition came from unconscious and hindered
the expression in speech.

Then, in examining all these cases as carefully as possible, I saw that it was a matter of what Freud called repressions. I also saw what he meant by symbolization.

Dr. Evans: In other words, from your word association studies, some of the things in The Interpretation of Dreams began to fall into place.

Dr. Jung: Yes! And then I wrote a book about psychology of dementia praecox, as it was called then— now it is schizophrenia—and I sent the
book to Freud, writing to him about my association experiments and how they confirmed his theory thus far. That is how my friendship with
Freud began.

Dr. Evans: There were other individuals who also became interested in Dr. Freud’s work, and one of them was Dr. Alfred Adler. As you
remember Dr. Adler, what in your es􀢢ma􀢢on led him to become interested in Dr. Freud’s work? Dr. Jung: He belonged; he was one of the young doctors that belonged to his surroundings there.

There were about twenty young doctors who followed Freud there, who were—who had a sort of little society. Adler was one who happened to be there, and he learned— he studied Freud’s psychology in that circle.

Dr. Evans: Another individual, of course, who joined this group was Otto Rank, and he, unlike yourself, Dr. Adler, and Dr. Freud was not a physician; did not have the Doctor of Medicine degree. Was this regarded by your group at the 􀢢me as something unusual, to have someone become interested in these ideas who was not by training a physician?

Dr. Jung: Oh no! I have met many people who represented different faculties who were interested in psychology.

All people who had to do with human beings were naturally interested; theologians, lawyers, pedagogues; they all had to do with the human mind and these people were naturally interested.

Dr. Evans: Then your group, including Freud, did not feel that this was exclusively an area of interest for the physician? This was something that might appeal to many?

Dr. Jung: Oh my, yes! Mind you, every patient you have gets interested in psychology .Nearly everyone thinks he is meant to be an analyst, inevitably. Carl Jung, Conversations with Carl Jung, Page 11.

Carl Jung: As Freud says, dream-analysis is the via regia to the unconscious.

It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt.

Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods.

Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this it does with astounding completeness. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 21.

As Freud says, dream-analysis is the via regia to the unconscious.

It leads straight to the deepest personal secrets, and is, therefore, an invaluable instrument in the hand of the physician and

educator of the soul. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 25

The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the
surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.

Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web
through patient work.

But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and dis- cover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.

This discovery compels rather more respect of the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age
has hitherto given short shrift. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 24.

I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objec- tive level.

In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself.

This I call interpretation on the subjective level. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 130

On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in real- ity can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism.

To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on pa- per.

Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most
abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 199.

Carl Jung on how he got interested in psychological medicine and first meeting with Freud

Professor Jung, how did you, as a doctor, become interested in psychological medicine?

Dr. Jung: Well, when I was a student of medicine I already then became interested in the psychological aspect—chiefly of mental diseases.

I studied, besides my medical work, also philosophy—chiefly Kant, Schopenhauer and others.

I found it very difficult in those days of scientific materialism to find a middle line between natural science or medicine and my philosophical interests.

And in the last of my medical studies, just before my final exam, I discovered the short introduction that KrafftEbing had written to his textbook of psychiatry, and suddenly I understood the connection between psychology or philosophy and medical science.

Stephen Black: This was due to Krafft-Ebing’s introduction to his textbook? Carl Jung: Yes; and it caused me tremendous emotion then.
I was quite overwhelmed by a sudden sort of intuitive understanding.

I wouldn’t have been able to formulate it clearly then, but I felt I had touched a focus.

And then on the spot I made up my mind to become a psychiatrist, because there was a chance to unite my philosophical interests with natural science and medical science; that was my chief interest from then on.

Stephen Black: Would you say that your sudden intuitive interest in something like that, your intuitive under- standing, had to some extent been explained by your work during all the years since?

Dr. Jung: Oh, yes; absolutely.

But, as you know, such an intuitive moment contains the whole thing in nucleo.

It is not clearly formulated; it’s an indescribable totality; but this moment had been the real origin of my career as a medical psychological scientist.

Stephen Black: So it was in fact Krafft-Ebing and not Freud that started you oft. Dr. Jung: Oh, yes, I became acquainted with Freud much later on.
Stephen Black: And when did you meet Freud? Dr. Jung: That was only in 1907.

I had some correspondence with him before that date, but I met him only in 1907 after I had written my book on The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.’

Stephen Black: That was your first book? Dr. Jung: That wasn’t really my first book.

The book on dementia praecox came after my doctor’s thesis in 1904.

And then my subsequent studies on the association experiment’ paved the way to Freud, because I saw that the behavior of the complex provided the experimental basis for Freud’s ideas on repression.

And that was the reason and the possibility of our relationship. Stephen Black: Would you like to describe to me that meeting?

Dr. Jung: Well, I went to Vienna and paid a visit to him, and our first meeting lasted thirteen hours. Stephen Black: Thirteen hours?
For thirteen uninterrupted hours we talked and talked and talked.

It was a tour d’horizon, in which I tried to make out Freud’s peculiar mentality.

He was a pretty strange phenomenon to me then, as he was to everybody in those days, and then I saw very clearly what his point of view was, and I also caught some glimpses already where I wouldn’t join in.

Stephen Black: In what way was Freud a peculiar personality? Dr. Jung: Well, that’s difficult to say, you know.

He was a very impressive man and obviously a genius.

Yet you must know the peculiar atmosphere of Vienna in those days: it was the last days of the old Empire, and Vienna was always spiritually and in every way a place of a very specific character.

And particularly the Jewish intelligentsia was an impressive and peculiar phenomenon—particularly to us Swiss, you know.

We were, of course, very different and it took me quite a while until I got it. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 252-267.

Carl Jung & Sigmund Freud. Anthology.

Even though differences of scientific opinion have brought about a certain estrangement between Professor Freud and myself, a debt of gratitude nevertheless impels me to honor Freud and Janet' as the men who have guided me in my scientific career. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 38-46

When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was "the true seat of anxiety," he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition. ~Carl Jung, Psychological, CW 11, Page 849.

The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632

His [Freud’s] irresponsible manner of observation is demonstrated by the fact, for instance, that not one of his cases of "traumatic" hysteria was verified. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

When I analysed Freud a bit further in 1909 on account of a neurotic symptom, I discovered traces which led me to infer a marked injury to his feeling life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

Freud, when one got to know him better, was distinguished by a markedly differentiated feeling function. His "sense of values" showed itself in his love of precious stones, jade, malachite, etc. He also had considerable intuition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348
People always assume anyway that my critical set-to with Freud was the result of a merely personal animosity on my part. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 349-350

It should also be noted that my characterization of Adler and Freud as, respectively, introverted and extraverted does not refer to them personally but only to their outward demeanour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 349-350

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love. ~Sigmund Freud - letter to Carl Jung (1906)

The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. ~Sigmund Freud Letter to Carl Jung, September 19, 1907.

So long as the self is unconscious, it corresponds to Freud's superego and is a source of perpetual moral conflict. If, however, it is withdrawn from projection and is no longer identical with public opinion, then one is truly one's own yea and nay. The self then functions as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the Divine that it is psychologically possible to imagine. ~Carl Jung; "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass"; CW 11, par. 396.

Freud and Josef Breuer recognized that neurotic symptoms… are in fact symbolically meaningful. They are one way in which the unconscious mind expresses itself. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 9.

I . . . have the feeling that this is a time full of marvels, and, if the auguries do not deceive us, it may very well be that . . . we are on the threshold of something really sensational, which I scarcely know how to describe except with the Gnostic concept of [Sophia], an Alexandrian term particularly suited to the reincarnation of ancient wisdom in the shape of ΨA. ~Carl Jung, The Freud/Jung Letters, Page 439

After the disgraceful defection of Adler, a gifted thinker but a malicious paranoiac, I am now in trouble with our friend, Jung, who apparently has not outgrown his own neurosis.” ~Sigmund Freud to James Jackson Putnam, 20Aug1912.

The reason I write to you about family matters is that no visitor since Jung has so much impressed the children and done me so much good ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Dec. 7, 1909.

It is a pity that you did not meet or speak to Jung. You could have told him from me that he is at perfect liberty to develop views divergent from mine, and that I ask him to do so without a bad conscience. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, April 7, 1912.

I hope you agree with the Nuremberg decisions and will stand loyally by our Jung. I want him to acquire an authority that will later qualify him for leadership of the whole movement. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Feb. 5, 1910.

If Jung were to obtain the professorship without the administrative duties, it would of course be a huge gain for us, but I think that he himself regards it as improbable. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Feb 5, 1912.

When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was "the true seat of anxiety," he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition. ~Carl Jung, Psychological, CW 11, Page 849.

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories. ~Carl Jung; Freud Letters; Vol. 2.

Freud found out that neurotics must be regarded as individuals. He also realized that as an explorer he had to be able to be subjective, for you can only induce the patient to declare his standpoint when you can tell him what you yourself think of him. ~ Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 66.

Adler looks forward and Freud looks back. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 150.

Freud and Adler believe that the unconscious consists only of contents which have once been conscious; for me it is a thing in itself, it is my belief and in fact I know that dreams are exactly what they say. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 162.

Since your visit I have been tormented by the idea that your relation with my husband is not altogether as it should be, and since it definitely ought not to be like this I want to try to do whatever is in my power. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters Pages 452-3.
You were really annoyed by my letter, weren't you? I was too, and now I am cured of my megalomania and am wondering why the devil the unconscious had to make you, of all people, the victim of this madness. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters Pages 455-7.

Incidentally, America no longer has the same attraction for him [Carl] as before, and this has taken a stone from my heart. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 303.

“No one provokes me with impunity." The ancients knew how inexorable a god Eros is. ~Cited by Carl Jung in Freud/Jung Letters, Page 19.

Gross and Spielrein are bitter experiences. To none of my patients have I extended so much friendship and from none have I reaped so much sorrow. ~Jung to Freud, Freud/Jung Letters pp. 228-229.

Adler's letter is stupid chatter and can safely be ignored. We aren't children here. If Adler ever says anything sensible or worth listening to I shall take note of it, even though I don't think much of him as a person. ~Carl Jung,Freud/Jung Letters, Page 532.

This time the feminine element will have conspicuous representatives from Zurich: Sister Meltzer, Hinkle Eastwick (an American charmer), Frl. Dr. Spielrein (!), then a new discovery of mine, Frl. Antonia Wolff, a remarkable intellect with an excellent feeling for religion and philosophy, and last but not least my wife. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, pp. 438-41.

It seemed to me that my spookerys struck you as altogether too stupid and perhaps unpleasant because of the Fliess analogy. (Insanity!) ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 9-11.

If there is a "psych-analysis" there must also be a "psychosynthesis" which creates future events according to the same laws. ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 9-11.

That last evening with you has, most happily, freed me inwardly from the oppressive sense of your paternal authority. ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 9-11.

You will be accused of mysticism, but the reputation you won with the Dementia will hold up for quite some time against that. ~Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung Letter May 1911

And then I wrote a book about psychology of dementia praecox, as it was called then— now it is schizophrenia—and I sent the book to Freud, writing to him about my association experiments and how they confirmed his theory thus far. That is how my friendship with Freud began. ~Carl Jung, Conversations Evans, Page 11.

Freud was a successful man; he was on top, and so he was interested only in pleasure and the pleasure principle, and Adler was interested in the power drive. ~Carl Jung, Conversations [Evans], Page 12.

I think, you see, that when Freud says that one of the first interests, and the foremost interest is to feed, he doesn't need such a peculiar kind of terminology like "oral zone." Of course, they put it into the mouth— ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 13.

That is the first archetype [Oedipus] Freud discovered; the first and the only one. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 13.

No one is hampered by one's self. And that's what he [Freud] never could admit to me. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 14.

Now, Freud refers very little to Pierre Janet, but I studied with him while in Paris and he very much helped form my ideas. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 15.

Now you see, the subjective factor, which is very characteristic, was understood by Freud as a sort of pathological auto-egotism. Now this is a mistake. The psyche has two conditions, two important conditions. The one is environmental influence and the other is the given fact of the psyche as it is born. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.

And there I was, in between the two. I could see the justification of Freud's view, and also could see the same for Adler; and I knew that there were plenty of other ways in which things could be envisaged. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.

It is a risky business for an egg to be cleverer than the hen. Still, what is in the egg must find the courage to creep out. ~Carl Jung, Letter to Sigmund Freud (1911)

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. ~Carl Jung, Letter to Sigmund Freud (quoting Zarathustra) (1912)

What Freud calls 'the dream façade' is the dream's obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 319.

Freud's letters in my possession are not particularly important. . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 40-41.

My personal recollections on the other hand are a chapter for itself. They have very much to do with Freud's psychology, but since there is no witness except myself I prefer to refrain from unsubstantiated tales about the dead. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 40-41.

Now, this derogatory way of judging Amenophis IV got my goat and I expressed myself pretty strongly. That was the immediate cause of Freud's accident. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 133.

Nobody ever asks me how things really were; one only gives a one-sided and twisted representation of my relation to him [Freud]. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 133.

Did it never occur to you that in my analysis we talked very little of "resistance," while in the Freudian analysis it is the term that most frequently occurs? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 148-150.

I shall always remember the time when Freud disturbed the peaceful slumber of the medical and philosophical faculties by his shocking discoveries, which are now taken into serious consideration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 184-187.

The healing function is not necessarily a characteristic of individuation; it is a thing in itself. It also doesn't work exclusively through transference; that is a Freudian prejudice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 227-229

The way in which the scientific world reacts reminds me strongly of those remote times when I stood up all alone for Freud against a world blindfolded by prejudice, and ever since I have been the subject of calumny, irritation, and contempt, although I have harvested a good deal of appreciation paradoxically enough just from universities (among them Oxford and Harvard). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 230-232.

No matter whether it was a Jewish or a Christian or any other belief, he [Freud] was unable to admit anything beyond the horizon of his scientific materialism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.

Naturally he [Freud] assumed that my more positive ideas about religion and its importance for our psychological life were nothing but an outcrop of my unrealized resistances against my clergyman father, whereas in reality my problem and my personal prejudice were never centred in my father but most emphatically in my mother. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.

I have always wondered how it comes that just the theologians are often so particularly fond of the Freudian theory, as one could hardly find anything more hostile to their alleged beliefs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.

The problem nearest to Freud's heart was unquestionably the psychology of the unconscious, but none of his immediate followers has done anything about it. I happen to be the only one of his heirs that has carried out some further research along the lines he intuitively foresaw. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 306-310.

The interviewer asked Dr. Cahen how Jung spoke of Freud in 1938-39. twenty-five years after their break. Dr. Cahen: "I don't remember a single visit with Jung where he did not speak to me of Freud. I think that neither of the two great men ever healed of the grave wound of their rupture. Jung spoke of Freud always with much esteem and admiration." ~Roland Cahen, J.E.T., Pages 11-13

Even though differences of scientific opinion have brought about a certain estrangement between Professor Freud and myself, a debt of gratitude nevertheless impels me to honor Freud and Janet' as the men who have guided me in my scientific career. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 38-46

When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was "the true seat of anxiety," he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition. ~Carl Jung, Psychological, CW 11, Page 849.


C.G. spoke of Ernest Jones and some of the inaccuracies in his biography of Freud. He said Jones had always been simply a follower of Freud; he had not added any original ideas. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296

When Jones was writing his book on Freud he never asked him (C.G.) anything about the early years when he and Freud were working together. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296


He [Jung] always treated Freud with respect and called him Professor. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Pages 69-75

C.G. spoke of Ernest Jones and some of the inaccuracies in his biography of Freud. He said Jones had always been simply a follower of Freud; he had not added any original ideas. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296

When Jones was writing his book on Freud he never asked him (C.G.) anything about the early years when he and Freud were working together. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296

As a matter of fact Freud was the far greater mind than Adler. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302


As you know, Freud himself was neurotic his life-long. I myself analyzed him for a certain very disagreeable symptom which in consequence of the treatment was cured. That gave me the idea that Freud as· well as Adler underwent a change in their personal type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302

Freud is essentially concretistic, like Newton, and I'm chiefly impressed by the relativity of psychological phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302

I would like to take this opportunity to rectify the error that I come from the Freudian school. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 121-122

I am a pupil of Bleuler's and my experimental researches had already won me a name in science when I took up the cudgels for Freud and opened the discussion in real earnest in 1905. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 121-122

His [Freud] is the honour of having discovered the first archetype, the Oedipus complex. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 524-527

I am only continuing what Freud began and I often regret that the Freudian school have not known how to develop their master's fortunate discovery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 524-527

For Christmas my wife gave me a really superb photograph of Freud, ca. 12 x 20 cm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 4-8

It was Freud’s momentous discovery that the neurosis is not a mere agglomeration of symptoms, but a wrong functioning which affects the whole psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 190

Freud rightly recognized that this bond is of greatest therapeutic importance in that it gives rise to a mixtum compositum [composite mixture] of the doctor’s own mental health and the patient’s maladjustment. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 358.

Although I was the first to demand that the analyst should himself be analysed, we are largely indebted to Freud for the invaluable discovery that analysts too have their complexes and consequently one or two blind spots which act as so many prejudices. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 8

When I find sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a façade for albumen. What Freud calls the “dream-façade” is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.

Freud’s procedure is, in the main, analytical and reductive. To this I add a synthesis which emphasizes the purposiveness of unconscious tendencies with respect to personality development. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 875

Freud has made a courageous attempt to elucidate the intricacies of dream psychology with the help of views which he gathered in the field of psychopathology. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 41

My method, like Freud’s, is built up on the practice of confession. Like him, I pay close attention to dreams, but when it comes to the unconscious our views part company. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 875

It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 539


Apart from the efforts that have been made for centuries to extract a prophetic meaning from dreams, Freud’s discoveries are the first successful attempt in practice to find their real significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

His [Freud’s] work merits the term “scientific” because he has evolved a technique which not only he but many other investigators assert achieves its object, namely the understanding of the meaning of the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

That is why Freud became the real discoverer of the unconscious in psychology, because he examined those dark places and did not simply dismiss them, with a disparaging euphemism, as “parapraxes.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

The unconscious is not just a receptacle for all unclean spirits and other odious legacies from the dead past—such as, for instance, that deposit of centuries of public opinion which constitutes Freud’s “superego.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 760

My conceptions are much more like Carus than like Freud. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking; Interviews and Encounters, Pages 205-218

In explaining dreams from a causal point of view, Freud got to their primary causes. But what interests me is why a person dreams of one thing rather than another. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 141-145

The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632

Jung made clear that it was only after having formed his initial conceptions of the unconscious and the libido and having made his mark through his experiment al researches in psychopathology that he came into contact with Freud. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xvi

I began to see among my patients some who fit Adler’s theories, and others who fit Freud’s, and thus I came to formulate the theory of extraversion: and introversion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33

With Freud, the unconscious is always pouring out unacceptable material into the conscious, and the conscious has difficulty in taking up this material and represses it, and there is no balance. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100

Freud's view that conscious experiences are inherited flies in the face of common knowledge and also contradicts his own hypothesis that conscience is made up of ancestral experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458

For him [Freud] conscience is a human acquisition. I, on the contrary, maintain that even animals have a conscience-dogs, for instance-and empirically there is much to be said for this, since instinctual conflicts are not altogether unknown on the animal level. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458

As you know I have stipulated that my correspondence with Freud ought not to be published before 30 years have elapsed after my death, but lately I have been asked from different sides to permit inasmuch as I am competent-an earlier publication of the whole correspondence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 458-459

My letters [To Freud] were never written with any thought that they might become broadcast. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 458-459