10 S248

Solothurn, 1–7 Dec. 15

Dear Friend,

As you do not wish any further discussion, I will not deal with the first six pages of your letter, nor with some views expressed in your accompanying letter,²⁴⁹ which seem debatable to me.

Your explanation of the resistance against understanding is very good in my opinion. It is my impression that the first step toward appreciation of the extravert is made by no longer wanting to understand him. I believe that the most important problems of the extravert cannot be grasped intellectually at all, just as the most important problems of the introvert cannot be grasped by feeling. I can imagine that it is as difficult to appreciate a problem by way of feeling, without wanting to understand it intellectually, as it is difficult—according to my experience with introverts—to understand something intellectually, without wanting to accept it with our feelings. I learned this by realizing that I have to accept as facts the problems of the introvert, which can be understood only intellectually.

Just as the introvert must see that there is “also” the devil lurking behind his wish to understand, the extravert must see that there is “also” the devil lurking behind his compulsion of feeling himself into the other. (For the extravert, understanding means “feeling into.”)

Although I agree with you on this, it still seems to me that the psychology of the extravert can be explained to a still greater extent, also intellectually,250 than has been done in our correspondence so far. As you can see from the postscript to my last letter, I regret that you broke off this correspondence. I still had a few things to say about how in the course of time I learned to understand, purely intellectually, myself and other extraverts. But perhaps the introvert can reach this understanding of the extravert only after no longer wishing to understand him.

In reading the two last, very interesting and generous pages of your letter, it became clear to me that my assumptions when beginning this correspondence were completely different from yours. It was never my intention and wish to understand you or the psychology of the introvert through it, or even to feel myself into you. As you know, this correspondence grew out of another, smaller exchange of letters, which itself grew out of our oral discussions that have lately become more and more heated.²⁵¹ I was forced to the latter two²⁵² by the feeling that you did not appreciate something in the extraverted character, and the most valuable in it to boot, less so in purely intellectual discussions, but more in the feeling sphere, as shown by your reactions. I found myself compelled, therefore, to defend my point of view against you. I concede that I made the mistake, particularly in our oral discussions, of demanding all too much that I be accepted. This was due to my inferiority feelings, to my too weak belief in what I would like to call, in short, my truth. Today I know that, if my truth is truth, it will remain my truth, even if you cannot accept it.

The longer our correspondence went on, the more I became convinced that this feeling, which at the time drove me to enter into those heated discussions, was correct. Thus it was not in order to instruct you, or to play the role of the Savior for you, that I tried to show you the extravert as I understand him, but out of an instinct of self-preservation. The necessity to be accepted is not identical with the wish to be understood. It is perfectly possible to work together on the same project with someone else without being completely253 understood by the other, but it is impossible without being accepted as a fact, and this also in the feeling sphere.²⁵⁴ I know that you have done what you could, vis-à-vis the extravert and myself, to accept him. It is not my task to search for the outer and inner reasons that prevented you from advancing further in this. I also know very well that much has still to be “cleared up” in that “famous extravert,” but I cannot believe that the one type is only then able to accept the functions of the other when these have been “cleared.” This would be in contradiction to all laws of development.

I fully agree with you that the healthiness of the project on which we both work depends on the difference of the functions. This differentiation must not be carried too far, however, so that the heart, for example, rejects the blood coming from the liver as unpurified or unnecessary. Only that organism lives healthily, after all, in which all the different functions of the organs work together harmoniously. My understanding of Lao Tzu’s feeling of reciprocity is that it enables the working together of completely differentiated organs. And this must result, in my opinion, in a certain harmony. (Harmony is based on the consonance of two differentiated tones.) This harmony may be found only in the symbol, however. Only the symbol can, of the two opposed standpoints of truth and beauty, be beautiful and true at the same time.

Now I also understand why it was impossible for me until now to tell you something about what has been the most important work to me during the last months.²⁵⁵ Its topic is probably about the same as what you call, so rightly and beautifully, the “mystery of life.” With the help of the black book and the dreams,256 I came to unexpected insights about the “core of individuality.” As far as I can see, the compacted formulas, the symbols of the mystery, are the same for both types, but the ways leading to it are opposed to each other. So far it was my impression that your attitude, which “wishes to understand,” could not accept my ways; so I kept silent.

I, too, bless my blindness for the other’s secrets, but I still have the feeling that—provided the introvert no longer wants to understand, and the extravert no longer wants to feel himself into the other—both are able, if not to understand each other, then to accept each other in formulas of thinking and feeling, and this to a greater extent than has been the case between the two of us so far.

Now as to our correspondence, my view is the following: it has long been clear to me that it can never be published in this form. I would like to leave open the question, however, whether it would not be a very good thing to create a certain confusion by making it available to a smaller circle. Perhaps this would counteract a certain one-sidedness into which, in my opinion, we have gotten over time. But we would both have to adopt what you describe as the “superior standpoint” toward the correspondence. I will answer to the work, which you are now preparing for the society,²⁵⁷ by formulating a counterposition, which I would read before your paper will be discussed. I would not like to start on a work of my own right now, because we would run the risk of talking at cross-purposes. I do have the impression, however, that this will lead to the same confusion as making the correspondence available. For my part, I would have preferred to discuss, or rather continue, it beforehand, and only then to work further on the problems contained therein.

Perhaps we must, for the time being, work it out between ourselves on a different basis in order to achieve a truly superior standpoint, before presenting it to others.

With best regards,
Hans Schmid

248 The extant correspondence ends with this and the following three letters from Schmid. Transcription and translation of all four letters are based on photocopies kindly made available by Hans Schmid’s grandson, Florian Boller, through the mediation of Ulrich Hoerni of the Stiftung der Werke von C. G. Jung. No further letters from Jung have been found at this time.

²⁴⁹ Schmid probably refers to the two parts of the previous letter, that is, Jung’s exposure of his general views and his outline of introversion/extraversion and the functional types, which occupy the first six and a half pages of the previous letter, on the one hand, and the following passage on Birgitta of Sweden and the dangers of “understanding,” on the other (see note 242).

²⁵⁰ “also intellectually” inserted later.

²⁵¹ No such “smaller exchange of letters” has been found so far. See letter 11 S, in which Schmid quotes from previous correspondence.

²⁵² That is, 6 S and 8 S.

²⁵³ One word heavily struck out.

²⁵⁴ The rest of this passage, from here to the end of the paragraph, was added at the bottom of the next page.

²⁵⁵ Iselin (1982, p. 149) surmises that this probably refers to Schmid’s book, Tag und Nacht (Day and Night), which seems quite unlikely, however, since the book did not appear until 1931. This rather seems to be a reference to the fact that “Hans Schmid also wrote and painted his fantasies in something akin to Liber Novus” (Shamdasani, 2009, p. 204; see the following note).

²⁵⁶ Unclear. On Jung’s so-called black book(s), see Shamdasani’s introduction in Jung, 2009. It is possible that Schmid refers to one of those, which Jung had let him read, and to dreams of Jung recorded therein, but much more likely that he refers to the similar project of his own and his own dreams.

²⁵⁷ MS: Verein. The reference is to the Verein für analytische Psychologie (Society for Analytical Psychology), where Jung gave a presentation on “historical contributions to the type question” on 3 June 1916 (Protokolle etc.). The minutes do not mention a contribution of Schmid.