Introduction

I. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER

THE FIRST KNOWN DOCUMENT OF THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ERICH NEUMANN AND C. G. Jung—a correspondence that lasted from 1933 to 1959—is a short note from Jung to Neumann dated 11 September 1933: “Dear Doctor, I have reserved an hour’s appointment for you on Tuesday, 3rd October at 4 pm. Yours respectfully, C. G. Jung.” Unfortunately we do not have the initial letter by Neumann, which instigated the correspondence with Jung in the first place. But the two men had met earlier that summer, when Jung was in Berlin to hold a much-acclaimed seminar from 26 June to 1 July 1933.1 The handwritten attendance register lists around 145 names, including those of Erich Neumann and his friend Gerhard Adler.

Jung’s note to Neumann was sent to the following address: Weimarischestrasse [sic], 17, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Berlin was the place where Erich Neumann was born in 1905 and where he grew up. His father, Eduard, was a merchant, married to Zelma. Erich was their third child. Adler has given us an account of young Erich Neumann during the Berlin years:

Erich Neumann and I were connected by a close friendship of almost 40 years, a relationship that went back to our student days. Even as a student and young man his creative personality was clear and impressive. We belonged to the same circle of friends, a circle, which was interested in and engaged with all those life-problems of the immediate post-war period—problems that were a focal point for Germany at that time: philosophy, psychology, poetry, and art, and last but not least the Jewish question—were only a few topics that touched us deeply in our hearts. How many nights did we not spend conversing intensively and never endingly about all sorts of potential life-questions! And in all of those instances the depth and breadth of his view, the intensity of his passionate nature, contributed original and creative answers.2

This creative side of Neumann’s character found its early expression in literary ways: poetry exists from as early as 1921 and continues until 1929,³ when his creativity was focused on the novel Der Anfang (1932).⁴ Alongside his literary ambitions he studied at the University of Berlin, where he sat in courses of psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, history of arts, literature and Semitic studies (1923–26). In 1926 he went to Nuremburg to finish his studies of philosophy and psychology at the University of Erlangen with a dissertation on the mystical language philosophy of Johann Arnold Kanne (1773–1824).⁵ He also wrote a commentary on Kafka’s novel Das Schloss and fifteen of his short stories, which he sent to Martin Buber.⁶ His ever-increasing interest in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy⁷ led him to embark on the study of medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin (Charité). He completed his studies there but could not undertake an internship because of the race laws the Nazis had implemented.⁸

The year 1933 was a turning point in his life in many ways. In contrast to his father, Erich was a dedicated Zionist9 and was readily prepared to leave Germany with his wife, Julie (née Blumenfeld) when Hitler seized power in January 1933. Together with their one-year-old son Micha the family left Germany for good. The first station on their way to Palestine was Zurich, to meet up with C. G. Jung. This is where Neumann’s (missing) letter to Jung comes into play. Jung’s reply from September 1933 was the invitation that followed. So Erich Neumann and his family left Germany for Zurich at the end of September 1933.

When Neumann met Jung he was already acquainted with the works of Jung and Freud, which he had read during his student years.¹⁰ According to Jung’s letter, they met on 3 October 1933 for the first time in Zurich and we know that they continued their therapeutic sessions until spring 1934.¹¹ On 14 December 1933, Jung writes an official letter stating that “Dr. Erich Neumann is engaged in psychological studies with me” (2 J) and that his work would resume on 15 January.

The next letter from Jung to Neumann is dated 29 January 1934 and was published in Aniela Jaffé’s edition of Jung’s Briefe. In this letter Jung already refers a patient to Neumann. One should not be surprised about the brief period of analysis that saw Neumann as being fit to take on his first patient—at least in Jung’s eyes. This was common practice and was already an improvement on the couple of instructive weeks that were seen to suffice as training at the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement. We do not know if Neumann took on this patient. We also do not know if Neumann had already experienced therapy during his Berlin years—as, for instance, James Kirsch had done before he met Jung in Zurich for the first time.

II. C. G. JUNG IN THE 1930S

When Neumann met Jung in Zurich in the autumn of 1933, the Swiss was fifty-eight years old and thirty years his superior. Jung had established himself as one of the leading psychologists of his time and as the founder of his own brand of psychotherapy under the name of “Analytical Psychology” or “Complex Psychology.” His reputation was internationally acknowledged through invitations to lecture in England, the United States, and India, where honorary doctorates from Harvard (1936), Oxford (1938), and the Indian universities of Hyderabad, Calcutta, Benares, and Allahabad (1937/38) were bestowed upon him. His travels and lectures abroad are also reflected in the correspondence with Neumann, for instance in his letter of 4 April 1938 where he apologizes for his lack of writing due to his lecture series at Yale in October 1937 (“Terry Lectures”), which was followed by a dream seminar at the Analytical Psychology Club in New York,12 and his journey to Calcutta. Jung also visited Palestine once, albeit as a tourist when he traveled with Hans Eduard Fierz through the Aegean in 1933, a year before the Neumanns settled in Tel Aviv. Jung refers to this visit in a letter to Neumann on 19 December 1938: “I am right in the thick of it and am following the Palestinian question on a daily basis in the newspapers, and think often of my acquaintances there who have to live in this chaos. When I was in Palestine in 1933, I was unfortunately able to see what was coming all too clearly. I also foresaw great misfortune for Germany, even quite terrible things, but when it then shows up, it still seems unbelievable.”¹³

Closer to home he got involved in the business and politics of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie, AÄGP), the later International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (IAÄGP), when he became second chairman in 1930, after Ernst Kretschmer’s resignation as acting president in 1933, and finally president in 1934. His chairmanship of a society that was dominated by its national-socialist German section was heavily criticized at home and abroad. In reaction Erich Neumann, who was undertaking training with Jung in Zurich at that time, wrote a letter to Jung expressing his concern and urging Jung to justify his decision (4 N). (See chapter on “Discussing Anti-Semitism.”) Less controversial was the foundation of the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie in 1935.

Another institution that originated from those years and that is inextricably linked with the names of Jung and Neumann is the Eranos conference. Founded in 1933 by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, the annual gathering in Ascona was an exchange of thoughts between scholars of different fields. Neumann expressed his fascination with the event in an almost hymnic way, calling it a link in the aurea catena of the great wise man leading through the ages: “Eranos, landscape on the lake, garden and house. Unpretentious, out of the way, and yet … a navel of the world, a small link in the golden chain.”¹⁴ Whereas Jung took part and gave lectures at most of the Eranos conferences from 1933 until 1951, Neumann presented an annual paper from 1948 until 1960. Aniela Jaffé, referring to the famous “terrace-wall” sessions when Jung used the conference intervals to discuss the psychological relevance of the presentations outside on the terrace, gave this account of Neumann’s impact on Eranos: “These wall sessions were the unforgettable highlights of the summer. They acquired a different character when Erich Neumann of Tel Aviv was there for then a dialogue developed between the two and we listened.”¹⁵

The Eranos meeting always took place for eight days in August. In those summer days Jung was free from many obligations that were bestowed upon him during the rest of the year. Besides seeing his patients, writing books and articles, leading his correspondences with colleagues and scholars, and looking after his vast family, teaching increasingly added to his workload. Since 1925 Jung had been holding seminars at the Psychological Club on a regular basis. The seminars in the 1930s—which are occasionally mentioned in the correspondence—included the vision seminar (1930–34) based on the visions of Christiana Morgan,¹⁶ the seminar on Kundalini yoga (1932),¹⁷ and the seminar on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1934–39).¹⁸ Jung sent a copy of the manuscript of the latter to Neumann in 1935 (14 N, n. 269). As the letters show, Jung tried to keep Neumann informed about the theoretical developments in analytical psychology by sending him his latest publications and copies of seminar notes. Jung also gave lectures at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) from 1933 to 1942 on a vast range of topics from the historical roots of complex psychology to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, sometimes accompanied by seminars such as a seminar on children’s dreams from 1936 to 1940.¹⁹

Figure 1. Jung’s “terrace wall” session at the Casa Eranos veranda in 1951 (Eranos Archive; courtesy of Paul Kugler).

In 1935 Jung was awarded a professorship at the ETH (12 N, 9 February 1935). Jung sent Neumann a copy of his inauguration lecture from 5 May 1934 titled “A review of the complex theory” (“Allgemeines zur Komplextheorie”) to which Neumann referred in his letter 14 N.²⁰ That was only one of the many decorations that came with his sixtieth birthday in 1935. To honor the birthday occasion a festschrift was organized and published under the title Die kulturelle Bedeutung der komplexen Psychologie, which included articles by many of Jung’s most ardent followers and collaborators (17 N, 29 October 1935; 18 J, 22 December 1935).²¹

The 1930s also saw a change in Jung’s theoretical interest. His work on the Liber Novus and his attempts to explore and depict his experiences of self-observation, which had occupied him since 1913, ceased and were gradually replaced by an ever-growing fascination with alchemy and its importance for the individuation process.²²

III. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PALESTINE AND ZURICH, 1934–40

Whereas Julie and Micha had already left for Palestine in February 1934, Erich remained in Zurich until May when they met again in Tel Aviv. Their first address was 37 Sirkin Street, where the family stayed until they moved to 1 Gordon Street in 1936. Dvora Kutzinski, who Julie analyzed and who subsequently became an analyst and lifelong friend of the Neumanns, described the apartment (on Gordon Street) as follows:

It was an apartment they bought with “key money.” Old. Modest. Two children. When patients came, they had to disappear. One waited in the children’s room, and the front room was for his mother. Erich’s patients waited on one side of the curtain. Julia’s patients waited in the children’s room. He had patients on the hour; she on the half hour.23

Soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv, Neumann writes a long letter (seven pages) to Jung. And already in this first letter from Palestine we can find many topics that will occupy their correspondence until 1940, when the war interrupted their exchange.

Zionism, the Jewish People, and Palestine

Neumann’s first impressions from Palestine showed signs of disappointment. His high expectations of the Jewish people and their ability to create an idealistic Jewish state were shattered during these first weeks in Tel Aviv. As his son Micha Neumann put it: “Father thought he would come here and find all his good buddies from Berlin but instead he found a great many Poles, very simple people, artisans, builders, merchants, speculators, people of the Fourth Aliyah (1924–1931)—not idealists like those from the Second Aliyah (1904–1914).”²⁴ Erich Neumann felt alienated by those immigrants, and equally he had nothing in common with the Jewish orthodoxy around him. Though he had nothing but praise for those who worked behind the scenes for the coming generation that would be the first to form the basis of a nation: “We are Germans, Russians, Poles, Americans etc. What an opportunity it will be when all the cultural wealth which we bring with us is really assimilated into Judaism” (5 N, June/July 1934).

Figure 2. Neumann at his desk (RLN).

Accordingly he rejected Jung’s assumption that the Jewish migration to Palestine could not lead to a form of Alexandrianism.25 For Neumann, the ability to assimilate would create something new, but it would also unleash the Shadow, the effects of which had been repressed by external forces during the diaspora.

The Earth Archetype

Whereas Neumann seemed partially disillusioned with the Jewish people in Palestine, he discovered to his astonishment an archetypal connection with the land. He describes how his anima started to connect to the earth, suddenly “appearing in dreams all nice and brown, strikingly African, even more impenetrable in me, domineering” (5 N, June/July 1934). It is most fascinating to observe how the thoughts that occupied Neumann during those first weeks in Palestine returned almost twenty years later in his 1953 Eranos lecture on “The Meaning of the Earth Archetype for Modern Times” (“Die Bedeutung des Erdarchetyps für die Neuzeit”).²⁶ There, his personal encounter with the anima and her expression as an earth archetype is amalgamated with his psychological findings on the development of consciousness, his new ethics of shadow integration, and his research on the archetype of the Great Mother, which he was undertaking during these years. In his lecture he shows how, in its weaker states, the patriarchal view of consciousness had to repress the earth archetype, which threatened to swamp consciousness completely. Hence consciousness had to reject its unconscious and matriarchal origins, a rejection that can be seen in the Platonic-Christian hostility toward the body and sexuality. As modern man has been unchained from the heavens, the sky and the spiritual realm, he falls prey to the cruel manifestations of the Great Mother. Only the conscious acceptance of this dark side of the earth archetype, meaning the integration of the instinctual unconscious forces—here Neumann’s ethics come into play—will make it possible for the archetype to express itself creatively rather than through cruelty. Together with the Great Mother appears the serpent (see Neumann’s dream): The evil serpent of the Old Testament changes into the serpent of redemption as depicted in the Gnosis or the Sabbatean myths. What we can see in this example is the significance of Neumann’s experience of Eretz Yisrael not only for his own individuation but also for the development of his psychological theories.

Discussing Anti-Semitism

Another topic Neumann raises in the first Tel Aviv letter to Jung concerns an article by James Kirsch in the Jüdische Rundschau.27 This article, from 29 May 1934, is a reaction to Jung’s article “The State of Psychotherapy Today” (“Zur gegenwärtigen Lage der Psychotherapie”) published in the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete,²⁸ which was the journal of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie). In his article, Jung emphasized the importance of the “personal equation” in psychotherapy. He deploys the idea that the analyst must be conscious of his own shadow and uses this argument in order to attack Freud and Adler, who allegedly ignored or repressed their Jewish resentments toward non-Jews. This, according to Jung, led to a fatal situation in which Jewish categories were wrongly applied to the unconscious of Christian Germans or Slavs.²⁹ Especially the argument that “the Jew is a relative nomad” and would never be able to create his own form of culture because of his need for a civilized “host people” (Wirtsvolk), was received with a certain bewilderment among his Jewish followers in Palestine.³⁰

Given the nature of Jung’s arguments, Kirsch’s article exercised a kind of constraint. He accuses Jung of exercising a one-sided view of Jewishness: Jung, according to Kirsch, sees Freud only as a Galuth Jew³¹ and projects this image of Freud onto the entire Jewish people. In so doing, Jung ignores the latest developments of a specifically Jewish culture, of which the most significant sign could be seen in the return to the old land. But one could also learn from the great psychologist Jung about how to engage with these elementary primal forces that have been unleashed, through the return to the Jewish land, onto the individual soul.

The article by Kirsch came in the aftermath of a debate that had been triggered by Gustav Bally’s article “Therapy of German Descent” (“Deutschstämmige Therapie”) in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung dated 27 February 1934.32 Bally had been less apologetic than Kirsch in his article. Not only did Bally accuse Jung of open anti-Semitism but also of taking over the presidency of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (succeeding Kretschmer) at a time when the German section was “gleichgeschaltet” and Jewish membership prohibited. In his opening address as the new president (published in December 1933 in the Zentralblatt) Jung demanded that in the interests of scientific clarity, the confusion between Jewish and Germanic psychology should cease.³³ The pledge for allegiance (Treuegelöbnis), as Jung later called it, to the Führer by the German section of the society, which was originally meant to be for the German edition only, was distributed along with the international edition—according to Aniela Jaffé without Jung being informed—and caused fury among many supporters. Bally replied to this as follows:

He who introduces himself as editor of a “gleichgeschaltete” journal by raising the race question has to know that his demand rises against a background of organised tumult, which will interpret it in the manner implicitly contained in these words.³⁴

Jung reacted to Bally’s attack with an article in the NZZ titled “Rejoinder to Dr. Bally” (“Zeitgenössisches”).³⁵ There he defended his presidency as an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of the survival of German psychotherapy. Regarding the accusations of anti-Semitism, Jung repeats his arguments and talks about the imponderabilities of the soul differences between Jews and Christians—everyone, he argues, would know about those differences.³⁶ And he opposes the argument that he only dared to engage with that topic now that the Nazis were in power in Germany, by stating that he had already espoused race-psychological ideas in articles in 1918 and 1927.37

In a letter dated 26 May 1934, written a week before Kirsch’s article in the Jüdische Rundschau, Jung tries to appease Kirsch, who had told him about the hostile reactions in Palestine toward his statements. Referring to the internationalization of the AÄGP, now IAAGP, he reports on the new statutes from the congress in Bad Nauheim that would make it possible for German Jewish physicians to join the international organization as individual members.³⁸ He also refines his argument about the impossibility of forming a unique Jewish culture:

This view is based on (1) historical facts, and (2) the additional fact that the specific cultural contribution of the Jews evolves most clearly within a host-culture, where the Jew frequently becomes the very carrier of this culture, or its promoter. This task is so unique and demanding that it is hardly to be conceived how, in addition, any individual Jewish culture could arise alongside it. Now, since Palestine presents very unique conditions, I have cautiously inserted “presumably” in my sentence. I would not deny the possibility that something unique is being created there, but I don’t know that as yet. I positively cannot discover anything anti-Semitic in this opinion.³⁹

And Jung continues: “Regarding your suggestion that I write a special piece about this question, this too has already been anticipated, in that I suggested an exchange of letters with Dr. Neumann, who has worked with me and now lives in Palestine, which would deal with all the contentious questions. Up to now, though, I’ve heard nothing from him.”⁴⁰ He returns to this at the end of the letter by saying: “When you see Dr. Neumann, please greet him from me and remind him that I am waiting to hear from him.”⁴¹

Kirsch seems almost insulted about the fact that Jung wished this exchange to have been with Neumann and not with him:

In closing, I would like to inform you that Dr. Neumann, who for some time apparently has been living in Tel Aviv, just around the corner from my place, has not yet found an occasion to get in touch with me. To be ignored in this manner does not really surprise me since—as I mentioned to Miss Wolff in Berlin—he was already describing himself in June 1933 as the only Jungian analyst in Palestine.42

Of course Neumann had only recently come to Tel Aviv and therefore could not have described himself as the only Jungian analyst in Palestine in 1933. During the Bally affair Neumann had been in Zurich undertaking his training with Jung. There is one letter from him to Jung from that time (4 N). Although the letter is neither dated nor given a location, the content suggests that it was written between March and May 1934, which means that it was written from Zurich. That Neumann felt it necessary to use the written form instead of talking to Jung personally shows the shocking impact that Jung’s race-psychological remarks must have had on him. In the opening lines of the letter Neumann makes it clear that he does not write from idle personal reason, but because he feels obliged to take issue with Jung “on a matter which goes far beyond any merely personal concerns” (4 N, March–May 1934).

This fascinating document, an expression of Neumann’s disgust, is an outspoken critique of Jung’s positions regarding Jewishness and National Socialism. Neumann questions Jung’s positive understanding of the Germanic unconscious, which had seized the German people, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the collective shadow. He asks if this easy affirmation, this throwing himself into the frenzy of Germanic exuberance, could really be Jung’s true position or if he misunderstood him, and he wishes to change Jung’s picture of Jews, which he criticizes as being one-sided and full of misunderstandings. He contends that Jung knew more about the India of two thousand years ago than about the development of Hasidism 150 years ago. But, and here Neumann argues in a similar way to Kirsch, that Hasidism and Zionism proved the ability of the Jewish people to form their own culture and that Jung was mistaking Freud for the entire Jewish people. As Jung had once declared Freud as a European phenomenon, he, Neumann, could not understand why Jung would repeat the National Socialist notion that Freudian categories are Jewish categories.

Apparently Jung and Neumann talked about this letter in Zurich and agreed that they would discuss the issue in their subsequent correspondence. This is what Jung indicated in his letter to Kirsch. Neumann also refers to this in his first letter from Tel Aviv: “I’ve set myself the big challenge of getting you to write something fundamental about Judaism. I believe I can only do this by simply speaking to you about what is very important to me” (5 N, June/July 1934). He attaches the uncut version of his rejoinder to Kirsch published (as an abridged version) in the Jüdische Rundschau.⁴³ The printed version, at least, defends Jung against the allegations Kirsch brought and stands in sharp contrast to Neumann’s Zurich letter. He sides, in part, with Jung by arguing that the Jews have a special ability to focus upon, recognize, and also to endure the shadow. To see this as a negative quality of the Galuth Jew, as Kirsch did, would mean taking away the fundamental principle of the moral instinct of the Jewish people. What Neumann did not add to his argument (in the abridged version) was a point he had made in the letter to Jung—namely, that Jung did turn a blind eye to the shadow side of the Germanic people.

Whereas in his Zurich letter (4 N) he doubts Jung’s ability to talk about Jews, since he sees Jung’s Jewish patients as a small and sad remainder of assimilated Jews and therefore not as true representatives of the Jewish people, his reply to Kirsch sounds rather differently:

Even the objection against Jung that he “has not progressed from dealing with the phenotype of the Jew who lives in exile from the Shekhinah to the genotype of the real Jew” is wrong. Jung as a psychologist sticks to his experiences of his work with Jewish people, and we all belong to “the phenotype of the Jew who lives in exile from the Shekhinah,” meaning the Jew as he is—and we don’t need to escape to an image of a non-existent “real,” “authentic” Jew.44

And he finishes his contribution by putting his faith in the idea that Jung and his psychology will help the Jewish people to reunite with their primal roots, for which the integration of the shadow is a necessary prerequisite.

The debate in the Jüdische Rundschau also includes letters to the newspaper by Otto Juliusburger (in the same issue as Neumann),⁴⁵ by J. Steinfeld,⁴⁶ and is concluded by a statement by Gerhard Adler on behalf of Jung, who had asked Adler in a letter of 19 June 1934 to write to the Jüdische Rundschau and the Israelitische Wochenblatt für die Schweiz in order to clarify Jung’s position in this debate:

I am always being assailed by letters which accuse me of the craziest anti-Semitism and I can hardly find the time to reply to these letters. You will no doubt have heard of Kirsch’s article in the “Jüdischen Rundschau.” I had already written a letter of clarification to Kirsch before I knew of the existence of this article. He seems to be stuffed full of all sorts of rumours of lies. I would be very grateful to you if you would perhaps highlight my position regarding the Jewish question—in my name and under my orders—for this publication.⁴⁷

He also mentions Neumann’s contribution, which he had not read at this stage.

In the issue of 3 August 1934 of the Jüdische Rundschau the editor summarizes the arguments of Kirsch and Jung and declares an end to the debate with the publication of Adler’s text. In his contribution titled “Is Jung an Anti-Semite?” (“Ist Jung Antisemit?”), Adler underlines the importance of Jungian psychology in integrating Jews into a bigger picture and reuniting them with their culture and primal ground.48 He differentiates between the “form of culture” (“Kulturform”) and “culture” (“Kultur”) itself, stating that Jung had never denied the existence of the latter. Finally he points out the successful therapeutic processes that Jewish patients have experienced with Jung.⁴⁹

Kirsch-Neumann Controversy

Due to Jung’s preference for Neumann as his spokesman in matters Jewish there was a kind of tension between Neumann and Kirsch right from the outset. Neumann’s open reply in the Jüdische Rundschau certainly did not help to calm things down. In his first letter from Tel Aviv, Neumann reports to Jung that he had met Kirsch after the publication of his rejoinder. Kirsch had conveyed Jung’s complaint that he (Neumann) had not written earlier and had told Neumann that Jung agreed with Kirsch’s theory that the Jews had been subject to neurosis for two thousand years. And then Mrs. Kirsch got involved in the discussion, accusing Neumann of breaching an unwritten rule among Jungian analysts by responding in a public letter. She also asserted Kirsch’s authority in psychological matters, endowed, as it was, with the complete trust of Jung. Neumann reports this meeting to Jung asking if he has misbehaved in any way. Given these animosities that arose almost immediately after Neumann’s arrival in Palestine, Thomas Kirsch’s judgment of Erich Neumann as a “member of the German Jewish group in Berlin whom my father had befriended” does not give an accurate account of their relationship.⁵⁰

Jung’s reply of 12 August 1934 (7 J) assured Neumann that no secret committee of Jungian adherents was in existence. But as the remarks and reaction of the Zurich Jungians regarding the publication of his book on Depth Psychology and a New Ethic in 1949 demonstrated, Neumann was indeed on the periphery of these circles—his remote and isolated position in Tel Aviv made it difficult for him to lobby for his cause during those years. In his letter, Jung continued to thank Neumann for the intelligent and proper elucidation of Kirsch’s article and assured him he had acted in the right way. (This small victory for Neumann was probably diminished by Jung’s apology that he had to send his letter via Kirsch, as he did not know Neumann’s exact address.)

At the beginning of 1935 Kirsch took center stage once more in the correspondence between Jung and Neumann. This was the year in which Kirsch divorced his wife Eva and moved with his second-wife-to-be, Hilde, to London. According to their son Thomas, “they had experienced the early Zionists as more fanatical than they were comfortable with. Living conditions in what was then called Palestine were also considered too primitive for those who were used to the modern conveniences of European life.”51 As Neumann wrote to Jung on 9 February 1935 (12 N) Kirsch’s decision to leave Palestine did not go down well with his Jewish colleagues and patients, who still recalled his emphatic praise of the formation of a unique Jewish culture in the promised land.

In his reply from 19 February 1935 Jung distanced himself from Kirsch and confirmed Neumann’s suspicion. He had been unable to open Kirsch’s letter—“a very pathetic story.” And he ended with the remark: “I can only tell you how glad I am, firstly that I have not started a religion, and secondly that I have not founded a church. People may cast out devils in my name all they like or even send themselves into the Gergesene swine!” (13 J).

The Rosenthal Review

In 1934 Jung published a collection of articles titled Wirklichkeit der Seele (Reality of the Soul).⁵² One of the contributors was the German Jewish pedagogue and Zionist Hugo Rosenthal, who in the aftermath of the controversy with Bally was included “in order to annoy the National Socialists and those Jews who have decried me as an anti-Semite.”53 His article, “Der Typengegensatz in der Jüdischen Religionsgeschichte” (“The Type-Difference in the Jewish History of Religion”),⁵⁴ was reviewed by Neumann in the Jüdischen Rundschau on 27 July 1934.⁵⁵ Although Neumann gave credit to Rosenthal for being the first one to apply Jung’s typology to the history of the Jewish religion and culture, he also criticized his contribution for only scratching the surface of the problem. By sticking to an internal Jewish perspective Rosenthal would fail to follow up the wider consequences of his discovery of the Jewish people’s introversion and its sharp contrast to the extraverted non-Jewish environment of the diaspora. Nevertheless, the polarity between introversion and extraversion within the Jewish tradition itself would still reveal remarkable results, especially where Rosenthal used biblical material—most importantly the story of Jacob and Esau—to show the typological polarity.

Based on this review Neumann began to elaborate on the questions Rosenthal raised (5 N). In his first letter to Jung from Tel Aviv he told Jung about this attempt to engage with the question of Jewish psychology and announced a typewritten text that would follow the letter (5 N). This letter of content, which Neumann and Jung referred to as “Annotations” (“Anmerkungen”), was—together with two other letter attachments—believed to be missing until recently, when the editor identified it in the Neumanns’ heirs’ collection of unpublished material in the home of Mrs. Rali Loewenthal-Neumann, Erich Neumann’s daughter, in Jerusalem in 2012. “Annotations” has been published as attachment to the letter 5 N as 5 N (A). Although one has to see it as a thought experiment and brainstorming on Neumann’s part, it undoubtedly formed the backbone of the initial discussion between Neumann and Jung on Jewish psychology. The “annotations” are mainly concerned with the typological opposition in the biblical story of Jacob and Esau elaborating on Rosenthal’s article. On Jung’s recommendation Neumann used the material of the letter to write an (unpublished) article on the topic of Jacob and Esau.

Before Jung was able to reply, another letter with attachment followed on 19 July 1934 (6 N and 6 N [A]). This second attachment, subsequently referred to as “Applications and Questions” (“Anwendungen und Fragen”), was even more elaborate and dealt with the question of Jewish psychology, typology, and individuation. It was around this time that Neumann started to work on his (unpublished) text Ursprungsgeschichte des Jüdischen Bewusstseins (On the Origins and History of Jewish Consciousness).⁵⁶ For the next six years Neumann would work on two volumes, which are concerned with the depth psychology of the Jewish psyche and the problem of revelation on the one hand, and the psychological relevance of Hasidism for Jewry on the other hand. But it is not incorrect to say that the beginnings of this project can be found in “Applications and Questions.”

Although Jung’s reply to these extensive letters took a while, the letter of 12 August 1934 (7 J) is probably his most substantial contribution to the question of Jewish psychology in his correspondence with Neumann. Here, Jung engages with the contents of Neumann’s letters, amplifying on the material presented to him. But still not enough for Neumann, who expressed his disappointment that Jung did not sufficiently elaborate on the content of “Applications and Questions” and subsequently sent a final attachment together with the letter 8 N, referred to as “Letter III” (8 N [A]).

Last Time in Zurich

At the beginning of 1936 Neumann expressed symptoms of exhaustion. He explained his need to withdraw from his considerations of Palestine and the Jewish question in order to dedicate his time to his individuation process and expressed his desire to come to Zurich (19 N, 30 January 1936). Indeed, in May and June 1936 Erich and Julie Neumann visited Zurich. It would be the last time before the war, as they would not return to Switzerland until 1947. In Zurich Erich worked psychotherapeutically with Jung and Toni Wolff, who also became Julie’s therapist. During their stay the Neumanns took part in the Jungian life of Zurich, as Erich’s participation of Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra showed.⁵⁷

Nietzsche’s philosophical text also played an important role in Jung’s Wotan, which was published in the same year.⁵⁸ According to Jung the return of the Germanic God Wotan to Nazi Germany, the archetypal seizure of the German people by the pagan God, had been anticipated in certain sections of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, a book Jung praised for its visionary qualities.⁵⁹ In an interesting exchange in 1939, shortly after the beginning of the war, Neumann reported a dream in which he identified himself with a pilgrim wearing a wide-brimmed hat, easy to recognize as Wotan (29 N). In his reply Jung shifts his previous argument about the pure Germanic character of this archetype, indicating the psychological regression in Nazi Germany, to a wider understanding of Wotan as a wind god, who, archetypically, also bears universal significance.

Closer to home, the Neumanns moved to a different apartment in 1936. The new address of 1 Gordon Street would become a household name among therapists and patients. Not only would Erich and Julie have their practice in the modest apartment, it also became a place for Erich Neumann’s weekly seminar series. In the 1930s topics ranged from the theory and teachings of Jung to Hasidism, from the psychological characteristics and problems of the modern Jew to the archetypal contents of fairy tales.⁶⁰

In the same year Erich’s parents came from Berlin for a visit—a brief moment of calm joy in those troubled days. But it was the last time that Erich Neumann would see his father. In the following year Eduard Neumann died of the injuries sustained in a beating by Nazi thugs.61 But this personal tragedy would not come on its own. On the night of 9 November 1938 a pogrom of unprecedented scale against Jews had taken place in Germany, the so-called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).⁶² In a moving letter to Jung dated 5 December 1938 Neumann expressed his shock about recent events in Germany (27 N). Neumann’s letter is an expression of perplexity and ambivalence. He praises Jung for an assurance that there is still a place left for the Jews in Europe, but remarks at the same time that Jung’s ivory tower position would make it more difficult to communicate the horrors bestowed upon the Jewish people. In regard to Germany he writes about the personal debt of gratitude toward the German people that would not allow him to simply identify it with the symptoms of its schizophrenic episode. And in a twist that for us today, in hindsight, is difficult to grasp, he links the atrocities committed against Jews in Nazi Germany with the hope for a rejuvenation of the Jewish people, thereby going back to his previous thoughts about Jewish extraversion:

Added to this is the fact that I believe that these entire events will be, in brief, the salvation of Judaism, while at the same time I’m clear that I do not know if I will be among the survivors of this upheaval or not. The enormous extraversion of Judaism which has led it to the brink of its grave will be cut off with the inexorable consistency of our destiny, and the terrible state of emergency which has gripped the entire people and will continue to do so will inevitably compel the inner source energies either into action or to their peril. (27 N)

IV. THE LONG INTERVAL, 1940–45

The correspondence between Jung and Neumann broke off in 1940 and was only resumed in 1945. During those years Palestine, still under British mandate, was threatened by the swift advances of German troops in North Africa. Jewish support of the British war efforts ranged from the involvement of Haganah units, the Palmach, against Vichy French forces in Syria in 1941 to the formation of a Jewish Brigade Group as a front-line unit in 1944. Palestinian Jews were parachuted over Nazi territory to gather intelligence and get in contact with surviving Jewish communities. In total more than thirty thousand Palestinian Jews served in the British Army and fought in Greece, Crete, North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe.63 Since 1941 news of the systematic mass murder of European Jews had reached Palestine and made the abolition of the immigration quota ever more urgent. In spite of the efforts of well-meaning supporters such as Winston Churchill, the British policy did not change until 1943, when, at last, any refugee coming via the Balkans and Istanbul would get entry permission regardless of the existing quotas.

The war years saw Neumann at his most productive. Although the only text to be published as it was conceived during the war was Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, the foundations of many of his later writings go back to that time. The unpublished texts written in this period were “Zur religiösen Bedeutung des tiefenpsychologischen Weges” (“On the Religious Significance of the Path of Depth Psychology”) (Neumann 1942) and “Die Bedeutung des Bewusstseins für die tiefenpsychologische Erfahrung” (“The Role of Consciousness in Depth-Psychological Experience”) (Neumann 1943). The latter consisted of four parts: “Symbole und Stadien der Bewusstseinsentwicklung” (“Symbols and Stages in the Development of Consciousness”), “Bewusstseinsentwicklung und Psychologie der Lebensalter” (“The Development of Consciousness and the Psychology of the Life Stages”), “Der tiefenpsychologische Weg und das Bewusstsein” (“The Path of Depth Psychology and Consciousness”), and “Stadien religiöser Erfahrung auf dem tiefenpsychologischen Weg” (“Stages of Religious Experience on the Depth-Psychological Path”). As the chapter titles reveal, Neumann’s mind was already occupied with the question of the development of human consciousness, which would become the major topic of his magnum opus On the Origins and History of Consciousness.

On an everyday level he continued to see his patients and ran the usual seminars for colleagues and those interested in analytical psychology in his flat.64 He also had to look after the household that had grown by one member, when his daughter Rali was born in 1938. There was also concern for the fate of the German relatives. Most of them had been able to flee Germany and immigrate to England.⁶⁵ Erich’s mother Zelma, who was supposed to come to Tel Aviv and was taken by surprise by the beginning of the war while in London, had to spend the war years with her other son, Franz, and his family in England and would only be able to continue her journey in 1947.

V. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND ZURICH, 1945–60

In Touch with Europe Again

After the end of the war, Palestine was still under the mandate that had been given to Britain by the League of Nations in 1922. The attacks against British military targets by Jewish paramilitary agencies such as the Irgun, its offshoot the Stern gang, and the Haganah, which had ceased while under the threat from Nazi Germany and its allies, were resumed. The excessively rigid anti-immigration policy of the British authorities meant that Jews, among them many Holocaust survivors who wanted to come to Palestine, were detained in camps in Europe. Jewish agencies organized “illegal” immigration to Mandatory Palestine. The unresolved immigration situation increased the tension in the region and led to ever more violence. After a number of Zionist leaders were arrested in 1946, the Irgun blew up a wing of the King David Hotel and killed ninety-one people. In 1947 Britain asked the United Nations for help in solving the crisis. The UN General Assembly voted on 29 November 1947 for the creation of two separate states. The decision was welcomed by the Jews in Palestine but was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs, who used this dangerous moment of lawlessness to start—with large support of the Arab world and some involvement of volunteers from neighboring Arab countries—hostilities against the Jewish community. This resulted in the killings of Jews not only in Palestine but also in its Arab neighbor states. The situation led straight to the war of independence of 1948.

In October 1945—after an interval of five years—the correspondence between Neumann and Jung resumed. The first sign Jung received from Palestine was a small parcel containing a typescript titled Tiefenpsychologie und Neue Ethik (Depth Psychology and a New Ethic). To reestablish contact by sending this text was a significant gesture by Neumann, as the book can be read as his personal reaction to the atrocities of the Holocaust. And he sent his text to a man whose race-psychological considerations had prompted an international outcry in 1933–34 (and continued to do so after the war) and had led to Neumann’s discussions with Jung about the specifics of Jewish psychology in the first place. In the years to come this little book would shake the foundations of Jungian theory in regard to ethics and led to hefty attacks against Neumann from within Jungian circles in Zurich.

The first letter arrived separately from the parcel on 1 October 1945. Therein, Neumann stressed the importance of his contact with Jung and Toni Wolff as representatives of German culture, which never ceased to be of vital importance to him. He reported a change in his scholarly interests, stating—and this puzzled him—that precisely at the time when the question of the Jewish psychological condition was of paramount global necessity, his personal interest in the subject had faded away. Once he had completed his book on Hasidism, which formed the second and final part of his unpublished Ursprungsgeschichte des jüdischen Bewusstseins (On the Origins and History of Jewish Consciousness) (Neumann 1934–40), he turned his focus toward more general psychological problems.

The letter reached Jung at a critical point in his life. In February 1944 he had suffered a heart attack with almost fatal consequences, which was followed by another one in November 1946. Neumann did not realize how fragile Jung’s health was at that time. Although he had heard from Gerhard Adler of Jung’s illness, he probably did not understand its severity and assumed that Jung was well again.

In the twilight zone between life and death in which Jung found himself in the days after the first heart attack, he experienced a series of visions that had a profound effect on him. And it is fascinating to notice that one of the visions was of a kabbalistic nature:

I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, and the wedding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually, “Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!” I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding.66

It is as if the intellectual development of the two men had crossed paths during the long years without contact. Neumann, who had accused Jung in 1934 of knowing more about ancient Indian philosophy than about contemporary Jewish culture and religion, had refocused his research interest from Jewish psychology to questions of ethical behavior and developmental psychology. For Jung, in contrast, Jewish mysticism had become increasingly important, and the symbolism of the separation and reunion of the male and female aspects of God, of Tifereth and Malchuth, does not only feature in his vision of 1944 but also informed his understanding of the Mysterium Coniunctionis.⁶⁷

Neumann’s main contact with Switzerland and Europe in these immediate days after the war was Gerhard Adler. And it was Adler who worked on a plan to connect Neumann once again with the wider Jungian world. In a letter to Jung on 12 December 1945 he wrote:

It concerns my friend Dr. Erich Neumann in Tel Aviv. He sent me a whole series of manuscripts, which I find in part excellent. I know that he writes entirely without echo and without much prospect to publish. Do you think it would be possible to invite him to Ascona for a presentation? I am certain that he would deliver something valuable and original, and it would be equally as interesting to others as it would be of help to him to find an echo—and eventually even a publisher! I would not bother you with this question, if I were not to be absolutely certain that he could do more for the understanding and the dissemination of “Analytical Psychology”—especially in Jewry—than most of the others I know.68

In his first letter to Neumann after the war, in August 1946, Jung mentions his efforts to bring Neumann back to Europe and the difficulties that attended them. And it would take another year for Neumann to achieve this return.

Coming Back to Switzerland

In summer 1947 Erich and Julie Neumann met Gerhard Adler and his wife in Switzerland. Together they attended the Eranos conference in Ascona in August 1947 (see Jung’s letters of reference 45 J and 48 J). Although Jung was not present that year, Neumann had a chance to discuss his ideas with other prominent scholars, such as Karl Kerényi, Gilles Quispel, and Victor White to mention a few, and also to link with those Jungians who had come from Zurich. Of special importance was his meeting with Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, the organizer of the conference, who was particularly impressed by Neumann’s personality and intellect, so much so, that she—of course after consulting with Jung—not only invited Neumann to speak at the next Eranos conference about the mystical man (his first of thirteen annual consecutive presentations until 1960), but also to write an introduction to the first Bollingen publication of material from the Eranos picture archive.⁶⁹ The volume was to be comprised of the images from the exhibition held on the occasion of the 1938 conference on “Gestalt und Kult der Grossen Mutter” (“The Nature and Cult of the Great Mother”). In the years to come, Neumann’s “introduction” grew to such an extent that when it finally came out in 1956, it had become a substantial book in its own right with an appendix of images from the Eranos archive.

Neumann and Jung also met again in person that summer—after eleven years. During their meeting they discussed another of Neumann’s texts, a volume that would later be published under the title The Origins and History of Consciousness (Ursprungsgeschichte des Bewusstseins), which was to become Neumann’s main work. The text is split into two complementary parts. While the first half is concerned with the mythological stages in the evolution of consciousness, the second corresponds to these stages on an ontogenetic level following the psychological stages in the development of the personality. Neumann calls the first developmental state the uroboric one, here referring to the symbol of the serpent biting its own tail. In this state of complete unconsciousness there is no separation between the ego and the world. The participation mystique (Lévy-Bruhl) of this animistic belief equates to the embryonic state of the womb. Only slowly does the ego work its way toward consciousness. It passes through the stages of the “Great Mother”—(Neumann elaborates on the cult and the characteristics of this archetype in his second major work of 1956)—and the separation from the world-parents, until it enters the stage depicted by the hero’s quest. It is here that the ego begins to differentiate itself through the “slaying” of the parental couple, a prerequisite for reaching the final stage, that of the highest consciousness, which is the point of departure for the assimilation of the unconscious as part of the psychological process of individuation.

Jung was deeply impressed by Neumann’s study, his only reservation was Neumann’s use and understanding of the concept of the “castration complex,” which he wanted to see replaced by the term “Opferarchetyp” (archetype of sacrifice). When Neumann insisted on the importance of the concept, Jung replied with a phrase that would ironically anticipate the events to come: “You still have to gain experience for yourself as far as being misunderstood goes. The possibilities exceed all terminology” (54 J). Not least due to Jung’s intervention, both volumes—Die Ursprungsgeschichte and Tiefenpsychologie und neue Ethik—were accepted for publication by Rascher in Zurich.

Figure 3. Neumann, Jung, Mircea Eliade, and others at the Eranos Round Table (Eranos Archive; courtesy of Paul Kugler).

Neumann returned to Ascona in 1948 to address the audience at the Eranos conference for the first time. His lecture on “The Mystical Man” was not received with unanimous appreciation.70 Carl Alfred Meier apparently stormed out of the room in the midst of the lecture, an action Neumann referred to in a letter to Meier as “complex driven.”⁷¹ Jung defended Neumann against the accusations of Meier and Jolande Jacobi that he was advocating a new dogmatism, stating that “Dr. Meier, for instance, would fare better to elaborate on the connection between his Asclepius and psychotherapy than to run away from the lecture. He would discover some tricky problems, where groundwork, such as Neumann’s, might be more than welcome.”72 But that was not the end of the affair, which would shed an unfortunate light on some of the most important members of the Zurich followers of Jung, if not on Jung himself.

In the spring of 1948 the Jungian community in Zurich celebrated the foundation of the C. G. Jung Institute for the teaching of analytical psychology. Although Jung was the president, it was the vice president, C. A. Meier, who was the quasi–acting director, the same Meier who would leave Neumann’s lecture in protest in the summer to come. Another member of the institute’s board, through the personal insistence of Jung, was Jolande Jacobi. Here is her description and opinion of Neumann’s 1948 Eranos lecture expressed in a letter to Jung:

I could not follow your advice to engage with Neumann’s thoughts, as I did not like his presentation at all. He did precisely what you always rejected, namely, to create a “system” from your teaching. Though he warned of “dogmatization” in his introduction, he did not follow his own warning. […] By the way, it was quite interesting how easily the women—almost every one of them—were fascinated by him, whereas the men rejected him strongly. It was equally informative how, during his lecture of two hours, he was completely withdrawn and did not notice his audience at all; he was very odd. Of course he is ingeniously talented at formulation, has an abundance of words, and an eloquent and beautiful style, which can be used to express everything magnificently. It seems almost too easy for him. Does this pose a danger for him? I did not only have to disagree with his schematizing manner, but also with the content of his deliberations. I did not think that those “exceeded yours,” as you were allegedly quoted as saying, but remained way below yours. Everything that you have revealed about Christian symbolism and the understanding of Christianity over the years, is wiped away, if Neumann’s account were to be the authentic Jungian teaching. The most important of your principles, namely, that “the damaged,” “the crippled” is also the chosen one, would collapse.73

Thus Neumann’s Eranos lecture had already antagonized two of the key players of the Zurich Jungian circle: Meier and Jacobi. But at least at this stage, Jung did not give in to their critiques; on the contrary, in his reply to Jacobi he told them off:

I think that Neumann’s work is excellent. It is not a dogmatic system, but a structured account, thought through in minute detail. Admittedly he does not take the feelings of his audience into consideration. That is the reason why he does not mention the positive aspect of the damaged. But it is certainly not unknown to him. […] His style of presentation must have had a particularly unfortunate effect. But his intellectual achievement is outstanding. You are all a bit spoiled by my anima, which is capable of switching between light and dark—nothing is entirely dark and—thank God—completely light! That is why I am accused of contradictions! With Neumann it is more complex. One needs to think with him, otherwise one is lost. I even recommend a careful reading of his lecture. Neumann comes from his eremitic existence in Tel Aviv, which is unknown to us. The house opposite to his was bombed to the ground and “Israel” is suffering in labor. N. is strongly infected collectively due to his anxious rejection of the outer world. This attitude is responsible for his lack of emotions and thus has to be taken into consideration. […] According to my opinion Neumann is a scholar of the first order, and it is up to my students to prove that he does not teach a dogma, but attempts to create a structure.⁷⁴

As Jung mentioned, Neumann’s participation at Eranos in 1948 was overshadowed by the war in Israel. In response to the UN plan of a two state solution, the country had plunged into a war between the Jewish and the Arab communities of Palestine. The British, who were still holding the mandate until 14 May 1948, hardly intervened, which Neumann described in a letter to Jung as the “betrayal of the English” (62 N, 24 January 1948). When the state of Israel was declared with effect from 15 May 1948, troops from neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel and the internal conflict became a war between states. The Arab-Israeli war, or War of Independence, lasted until 10 March 1949 and ended with an Israeli victory. As a result, the state of Israel kept almost the entire territory allocated by the UN plan and occupied in addition large parts of the land proposed for a Palestinian state.

Given the dangerous situation in Israel, it is not difficult to imagine that Neumann would have seemed quite tense when he came to Switzerland in August 1948. Earlier that year a bomb had destroyed the neighboring house at 3 Gordon Street and brought the realities of war very close to home. In a letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn from 12 July 1948 he described that incident: “As long as we are meaninglessly bombed—only yesterday, directly next to us, one child dead, eighteen wounded; while I am writing this there is another warning—I cannot, as you will understand, make a final decision to come.” And he continued to express the feelings that he probably shared with the entire Jewish population of Israel during those days, and that also explains his difficulty in reestablishing contact with Europe:

Nevertheless, I very much believe that I belong here, even when I am standing here totally on the edge of Europe. You will have difficulties in understanding that, but there is the gassing of 6 million Jews hanging over Europe, and this weighs more heavily than wild Arabs, who are primitive barbarians, but you would not expect otherwise from them. More when we meet.⁷⁵

Enemies in Zurich: The New Ethic

Depth Psychology and a New Ethic can be read on a personal level as Neumann’s attempt to understand how a civilized nation such as Germany, in whose society and culture Neumann was deeply rooted, was able to commit atrocities on a scale never seen before. His psychological answer goes back to the heart of the Judeo-Christian ethical system. This old ethics, according to Neumann, was based on the opposition between good and evil—and their mutual exclusion. At its core, one would find the psychological principles of repression (Verdrängung) and suppression (Unterdrückung). This kind of ethics demanded the complete identification with its positive values, which made a recognition and integration of the other side or the shadow impossible. The consequence of such an exclusive identification of the good with the conscious side and the consequent repression of evil created an unconscious feeling of guilt, the pressure of which was relieved through the projection of the shadow on to the other. The rage against the foreigner or the supposed ethical inferior, or even the sacrifice of the best of society for the greater good, is an expression of this primitive scapegoat psychology. Neumann demanded a new ethics that would replace the old dichotomy of good versus evil with the integration of the individual shadow in the sense of Jungian psychology.

How little sensitivity Neumann could expect in regard to his ethical demand is revealed by an exchange with Rascher, who asked Neumann “to change the first section [of the foreword], as we do not want ‘the Nazism of Germany’ to be mentioned.”76 Neumann replied that his book dealt with contemporary historical facts and German Nazism would undoubtedly belong in this category.⁷⁷

But The New Ethic was not the only book by Neumann that would be published by Rascher that year. Originally intended as a volume to be published on its own, The Origins and History of Consciousness had previously been chosen to become the first volume in the institute’s series Studien des C. G. Jung Instituts (Studies from the C. G. Jung Institute).⁷⁸ This meant that it would now be published under the auspices of the institute. One has to call it at least unfortunate, that the institute’s vice president, C. A. Meier, was just about to finish his major study Antike Inkubation und moderne Psychotherapie (Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy), which was only second in the pipeline of the series of books. And when Jung, as seen in the letter to Jacobi, presented Neumann as a role model for Meier, tempers must have flared. In her letter to Jung in the aftermath of Neumann’s Eranos lecture of 1948, Jacobi also started to stir up emotions against the inclusion of Neumann’s book in the series:

I have great concerns as to how such an account will look in a volume of more than 800 pages and if such a book at the beginning of our series won’t dominate all the others to come? There is also the danger that it will be understood as the “official,” approved Jungian teaching and not the Neumannian understanding, which in fact it will be. And as Dr. Neumann seemed rather unhappy that his book has not appeared yet, he might, perhaps, be delighted anyway, if his book were to be published outside of the series—it would stand up independently, which would be justified by its size anyway. I have only spoken to him briefly. His interest towards me was only limited to business (i.e., the printing of his book) and that has not prompted me to attempt further conversations. The entire Eranos was—even when Mrs. Froebe saw it as the best conference so far—a “failure.”79

On this occasion Jacobi’s worries did not fall on fertile ground. Jung emphasized the value of Neumann’s study and honored the book with an extraordinarily generous preface, stating that Neumann had continued laboring at the place where Jung had had to stop in his pioneering work—effectively declaring Neumann to be his successor.⁸⁰

But Neumann’s opponents found another opportunity to oppose the publication of The Origins and History of Consciousness in the institute’s series, when his Depth Psychology and a New Ethic was finally published at the end of 1948. On 10 December (72 J) Jung wrote to Neumann telling him that The New Ethic had sparked harsh reactions and discussions and that there was a debate going on as to whether the institute should publish the Origins and History of Consciousness in its series. Of course Jacobi had already set the tone for this discussion after the Eranos lecture. But in his letter, Jung enthusiastically assured Neumann of his support and emphasized the importance of the cathartic effect of such a controversial text.81 Yet Jung’s remark that a “small institute, which still stands on weak legs, must not risk too many opponents. (Side glances to university and church!),” should have been a warning sign to Neumann. In his reply he attacked the idea of an institute that would compromise its academic credibility in order to avoid confrontations (73 N, 1 January 1949) and added that he would gladly withdraw his book from the series if he were asked to do so. The use of this more rhetorical addendum turned out to be fatal for the book’s inclusion in the series, when, a month later, he received a letter from C. A. Meier in his capacity as vice president of the institute:

Dear colleague, as you have already heard from Jung, in the aftermath of the public and private controversy that was sparked by your New Ethic, the institute has discussed the question as to whether it was right to publish the Origins and History of Consciousness in the publication series of the institute. After an extensive discussion in the board we came to the conclusion that the young institute should not expose itself too much to hefty public controversies. Hence we prefer, for the time being, to publish texts of a monographic character on detailed questions of complex psychology, which still need a better material and scientific underpinning. It therefore seems also personally right, if your big summarising work is published as a separate publication, and I can understand the decision of the board. I hope that you do not have any difficulties with this decision and assure you that we all await the publication of your book with anticipation. Best wishes, always yours, C. A. Meier.⁸²

Neumann responded to Jung, the president of the institute, in a fuming letter, reiterating his accusations of opportunism and hypocrisy (74 N, 10 February 1949). Jung, in return, referred to Neumann’s previous letter according to which Neumann did not seem all too eager to publish in the institute’s series (75 J, 29 March 1949).

At the same time that the shock of Neumann’s New Ethic was causing outrage among Jung’s supporters in Zurich, Kegan Paul informed Neumann that they would publish an English translation of the book. Neumann asked Jung if he would be willing to write a preface for the English edition. Jung agreed to it, but suggested some changes to the text, as one could not expect any knowledge of psychological or philosophical concepts from an English audience. He sent Neumann his detailed amendments and suggested revisions of the text.⁸³ What kind of ambivalent role Jung played in this affair is revealed by a letter to Cary Baynes from May 1949:

He [Neumann] wanted me to write a preface to the English edition of it. I have written it but not sent it to him yet. Instead I have sent him a whole list of propositions that he might consider if he wants to have my foreword. His reply was not altogether favourable. He says that he could not write in the way I would, that to him the whole problem is as hot as hell and of immediate urgency.⁸⁴

Cary Baynes was also stirring up the mood against Neumann, as a letter from Marie-Jeanne Schmid, Jung’s secretary, to her shows:

What I would like to write to you about—and how I would wish I could talk it over with you!—is the “new star” Dr. Neumann, i.e., his books. What you wrote about his “New Ethic” made me long for your presence here. Discussion about it is running rather high over here, both in the “outer world” and in the “inner circle.” We are even going to have a discussion evening about it among the members of the club.⁸⁵ Personally I absolutely agree with you, namely, that one wonders whether he knows what he is talking about and—although his big book on the “Origins and History” is better—I also wonder with you whether it “really does all that” namely, what C. G. says in his foreword. I wish C. G. had never written it.86

Another opinion came from R.F.C. Hull, the translator of Jung’s works into English, who would also translate Neumann’s Origins and History in the years to come. He expressed his initial reaction to Depth Psychology and a New Ethic in a letter to Michael Fordham from 6 August 1949:

I hope I am not putting my foot in it when I say that this Neumann book seems to me singularly ill conceived and possibly a dangerous interpretation of Jung’s ideas? If Jung’s strictures on Freud and Jewish psychology have led, in America, to the wild accusations that he was a Nazi, anything may happen if Neumann’s account of the Jungian “new ethic” is taken at its face value—there may be a hurling of epithets like “Communist,” “immoralist,” “Antichrist” and who knows what!⁸⁷

Neumann was deeply disappointed about this affair, though in his letters to Jung himself, he seems to hold back his anger. To justify his relationship with Jung, he begins to differentiate between Jung, the president of the institute, and Jung, the admired scholar, who challenges the status quo and defended Neumann’s book. In a letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Neumann summarizes his relationship with Jung after these events as follows: “Personally, Jung is still nice to me, sometimes even movingly so, but it remains that he is not reliable—an old man.”⁸⁸ He reiterates this argument in 1954 vis-à-vis Aniela Jaffé, calling Jung an uncertain friend in particular matters. In her reply Jaffé assures Neumann of Jung’s deep affection, which had never been disturbed by the circumstances that surrounded the publication of Neumann’s book. Here, she continued, one can see the development of the son surpassing the father: in which what had not been possible between Jung and Freud came to an end.89

In the case of Toni Wolff, Neumann was less willing to excuse her behavior. At the beginning of April 1949 she wrote to Neumann that his ethical concept would not belong in the theoretical framework of depth psychology (see 76 N, 6 April 1949). Neumann interpreted her letter as the manifestation of hostile sentiments toward him in Zurich. He replied to her expressing his disappointment in a harsh and unambiguous manner.⁹⁰ In an unusually defensive way Toni Wolff justified her critique of Neumann’s book:

I do not know if it is of much use to talk once again about the “Ethic.” I did write to you everything that I needed to say. Apparently, you have indeed mixed me up with everything else. I was not in Ascona last year, I have absolutely nothing to do with the publication of your book, I am a completely ordinary lecturer at the institute, and besides other women make the decisions. I also have told every one I know personally that your book should be accepted as a publication of the institute. You, hopefully, remember that I was one of those who advised you to publish the Ethic. But I have to confess once again that I am unable to read a manuscript equally critically as a printed book. And it was important to me, with regard to the English translation, to revise certain critical passages. I know England pretty well, and it was only in your interest. Why should I then make all this effort to go into such detail? It was quite some work. It is a shame that the Ethic came out first. Thus it became, in a certain way, almost too important.⁹¹

Finally, Neumann and Wolff found a way to reconcile, and when Toni Wolff died in 1953 Neumann wrote a moving letter of condolence to Jung, which gives an insight into the important role that she had played in the lives of both Erich and Julie Neumann.

The most intimate account of the affair around the publication of Neumann’s books can be found in his correspondence with Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. The outsider’s position that both had held in the Jungian world of Zurich was what brought them closer together. To Neumann, the annual conference in Ascona was of much greater significance than the visits to Zurich. In the letters to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn he did not hold back his anger. In March 1949 he wrote of severe tensions between Jung and himself, calling Jung’s dissociation from the institute’s decision ironic. The entire affair was a shameful disgrace, and he had written to Jung, whose role in all of this he called outrageous.92

There is another aspect that comes into play when Neumann reflects upon those incidents, and that is anti-Semitism. One has to imagine that the Jung Club still had its notorious regulation in place, according to which only 10 percent of members were allowed to be Jewish. This clause was only abandoned when Neumann’s Jewish friend Siegmund Hurwitz refused to become a member under such circumstances. And Neumann believed that the rejection of his new ethic and the refusal to include his book in the series was part of the same anti-Semitic agenda, driven, according to Neumann, by catholic circles around Jolande Jacobi—though Jacobi was herself of Jewish descent. In the aforementioned letter he continued to write about his sadness: “This is how it was in Nazi Germany, cowardly and opportunistic, but while it was truly dangerous there, it is only business in Z.—and one that is wrongly understood to boot, but this is no consolation.”⁹³ In a letter from May he is even more explicit about his understanding of the affair:

Jung’s behavior toward me is extremely moving and he cares in a way that truly affects me. Of course this has to be of higher importance to me than his weakness in individual cases, where, in my opinion, he is also factually wrong at times. Nevertheless, the whole affair is important to me in a tragic way, as it demonstrates to me the emergence of a reactionary Europe, which takes possession of Jung. Catholicism, individualism—well, those are words, but they are also powers, and everything rhymes in such a sad and fitting way with fascism and national socialism. Because of Jung’s carelessness it has already been tremendously difficult so far to separate Jung and his work from the embarrassing, even catastrophic, closeness to it. I am afraid the Zurich circles, including the readmitted Kranefeldt with his “archetypus sinaiticus” from 33, won’t improve the global situation.94

On a number of occasions he mentioned the psychological and physical impact that affair had upon him.⁹⁵ Although he recovered, and his relationship with Zurich improved steadily over the years to come, the most important aftermath of these days was that his relationship with Jung changed. As the letters reveal, Neumann seemed to realize at that point that Jung was an old man who would not be able to defend Neumann against the Zurich circles. He continued to honor and respect Jung and his work, but this also meant that Neumann would be able to free himself from Jung’s influence and could start developing his own theories beyond those of Jung.

Partial Reconciliation with Zurich

Over the coming year, things calmed down, at least on the surface. Jung retreated slowly into the quiet background of his Küsnacht mansion, leaving space for others to take over a leading role. In the case of Eranos Jung’s successor was Neumann. In 1951 he wrote to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn:

Even if you very much overestimate my role at Eranos. It has indeed turned out that Eranos has become a friendly island for me to which I belong. Zurich however […] anything but—after the Ethic experience. But I have had so many positive experiences with individuals there, that it is some comfort.⁹⁶

Even in Zurich Neumann earned the respect of some parts of the Jungian circle, especially through his Origins and History of Consciousness. Richard Hull, for instance, working on its translation, reversed his previous judgment: Though the book was indeed a “modern myth,” he wrote in a letter to Herbert Read in 1951, it was an absolutely fantastic one. Still one cannot help reading a hint of animosity in verdicts such as that, for Neumann, analytical psychology comes very near to being a substitute religion.97 Or when he calls Neumann’s system “a little too perfect,” blaming Neumann’s Jewish origins for its rigidity.⁹⁸

For sure, Neumann would count among the positive and comforting experiences a letter by Helene Hoerni-Jung, the youngest of Jung’s daughters, who wrote to him in September 1950 of how much she and her sister enjoyed his lectures, especially the exciting and new perspectives of someone outside the Zurich circle. “What we enjoy less are the theorising and pseudo-intellectual critiques which are getting quite clamorous.”⁹⁹

Neumann lectured not only in Ascona but also in Zurich and Basel on a regular basis. In Zurich he was invited to lecture at the Jung Club on a number of occasions,¹⁰⁰ and he even taught at the institute. It is one of the ironic aspects of the affair around the publication of The Origins and History of Consciousness that the board, consisting of the very same people who decided to ditch the book from the institute’s series, wrote to Neumann five months later to invite him to teach their students at the institute. The invitation letter was written in Ascona on 25 August 1949, and was signed by Binswanger, Frey, Jacobi, and Meier.101 Neumann accepted and became a regular teacher at the institute.¹⁰² An attempt at a personal reconciliation with the institute came probably in 1954, when he accepted the patronage of the institute.¹⁰³

Although Neumann and Jacobi would never become friends, her annual letters to Jung from the Eranos conferences started to express a slightly more positive attitude toward Neumann: The conference in 1955 did not offer a lot, nothing stimulating, “Neumann spoke in a dogmatic and seductive way,”¹⁰⁴ and in 1956 she writes that it even gained quality through Neumann’s presentation: “He was absolutely excellent.”¹⁰⁵ In contrast, although Neumann seemed to respect her strength and courage in comparison with the other Jungians in Zurich, he would not reconcile with her that easily. Even in 1959, while teaching a course at the institute in Zurich on child psychology, Neumann and Jacobi would clash with each other. Mario Jacoby, at that time a student at the institute, gave us an account of that confrontation:

Neumann had the characteristic of radiating great powers of persuasion in support of his ideas—which were new at that time—by using well-polished linguistic expression. Only the ever undaunted Jolande Jacobi, who was also present, dared to contradict him. She was not happy about Neumann’s notion of equating the infant’s experience of the mother with that of the Self in the Jungian sense. […] She was—as she said—convinced of the fact that the Self is a metaphysical reality which extends into human experience. “This is exactly what the Self is not” interrupted Neumann. With his humour, his clarity of thought and his persuasive clout he could hold his own, even in the face of some training analysts who were present who were all direct students of Jung.106

A damning letter to Aniela Jaffé in 1959, written in the aftermath of this incident and apparently in a state of depression, shows that Neumann’s general reconciliation with the Zurich Jungians was not successful after all. Here, Neumann explained his wish not to lecture in Zurich any more. The letter is a reply to Jaffé’s attempt to emphasize Neumann’s importance for Zurich, especially for the institute and the club. She wrote about her impression that the general appreciation that Neumann received by the members would not be reciprocated by him:

Perhaps it is due to past experiences that even today you find yourself in a sort of defensive position in Zurich, and one sometimes gets the impression that you operate according to the principle: “Attack is the best form of defence.” That has a remarkably divisive effect on your audience. Two camps immediately form: pro Neumann and contra Neumann—a fact which is then, of course, for the most part ignored and not discussed.¹⁰⁷

Calling Jaffé naive, Neumann set out to strike a balance in his relationship with Zurich over the last decade. There would be no community waiting for him in Zurich. Since Jung had left Eranos, the Zurich Jungians would shun Ascona. This ignorance, which he also had to face in Zurich, would have tragic consequences, as he would put his fingers on wounds and problems that needed discussion in order for analytical psychology to survive.¹⁰⁸ He would be prepared to forget the past insults by Jung, Jacobi, Meier, and Frey for the sake of the cause, but his opinion would be sidelined.109 And his final verdict sounds devastating:

You know, I put up with some things from C. G. that I am still amazed at today, but at least I know who he is in spite of this and in relation to me. I do not have the feeling that the same is required of me in relation to the Zurichers.¹¹⁰

Late Recognition

During his lifetime Neumann saw the translation of his works into several languages. Along with Hull’s English translation, The Origins and History of Consciousness was rendered into Italian and Dutch, and a Spanish translation appeared in 1956. Translations of Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, the three volumes of Die Umkreisung der Mitte, Eros and Psyche, and the Great Mother followed suit.¹¹¹

At the forefront of interest in things to do with Neumann were the Dutch. This special relationship becomes apparent not only through the number of translations but also through Neumann’s regular lectures in the Netherlands. In 1952 he was invited to the Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte in Amersfoort for the first time, which was followed by several other visits in the years to come. Presentations in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Leiden, and The Hague followed.¹¹²

Neumann’s international recognition reached a new height in 1958 when he participated in the First Conference of the IAAP (AGAP) in Zurich and in the Fourth International Congress of Psychotherapy in Barcelona, both marking milestones in the history of modern psychology. A year later he took part in a conference in Germany, something he had rejected until then.¹¹³ In 1960 he returned to Germany one more time to lecture in Munich on the topic of “Consciousness, the Ritual, and Depth Psychology.”114

At home he began to institutionalize the small group of analytical psychologists and to secure its future by founding the Israel Association of Analytical Psychology (1959). His reputation was steadily growing. He was even asked to become the head of the Psychological Institute of the University of Tel Aviv, an offer he gratefully declined.

Among all these signs of international and national recognition, signs Neumann had waited for desperately over all those years, fell the sudden and unexpected medical diagnosis of his fatal cancer. The last Eranos conference in the summer of 1960 was followed by a visit to London to see his brother and to seek specialist medical advice. But his condition deteriorated rapidly, and after the return to Tel Aviv Erich Neumann died on 5 November.

VI. THE LEGACY OF ERICH NEUMANN

Two monographs by Erich Neumann were published posthumously: Crisis and Renewal (1961) and The Child (1963).¹¹⁵ The latter was regarded as one of the first major studies on child psychology by an eminent Jungian scholar. Neumann’s interest in the subject went back to the 1930s as an (unpublished) essay from April 1939 titled “Remarks on the Psychology of the Child and on Pedagogy” (“Bemerkungen zur Psychologie des Kindes und der Paedagogik”) proves.¹¹⁶ In the 1950s he held seminars for child psychologists at his home in Tel Aviv on a regular basis.¹¹⁷ As mentioned before, Neumann also held a course on the subject at the institute in Zurich in 1959, which provoked a conflict with Jolande Jacobi.¹¹⁸ In the aftermath he expressed his disappointment about the lack of support from the Zurich school, warning of the skeptical attitude toward the possible practical application of analytical psychology by the “regressive English school of Fordham,” which would endanger the entire project.119 In his 1954 seminar he noticed a rapprochement between the Kleinian and Jungian school in England:

What is being reported from England is that the therapy of Klein and the Jungians is almost one and the same. Because Melanie Klein keeps on mythologising. I wonder whether the child understands her interpretations—which are strongly mythologically based—from what she refers to as myth; that this is the basis of the child’s understanding and interpretation of symbols. The question is whether the intellectual interpretation which she attributes to this is an essential component or not.¹²⁰

Fordham’s use of the Oedipal complex in The Life of Childhood is also criticized by Neumann in his letter to Jung of 1 October 1945 (33 N).¹²¹ There Neumann also emphasized the importance of child psychology, which Jung had neglected because of his interest in the individuation process of the second half of life.

The antagonism between Neumann and Fordham came to the surface when Neumann wanted to publish an article in Fordham’s Journal of Analytical Psychology.¹²² Fordham rejected the article in the first instance on grounds of theoretical differences, to which Neumann responded: “I did not know you have a critical attitude towards my work and should be thankful to get known with your criticism. Never did it occur to me that you might reject essays from me for such reasons. This would mean that you do not feel as editor of a Journal for Analytical Psychology, but as a censor who has to judge about what Analytical Psychology has to be.”¹²³ Subsequently, Fordham sent Neumann his latest book and the two men agreed to have a further discussion. Due to Neumann’s premature death there was no further debate to bridge those differences. However, in 1981, Fordham published an article on “Neumann and Childhood” in which he heavily criticized Neumann’s theory of childhood psychology: “I can enjoy the experience of his ‘poetry,’ especially when he interprets myth and legend; that, however, no longer justifies using vague, contradictory metaphor with which to capture states of consciousness in infancy and childhood. It was a device which used to pass muster, but today research has made that approach inappropriate. Both Jungians and psychoanalysts have constructed theories of childhood.”124 Fordham’s article was a hatchet job in every sense of the word: besides accusing Neumann of being dogmatic and non-Jungian, his main critique was targeted at Neumann’s lack of empirical data and use of out-of-date scientific theories such as the relation between phylogenesis and ontogenesis or Adolf Portmann’s extrauterine first year.¹²⁵ Fordham’s conclusion, that after detailed scrutiny almost nothing of originality remained from Neumann’s child psychology, was a dire verdict.¹²⁶ In defense of Neumann, it has to be said that his theory of childhood was informed by years of weekly exchanges with child psychologists and that the project of the Neve Ze’elim Children’s Home, a long-term treatment center in Israel, was based on the findings of his child psychology.127

In his article Fordham refers, as unlikely as it may sound, to none other than Wolfgang Giegerich, who wrote a fundamental critique of Erich Neumann’s analytical psychology in 1975.¹²⁸ Both agree that Neumann was not Jungian at all, because he confused—in spite of Jung’s warning—the archetypal with the empirical child.¹²⁹ Whereas for Fordham The Child is weak because of the lack of empirical data, Giegerich, in contrast, criticizes Neumann’s research for the attempt to base his findings on empirical facts, thereby fudging amateurishly in the realm of biology. Psychological truth should not be concerned with the empirical but with the imaginal.

As far as The Origins and History of Consciousness is concerned, Giegerich finds the opposite aspect worthy of critique. Quoting a passage from the introduction to Neumann’s book, he concludes that “such utterances, although limited to the castration complex and other such ‘symbols’ may by implication suggest that in the last analysis, Neumann wants everything he says to be understood as ‘symbolic facts’ which then could not be located in empirical (‘personalistic’) history.”¹³⁰ This is important, as Giegerich can only build his verdict about the book as a myth in itself, an archetypal fantasy, on this lack of empirical concreteness. What Giegerich did not know is that this passage in Neumann about the symbolic character of the castration complex was only included because of Jung’s intervention, who had concerns about Neumann’s usage of the term.¹³¹ This shows—and the correspondence between Neumann and Jung confirms this—that Neumann’s writing and thinking was often much more in tune and accordance with Jung than critics like Fordham or Giegerich would have liked it to be, insofar as their critique of Neumann would implicitly become one of Jung also.

There have been a number of attempts to revive the legacy of Erich Neumann. The volume Zur Utopie einer Neuen Ethik (2005), based on a conference organized by the German language organization of analytical psychology,132 and a special issue of Harvest (2006) marked the anniversary of Erich Neumann’s one-hundredth birthday.¹³³ In 2007, a memorial plaque was revealed at Julie Neumann’s house in Berlin (Pariser Straße 4). The proceedings of the accompanying conference, organized by the Arbeitskreis für die Geschichte der Analytischen Psychologie, were published in the journal Analytische Psychologie (2008).¹³⁴ In Germany his Eranos lectures have been republished, and there are regular conferences and seminar series on Neumann’s thinking. The high esteem in which Erich Neumann, the founder of the Israel Association of Analytical Psychology, is held among analytical psychologists in Israel cannot be doubted. There is hope that the publication of the correspondence between C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann will create an international revival of the interest in the thinking of Erich Neumann, which will make it possible to revaluate his position within the history of analytical psychology.

EDITORIAL REMARKS

The first attempt to publish the correspondence between C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann dates back to the early 1980s. Aniela Jaffé was supposed to be the editor, assisted by Julie Neumann and Robert Hinshaw.¹³⁵ Due to the unexpected death of Julie Neumann in 1985, the project was delayed and finally abandoned. In 2010 the Philemon Foundation obtained the permission to publish the correspondence.

Jung’s letters were in the private collection of the Neumann family in Jerusalem until 2006. During Jung’s lifetime no copies of handwritten letters were taken, whereas the secretaries would take and file copies of typewritten letters. These copies are kept in the Jung archive of the ETH Zurich. When Aniela Jaffé edited the selection of Jung’s letters, she received copies of Jung letters from all over the world.136 It is probably due to this that the Jung archive possesses a set of Jung’s letters to Neumann. This was completed for the use of this edition by a set of copies from the Neumann heirs in Israel. In 2006, thirty-four letters by Jung to Neumann were auctioned and sold at Sotheby’s in London.¹³⁷ In two cases, Jung’s letters from 22 September (100 J) and 9 July 1954 (103 J), lines are missing due to the bad state of the copies. As the whereabouts of the actual letters are currently unknown it was not possible to fill these gaps. The letters of Erich Neumann were sent back to Tel Aviv by request of Julie Neumann after Erich’s death. Fifty-five letters by Neumann to Jung were sold at the 2006 auction.¹³⁸

In total this correspondence consists of 124 documents. Of these there are thirty-nine letters by Jung to Neumann, seven attests or references written by Jung for Neumann, and one letter from Jung to Julie Neumann. The Neumann documents consist of fifty-eight letters from Neumann to Jung, three letters to Marie-Jeanne Schmid, and the three attachments 5N (A), 6 N (A), and 8 N (A).¹³⁹ As the contents of these three attachments is an integral—if not even the essential—part of the letter exchange between Jung and Neumann in the 1930s, the editor has decided to publish them—regardless of their length—in the sequence of the correspondence.

In addition there are ten letters by Marie-Jeanne Schmid and three letters by Aniela Jaffé, which they wrote to Neumann in their capacity as Jung’s secretaries. Appendix I is a copy of Neumann’s contributions in the Jüdische Rundschau¹⁴⁰—his rejoinder to Kirsch and his review of Rosenthal’s article. Appendix II is the list of amendments and revision Jung wanted Neumann to implement for the English edition of Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.

The letters are placed in chronological order. Neumann’s letters are sometimes not dated and the dates had to be reconstructed from the content. In such cases the reasons have been given in the footnotes. Neumann’s handwriting caused problems—not only to Jung—hence he decided to use a typewriter in the later years. Where Neumann wrote by hand—this concerns mainly the early letters—the transcripts needed to be checked a number of times. Despite this painstaking work there have been a few occasions where it was not possible to decipher a word—in those cases the problem has been indicated in the footnotes.

There exist a few letters of Jung in a handwritten and a typescript version, for instance letter 15 J of 27 April 1935. In those cases Jung wrote by hand and the secretary produced a typewritten version, which Jung corrected by hand before it was finally typed and sent to Neumann. Substantial differences between the different versions have been highlighted in the footnotes.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

In keeping with the values of the Philemon Foundation, I have sought in this translation to remain as true as possible to the style and meaning of the German original, opting, where necessary, for accuracy and faithfulness to the sometimes obscure German, rather than English idiom. It must be remembered that the original texts were letters between friendly colleagues, and as such punctuation, especially, at times reflects this personal medium in that it can deviate from the norms expected for scholarly publication. Where possible I have retained this punctuation, except where meaning would otherwise have been obscured. I have adopted the use of capitalized “Self” for the translation of Jung’s “Selbst” for the sake of clarity.

I acknowledge with gratitude the patient proofreading and editing collaboration of Martin Liebscher.

Heather McCartney

¹ Jung (1933b).

² Adler (1980), p. 181.

³ The published collection Sonnensucher (1926) is likely to be written by an author of the same name. This is strongly suggested by the lament for the poet’s father, “Tod des Vaters” (“Death of the Father”), whereas the father of the psychologist-to-be Erich Neumann was still alive at that time.

⁴ Second chapter was published in an anthology of young Jewish authors titled Zwischen den Zelten (Neumann, 1932).

⁵ Neumann (1928).

⁶ A part of Neumann’s commentary on “The Trial” was published in Neumann (1958). Its English translation together with comments on the chapter “In the Cathedral” can be found in Neumann (1979), pp. 3–112. For a detailed list of Neumann’s unpublished typescripts on Kafka, see Sotheby’s catalog (2006), pp. 146–47. On Neumann and Buber, see n. 215.

⁷ There is a psychological and philosophical text by a young Erich W. A. Neumann in the Zionist journal Proteus titled “Die Schmerzlüsternheit: Fragmente einer Psychologie des Pessimismus” (Neumann, Erich W. A., 1924). However, there is no evidence that this text was written by the future psychologist.

⁸ Micha Neumann quoted in Haaretz (Lori, 2005); see also Rali Loewenthal-Neumann (2006), p. 149. Erich Neumann would receive his medical doctor degree from the University of Hamburg in 1959, when The Origins and History of Consciousness was accepted as his doctoral thesis.

⁹ In his seminar on the Seelenproblem des modernen Juden: Eine Reihenanalyse von Träumen, Bildern und Phantasien (Soul Problems of the Modern Jew: An Analysis of a Series of Dreams, Images, and Phantasies) (Tel Aviv, 10 November 1938–29 June 1939) Neumann recalls the following dream: “I remember a dream, a mixture of a dream, a childhood memory and fantasy, there was a moment when the parents appeared as a very negative authority, in a devouring form, an image reminds me of grandfather. The main thing was the long beard, association: this is why I became a Zionist—Herzl-beard and the memory that the picture of grandfather that hung in my childhood home was connected with the Misrach” (1 June 1939, p. 360). On his father’s Zionism, see also Micha Neumann (2005), p. 18.

¹⁰ Micha Neumann (2005), p. 19.

¹¹ Micha Neumann indicates summer 1934. As a handwritten biographical cursory by Erich Neumann shows, Neumann did leave earlier, namely, in May 1934 (RA). This fits with Jung writing in a letter to James Kirsch dated 26 May 1934 that Neumann was now living in Palestine (Jung-Kirsch letters, p. 46).

¹² Jung (1937; 1937a).

¹³ Jung to Neumann, 28 J. On Jung in Palestine see n. 216.

¹⁴ Erich Neumann in Fröbe-Kapteyn (1957), p. 20 (translation by Robert Hinshaw, 2004).

¹⁵ Jaffé (1968), p. 119.

¹⁶ Jung (1930–34).

¹⁷ Jung (1932).

¹⁸ Jung (1934–39).

¹⁹ Jung (1936–40).

²⁰ Jung (1934b).

²¹ Psychologischer Club Zurich (ed.) (1935).

²² See Shamdasani (2009).

²³ Abramovitch (2006), p. 166.

²⁴ Micha Neumann, quoted in Lori (2005).

²⁵ See n. 171.

²⁶ Neumann (1954a).

²⁷ Kirsch (1934).

²⁸ Jung (1934a).

²⁹ Jung (1934a), § 354.

³⁰ Jung (1934a), § 353

³¹ Galut(h), Hebrew for exile, has become a synonym for Jewish diaspora.

³² Bally (1934).

³³ Jung (1933).

³⁴ Bally (1934).

³⁵ Jung (1934).

³⁶ Jung (1934), § 1031.

³⁷ Jung (1934), § 1034.

³⁸ Jung and Kirsch (2011), p. 45.

³⁹ Jung and Kirsch (2011), p. 44.

⁴⁰ Jung and Kirsch (2011), p. 46.

⁴¹ Jung and Kirsch (2011), p. 47.

⁴² Kirsch to Jung, 8 June 1934 (Jung and Kirsch, 2011, p. 53).

⁴³ Neumann (1934).

⁴⁴ Neumann (1934).

⁴⁵ Juliusburger (1934).

⁴⁶ Steinfeld (1934).

⁴⁷ Jung to Gerhard Adler, 19 June 1934 (JA).

⁴⁸ Adler (1934).

⁴⁹ Kirsch wrote a follow-up of his initial text for the Jüdische Rundschau, which was not published. He sent it to Jung attached to his letter of 8 June 1934. The text is printed in Jung and Kirsch (2011), pp. 54–56.

⁵⁰ Thomas B. Kirsch (2011), p. xiii.

⁵¹ Thomas B. Kirsch (2011), p. xiv.

⁵² Jung (1934c).

⁵³ Jung and Kirsch (2011), p. 47. Next to Rosenthal’s article the volume also contained two contributions by the National Socialist psychiatrist and psychotherapist Wolfgang Müller Kranefeldt (Kranefeldt, 1934; see also n. 531). Jung himself contributed nine articles to the volume. In “The Development of Personality” (“Vom Werden der Persönlichkeit”) Jung wrote about the problem of the peoples’ desire for the great individuals: “The huzzahs of the Italian nation go forth to the personality of the Duce, and the dirges of other nations lament the absence of strong leaders” (Jung, 1934e, pp. 167–68; German: p. 180). This text was a reprint of a lecture originally delivered in November 1932 at the Kulturbund in Vienna. In the 1934 publication Jung added the footnote: “Seitdem dieser Satz geschrieben wurde, hat auch Deutschland seinen Führer gefunden” (“Since this sentence was written, Germany too has found its Führer”). Cocks interpreted the phrase “has found” as a positive endorsement of the role of the strong leader by Jung (Cocks, 1991, pp. 160–61; also 1997, p. 147). For Sherry the footnote “makes it clear that Jung saw Hitler’s coming-to-power as the outcome of a natural, almost inevitable process” (Sherry, 2012, p. 100).

⁵⁴ Rosenthal (1934). On Hugo Rosenthal (a.k.a. Josef Jashuvi) see n. 176.

⁵⁵ Neumann (1934a).

⁵⁶ Neumann (1934–40).

⁵⁷ See Neumann’s question on 24 June 1936 (Jung, 1934–39, pp. 1021–22). See n. 269.

⁵⁸ Jung (1936).

⁵⁹ On Jung’s Wotan article in connection with his reception of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, see Liebscher (2001) and Dohe (2011).

⁶⁰ See Neumann (1937–38, 1938, 1938–39, 1939–40).

⁶¹ The exact circumstances of his death are not entirely clear. According to one account he was beaten up by the Gestapo during an interrogation. (Information by Rali Loewenthal-Neumann, personal conversation in Jerusalem, December 2012.)

⁶² See n. 335.

⁶³ Gilbert (2008), p. 119.

⁶⁴ From 12 November 1941 to 24 June 1942 his seminar was dedicated to the alchemical symbols in dreams (Neumann, 1941–42).

⁶⁵ See n. 355.

⁶⁶ Jung (1961), p. 294.

⁶⁷ See also Jung’s letter to Neumann, 5 January 1952 (89 J).

⁶⁸ Adler to Jung, 12 December 1945 (JA).

⁶⁹ Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn to Erich Neumann, 30 October 1947 (EA). See n. 423.

⁷⁰ Neumann (1949).

⁷¹ See n. 472.

⁷² Jung to Jolan[de] Jacobi, 24 September 1948 (JA). Meier’s comparison of the ancient divinatory understanding of dream with modern psychotherapy was finally published as Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy (Meier, 1949).

⁷³ Jacobi to Jung, 9 September 1948 (JA).

⁷⁴ Jung to Jacobi, 24 September 1948 (JA).

⁷⁵ Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn, 12 July [1948] (EA).

⁷⁶ Rascher to Neumann, 19 April 1948 (RA).

⁷⁷ Neumann to Rascher, 2 May 1948 (RA).

⁷⁸ Rascher to Neumann, 6 July 1948 (RA). See n. 444.

⁷⁹ Jacobi to Jung, 9 September 1948 (JA).

⁸⁰ Jung (1949).

⁸¹ A letter from Neumann to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn from 25 December [1948] showed Neumann’s delight about Jung’s reaction, which seemed to indicate that Jung would take side with Neumann: “In the meantime, ‘Ethic’ has come out; I hope that Rascher has sent you a copy, and, as Jung wrote in his very nice letter, it has already caused a stir. To my greatest surprise, even in the Institute itself” (EA).

⁸² C. A. Meier to Neumann, 3 February 1949 (NP).

⁸³ See appendix II.

⁸⁴ Jung to Cary Baynes, 9 May 1949 (CFB).

⁸⁵ On 26 March 1949 a discussion on Neumann’s Depth Psychology and a New Ethic took place in the Psychological Club Zurich.

⁸⁶ Marie-Jeanne Schmid to Cary Baynes, 15 March 1949 (CFB).

⁸⁷ R.F.C. Hull to Michael Fordham, 6 August 1949 (MFP).

⁸⁸ Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn, May [1949?] (EA).

⁸⁹ Aniela Jaffé to Neumann, 11 January 1954 (NP).

⁹⁰ See n. 465.

⁹¹ Toni Wolff to Neumann, 20 July 1949 (NP).

⁹² Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn 14 March [1949] (EA).

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Neumann to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, 22 May [1949] (EA). For Kranefeldt see n. 531.

⁹⁵ See Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn, 13 December [1949] and 11 [or 14] May [1949] (EA).

⁹⁶ Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn, 20 January 1951 (EA).

⁹⁷ Hull to Read, 25 May 1951: “I have reverted to my original opinion of the Neumann book…. The thing may be, as the opponents of Jung claim, a sort of modern myth, but what a fascinating myth it is! In that sense analytical psychology comes very near to being a substitute religion” (RKP).

⁹⁸ Hull to Read, 16 October 1951: “My one misgiving is that it tends to turn analytical psychology into a ‘closed circuit’ on the pattern of the uroboros itself; the system is a little too perfect. To parody one of Neumann’s own observations: he, as a Jew seems to have broken out of the ‘womb of the Torah’ only to land himself in a system that is just as absolute…. It would be a pity if this brilliant systematisation of Jung should lead to the kind of fanatical dogmatism one often finds among psychoanalysts” (RKP).

⁹⁹ Helene Hoerni-Jung to Erich Neumann, 25 September 1950 (NP).

¹⁰⁰ The club program register lists the following lectures by Erich Neumann: “Towards a Psychology of the Feminine in the Patriarchy” (“Zur Psychologie des Weiblichen im Patriarchat”) (7 October 1950); “On the Dominance of the Feminine Archetype in the Creative Man” (“Über das Dominantbleiben des weiblichen Urbildes beim schöpferischen Manne”) (13 October 1951); “A Structural Analysis of the Archetype of the Great Mother” (“Zur Struktur-analyse des Archetypus der Grossen Mutter) (27 September 1952); “Primal Relationship and the Self: Remarks on ‘Symbolic Wish fulfilment’” (“Urbeziehung und Selbst: Bemerkungen zu ‘Symbolische Wunscherfüllung’ von M.-A. Sechehaye”) (1 October 1955); “On the Problem of Reality” (“Zum Problem der Wirklichkeit”) (29 September 1956); “The Fear of the Masculine” (“Die Angst vor dem Männlichen”) (10 October 1959).

¹⁰¹ Curatorium des C. G. Jung Instituts Zürich to Neumann, 25 August 1949 (NP).

¹⁰² Neumann’s seminars at the institute were not without controversies. In autumn 1950 he was attacked by Meier and other members of the Curatorium for his interpretation of Amor and Psyche (see n. 518).

¹⁰³ Curatorium des C. G. Jung Instituts Zürich to Neumann, October 1954 (NP).

¹⁰⁴ Jacobi to Jung, 5 September 1955 (JA).

¹⁰⁵ Jacobi to Jung, 22 August 1956 (JA).

¹⁰⁶ Mario Jacoby (2005), p. 38.

¹⁰⁷ Jaffé to Neumann, 24 October 1959 (NP).

¹⁰⁸ Neumann to Jaffé, undated letter, written around late October/November 1959 (NP): “Even more, behind the Eranos work, there is much more inner inspirational experience; the system is, in part, difficult work which seems necessary for me, and whether analytical psychology will survive depends in part, I sometimes fear, on this.”

¹⁰⁹ Ibid: “A lunch with Frau Dr. Frey and Brunner belongs, as kind as they are, in the same category. I have tried hard—for the sake of the cause—to forget the old insults of C. G., Jacobi, Meier, and Frey—which does not come easily to someone like me.”

¹¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹¹ For the contracts with Neumann regarding translations, see RA.

¹¹² See nn. 545 and 551.

¹¹³ Neumann participated in the Evangelische Akademie in Tutzing at the Starnberger Lake, which took place from 18 July to 4 August 1959.

¹¹⁴ Presentation at the conference “Der Kult in den Kulturen der Welt” (“The Cult in the Cultures of the World”), 31 July–5 September 1960 (Neumann 1961c).

¹¹⁵ Neumann (1961b); (1963).

¹¹⁶ Neumann (1939).

¹¹⁷ Fragmentary notes of the 1954 and 1955 seminars can be found in NP (Neumann 1954; 1955).

¹¹⁸ See introduction, pp. lii–liii.

¹¹⁹ Neumann to Jaffé, undated letter, late October/November 1959 (NP). On Fordham, see n. 366.

¹²⁰ Neumann (1954), p. 12. Fordham’s interest in Kleinian thought would even lead him to undertake a Kleinian analysis in his later years.

¹²¹ Fordham (1944).

¹²² “The Significance of the Genetic Aspect for Analytical Psychology” was finally published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology in 1959 (Neumann, 1961a).

¹²³ Neumann to Fordham, 30 January 1958 (NP).

¹²⁴ Fordham (1981), p. 100.

¹²⁵ Adolf Portmann (1897–1982): Swiss zoologist. From 1946 on he was a regular participant of the Eranos conference in Ascona, where he used to give the last and concluding presentation. After the death of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn in 1962, he—together with Rudolf Ritsema—took over the presidency of the foundation. His last presentation at the Eranos conference took place in 1977. The Portmann theory of the extrauterine first year states that the newborn human—in contrast to other primates—endures a premature birth in a physiological sense. Due to its vulnerability the infant is completely dependent on the mother or other adults for a year. After this time in the “social womb” the infant experiences a “second birth” as a cultural and social human being. His works include Animal Forms and Patterns (1948) and The Animal as Social Being (1953). On Portmann see Ritsema (1982).

¹²⁶ In his attempt to discredit Neumann’s work, Fordham went even further and questioned Jung’s appreciation of it. In a private conversation with Sonu Shamdasani, Fordham gave the following account of a verbal exchange with Jung: When he asked Jung why he wrote of Neumann’s work in such laudatory terms, when he often criticized it in conversation, Jung stated that it was to prevent Neumann from having a psychosis (personal communication, Michael Fordham to Sonu Shamdasani). Fordham’s antagonism aside, Mircea Eliade reports of an equally critical remark by Jung: “He [Jung] finds Neumann too rationalist (Jung gives this interpretation of a dream of Neumann that has a little girl in it: Neumann hasn’t integrated the ‘the feminine creativity’ of which he has spoken so much in his writings” (Eliade, Journal II, p. 41 [6 June 1959]). But for every reported negative remark one can find a statement of Jung’s deep appreciation for Neumann such as this: “I have a huge correspondence, see innumerable people but have only two real friends with whom I can speak about my own difficulties; the one is Erich Neumann and he lives in Israel and the other is Father Victor White in England” (reported by F. Elkisch, 29 October 1976; quoted in Cunningham, 2007, p. 334).

¹²⁷ See Abramovitch and Badrian (2006), pp. 182–99.

¹²⁸ Giegerich (1975).

¹²⁹ Giegerich (1975) refers to Jung (1941), § 273, n. 20. Fordham (1981), p. 101 follows Giegerich on this point.

¹³⁰ Giegerich (1975), p. 115.

¹³¹ See the letters 52 J (1 July 1947) and 53 N (8 July 1947), n. 412.

¹³² Österreichische Gesellschaft für Analytische Psychologie (2005).

¹³³ Harvest (2006).

¹³⁴ Analytische Psychologie (2008).

¹³⁵ Personal information from Robert Hinshaw.

¹³⁶ See Jaffé’s preface in Jung (1973).

¹³⁷ Sotheby’s (2006), pp. 132–37.

¹³⁸ Information on the holdings of the Jung archive collection was given by Ulrich Hoerni (e-mail correspondence, 22 October 2012) and Yvonne Voegeli (e-mail correspondence, 20 September 2012).

¹³⁹ On those attachments see introduction, p. xxix–xxx.

¹⁴⁰ Neumann (1934).