77 N

9 April 49

Dear and Highly Esteemed Professor Jung,

Your letter that crossed with mine−and for which I am exceedingly grateful—has stunned me, and for reasons that I will explain to you in detail later, moved and upset me. But firstly I would like to sort out the “technical” things. Your reading of my first letter that it was not important to me where Origins was published was absolutely correct. My protest and my anger apply not to the fact but to its causes and the background to them, as well as to the manner in which they were carried out. As I am [also] informing the institute at the same time, I have already instructed Rascher in a letter of 1st April469 (as he had inquired of me regarding this), that publication under the auspices of the institute is definitely not an option. This took place before the letter from the institute that I received on 7th April⁴⁷⁰ and I have nothing to add to this.

Here, too, I would almost advise appointing someone to the institute who has some subtlety of perception and something of what declining Europe called “intellect” about them. An institute bearing your name may not permit itself to choose the term “promote” for a foreword from you, and it ought even less to imply that it has made a censorious revision to a foreword of yours, one written for a book that is absolutely not permitted to appear under its auspices. For this is, of course, the background to the otherwise quite inappropriate communication of the Institute … “so you must let it come out as a book in its own right, with the foreword from Professor Jung that he will send you the final version of directly.”

I would never have dared to suggest alterations to your foreword, but you will understand that there is nothing left for me to do, far off the beaten track and at the mercy of all hostilities, than to inform you, my only real counterpart, of the fact that I perceive your revisions as bitter, and where.

It is not about the fact that May ’48 shone more favorably on me than April ’49, nor about the qualifications to your endorsement of me that seem necessary to you. I have nothing to say about this, although the discrepancy between “creating a unified whole” and “woven his facts into a pattern” is monstrous.471 The second formulation leaves the question completely open as to whether these contexts are relevant, which the first implies with your all too kind emphasis.

My concerns are about the new inclusions, my bitterness about a change that is at the root of Dr. Meier’s fear of a system that scared him off even in Ascona.⁴⁷² When you formulated, for the first time, “buildings in which the empirical conceptual forms find their natural living space,” you were under the influence of the book itself; “finding a living space,” with the new addition about the personal equivalence and the exclusion of the “textbook sentence” from which I knew immediately that it would heap the enmity of Zurich upon me—that is a total distancing that perhaps is not intended by you in the way it now sounds.473 Now it sounds like this—to me: What can one do, there are simply some people who, for good or ill, cannot help creating a system and concocting hypotheses about it. Thank God there are other sorts of people too. Of course I am exaggerating. But it seems to me that the completely understandable qualification of your all too strong endorsement—which evokes no sort of “bitterness”—belongs to this. Now, all that remains is the qualification and the endorsement is dubious in decisive points.

I fear that your institute and Mrs. Jacobi, especially, will have to create an orthodoxy for the very reason that nothing of their own occurs to them, and you, dear Professor, will not be able to do anything about this.⁴⁷⁴ However, I promise you I won’t let them put my back to the wall, as far as it is possible to me. I already know now that I am naturally a bad Jewish-intellectual student of yours, for whom the essential thing evades me. Hence my anger at the sentence in the disloyal letter from Miss Wolff that I quoted to you. I adhere to the sentence from Mrs. von Keller⁴⁷⁵ after the incident with Meier, which was the start of it all: Now you must go on your way like a rhino and not look to the left or the right.

And with that, now let’s get down to business.

I am disturbed, exhausted, and unhappy that I have robbed you of 14 days with my small book, which does not deserve it. It is a by-product, a polemical text, and, of course, you hit the nail on the head as usual, it is a chapter from a bigger conceptual framework. For this reason, you have done me a great favor with your comments for which I am very deeply obliged to you, more deeply than ever before. Originally, a second section was supposed to follow the first with some additional content, and this second part contained dreams, fantasies, etc., especially even of my own, for this small book was not really conceived from the head. But it was the all too personal and barely representable part of the material that had to be discarded because of this. To this extent, I confess that I am guilty, but I would not know how to do it any other way, even today. Since your letter, I have again been giving some more thought as to whether I can, may and ought to write this second section—but it just won’t work.

Now, in the closest connection with this, I turn to your new critique, which, by the way, I will comply with as far as it is possible to me.

When I wrote this book in a different format and without the second section, I definitely did it in a way that then seemed possible to me because of your endorsement. Conscious of what the title indicates. All your new objections disregard this title, which was altered by you because of this. I have consciously (p. 91) left out the integration process and referred to your works. I.e., I have only been able to go to the very edge of where the religious problem begins. In order to be comprehensible and to get the discussion going, one must eschew constantly pointing to processes that are, in fact, not representable anyway. Besides, I cannot usurp the stance of a person of your stature and age. I will leave that to others. Your latest position is purely religious and is actually no longer interested in ethics. I know only too well that is ultimately valid, and also valid for you regarding what sort of dangers are emerging for the world, including Zurich. I am daring to protest here. The ethical behavior of the personality cannot only experience itself as the grain of corn between hammer and anvil. Esteemed Professor Jung, you sin against yourself to pitch this, your last phase, against the new ethic. I mean the following. I am not, as Miss W. assumes all of a sudden, such an idiot to have “forgotten” these things that I have experienced quite strongly and continue to do so. But the ethical stance of the alchemists exists in the preparation and the preservation of the fire, in a plethora of active and responsible operations, he must do the Opus, even in the knowledge that ultimately, however, the Opus does itself—but not in a way that violates things of earth. I am not “old protestant,” not “old testament,” but a Jew, i.e., a person who has experienced in the deepest way possible that ritual and symbol do not protect what is human if no moral “ego” constitutes its counterpart and if no old or new ethical stance forms the counterbalance to the symbol-laden unconscious. Hasidism is not the exponent of Jewish ethics, and Catholicism is, it seems to me, amoral inasmuch as it is not the old ethics, but in no way does it represent the new ethic. Ten years ago, no, in fact 13 years back, you told me that and why you never went to Rome and you pondered that perhaps this is the enemy, but I will not take up the fight if it is not required of me. And now? Massacre of the Jews, burning of the witches, all misery and crime of the world can take place with the collective symbols and within its rituals. The church remains the ancient Great Mother whom I know well. Miss Wolff is of the opinion that Faust made it easy for himself and that he does not deserve the Catholic conclusion for that reason. What a misunderstanding. In my experience one must be an anti-Catholic sinner,—that means a suffering and unredeemed person—in order to encounter her.

My shadow is really big enough to always have demanded and deserved my attention. For this reason I know how right you are about everything you say about suffering the shadow. But, it seems to me, one does not need to say this to anyone in a world whose sense of guilt threatens to annihilate them. But that it belongs here, is also inferred, must be included, that is a matter of depth psychology that preoccupied me. This is where the justification lies for having written this book. A Mrs. Jacobi on her knees—that is the danger!, but not an all too belligerent Neumann. Believe me, I suffer from my shadow enough to fully understand every word you wrote. But you have gone on too far ahead, others are too far behind—that is the difficulty. The activist accents are necessary—here a Jewish flame is burning that cannot be refuted by any symbolism because it is the inner life of the symbol. If one really wished to coformulate the whole, one would no longer be able to formulate anything at all. Not even you have managed this, not to speak of me. That is a matter of great art, not one of psychology. An example for many. Your critique of the formulation, “engaging” the Self. But that one can and one must, quite independently of the fact that it is all what one wishes to “make” it. One can also “engage” God, e.g., as the king, which is familiar to you, one can also live it, although it does not need that. In a novel that I wrote when I was 25, I called it giving “his signature.”476 I do not believe that I ever meant by this that even without this signature the contract is valid. Only with it, however, does it take effect humanly.

Dear Professor Jung, I would like to completely relieve you of any inner and outer difficulties that a foreword to this Ethic could lumber you with. You have unfortunately already gone above and beyond for this matter. I believe when I take all these things into consideration and perhaps write a postscript to it, it will do. So much about so little, the Origins is a thousand times more important to me, I am beginning to accept already that, after that, no cockerel will crow.

If anything else sounds incomprehensible, please believe me that it was not so intended—just as so much of what has happened since was not intended.

With great gratitude,

Your,

[E. Neumann].

⁴⁶⁹ Neumann wrote to Rascher on 1 April 1949: “I herewith inform you that I definitely do not grant my permission for publication under the auspices of the Jung Institute. This matter is closed as far as I am concerned. […] But as I am incidentally curious about whether another decision has been made by the Institute, I would ask you to treat this communication confidentially. […] The Institute has renounced the right to publish the book, I have declared myself to be in agreement with this” (RA).

⁴⁷⁰ This information is confusing as Neumann was already informed about the institute’s decision by Meier’s letter from 3 February 1949 (see n. 460).

⁴⁷¹ In the final version of his foreword Jung deleted the word “lückenlos”: “Es ist ihm [sc. Neumann] geglückt, [lückenlose] Zusammenhänge herzustellen und auf diese Weise ein Ganzes zu schaffen, was dem Pionier nie gelungen wäre und an das er sich auch nie hätte wagen können” (Jung, 1949, p. 556). In his 1954 translation R.F.C. Hull rendered: “He has woven his facts into a pattern and created a unified whole” (p. xiii).

⁴⁷² C. A. Meier left the room during Neumann’s presentation on the “Mystical Man” at Eranos 1948. Jung mentions the incident in a letter to Jacobi, in which he defends Neumann against her criticism: “Neumann is in my view a first class force, and it is up to the proficiency of my students to prove that he is not promulgating any dogma, but is merely seeking to create order. Dr. Meier, for example, would do better to thrash out the connection of his Asklepios with psychotherapy than to run away from a lecture. He would come up against some ticklish problems where some spade work such as Neumann does it would be very welcome” (24 September 1948 [JA]). In an undated letter to Meier from autumn 1948 Neumann refers to this incident: “I was of the opinion that, with the telling of your dream, which seems very clear to me, the complex-laden nature of your reaction to my lecture of which you heard the beginning had become clear to you, and with that, the matter seemed to me to be settled. Now I notice that you evidently believe that you formed a correct picture at that time in a downright anticipatory intuition about its ‘future’ progression. For this well proves that, after you had become acquainted with the lecture for the first time, you had confirmed your ‘fundamental objections’ which came to you before you knew what I had to say” (NP).

⁴⁷³ The Jung archive at the ETH Zurich contains the different drafts of the foreword (HS 1055: 851,1–3). (HS 1055: 851,1) is the handwritten version of May 1948; (HS 1055: 851,2) is a typescript version of the May 1948 draft—with handwritten changes. The original text, “This book qualifies more than any other as an actual textbook of this new branch of knowledge. I congratulate the author on this achievement,” is crossed out and replaced by: “The development of an ordered system can never disregard a total hypothesis which for its part is based on the temperament and the subjective assumptions of the author, alongside the objective principles. This issue is particularly relevant in psychology. The ‘personal equation’ conditions the way one sees. Relative ultimate truth requires the consonance of many voices. I can only congratulate the author on this achievement.” The printed version dated March 1949 sticks to this version with the exception of “Errichtung” (“construction”) for “Entwicklung” (“development”) and “seiner Leistung” (“on his achievement”) for “dieser Leistung” (“on this achievement”).

⁴⁷⁴ For Jacobi’s relationship to Neumann see introduction, p. xxxix–xli, xliv, lii.

⁴⁷⁵ Alwine (Alwina) von Keller (1878–1965): New York–born German pedagogue and psychotherapist, close confidante of the reformist pedagogue Paul Geheeb, who in later years would also be analyzed by her. In the 1930s she left Germany for England and Switzerland, where she lived with Emma von Pelet in the Casa Shanti next to Casa Gabriella, where the Eranos meetings took place. Having started her analytical traning in Berlin with Ernst Bernhard, she continued her analysis with Jung, whose student and close collaborator she became. Her ardent fascination with India, which she visited in 1929, led her to translate yogic texts from Sri Aurobindo (1943 and 1945) and Swami Vivekananda (Keller, 1944). On Keller see also Bernardini, Quaglino, and Romano (2011).

⁴⁷⁶ Neumann wrote a novel titled Der Anfang (The Beginning). One chapter was published in an anthology of young German Jewish authors, Zwischen den Zelten (Neumann, 1932).

 

78 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 1. VI. [1949]

Dear Professor Jung,

On this occasion it is just a technical request, in haste, and a query that I’m bothering you with.

We require new passports to exit the country, a matter that remains difficult, and my wife must state her profession in her passport in order to get the exit visa for the conference, etc. Certification is required as we are a young and therefore a particularly bureaucratic state. For obvious reasons I do not wish to issue her with such a “Diploma” personally, so I am asking you to certify that my wife, Julie Neumann, has been working for more than 10 years as an analytical psychologist with your assent. (Training: Adler, Miss Wolff, and my humble self.)

The other thing. The “Living Thoughts L.”477 have approached me to write the volume on you. I had accepted and written to Rascher.⁴⁷⁸ R. objected angrily and informed me that you and he had already turned down the publisher’s request.⁴⁷⁹ Whereupon, I equally angrily withdrew my agreement. Response from them: you had absolutely not declined etc., etc. I consider the matter closed, but just wanted to put you in the picture anyway, in case you wish to do something about it. In principle, I think it could only be a good thing if something like this came out on the occasion of your 75th and this is why I had accepted it. What’s been done for Freud, should also be done for Jung.480 Of course I did not know that you had been asked and that you had suggested Mrs. Harding.⁴⁸¹ The publisher has only just told me this. I only say it so that no misunderstandings arise.

As I am up to my ears in all sorts of things, you will forgive my brevity. I certainly hope that it all works out and that I will be able to come to Switzerland once again this year and see you and speak with you. The Ethic can wait till then. The translation is due in two years and I have contractually agreed upon revisions, etc. At the moment I am torturing myself with the Eranos lecture, the Great Mother and the Psychology of the Feminine, both internally and externally.

With best wishes, also to Mrs. Jung,

Your grateful,

E. Neumann

⁴⁷⁷ The “Living Thoughts Library” was a book series edited by Alfred O. Mendel. Each volume presented the work of a prominent thinker through excerpts from the primary sources and an introductory explanation by a representative of or scholar in the field. In the first volume of the series Thomas Mann introduced the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Mann, 1939).

⁴⁷⁸ Neumann to Rascher, 24 April 1949: “I have been invited to write and assemble the Volume on Jung for the ‘Living Thoughts Library’ which I’m sure you know, in which the leading minds of the world are represented. I have naturally accepted and hope that it will be a pleasure for him on the occasion of his 75th birthday next year. However, as the volumes combine an essay on the author with a selection of his writing, I felt it was necessary to ask you for your permission” (RA).

⁴⁷⁹ Rascher to Neumann, 7 May 1949: “As far as the compilation volume for The Living Thoughts library is concerned, the publisher has already approached Prof. Dr. Jung and us. We have resolutely declined their request” (RA).

⁴⁸⁰ The editor Alfred O. Mendel wrote to Jung on 26 October 1948 asking him for the permission to edit a volume on Jung. In his letter Mendel mentioned the volume on Freud (Wälder, 1941): “In the book series whose catalogue I enclose, there is a volume on ‘Freud.’ In keeping with Freud’s express wish, it was compiled by his ‘right-hand man,’ Dr. Wälder” (JA).

⁴⁸¹ In his letter to Mendel from 11 November 1948 Jung wrote: “From among my students, Dr. M. Esther Harding in New York (108 East 38th Street) would be the most obvious person” (JA). On Esther Harding see n. 276.

 

79 J

Küsnacht, Zch., 18th June 1949

Seestr. 228

Dr. Erich Neumann,

1, Gordon St.,

Tel Aviv

Dear Colleague,

Enclosed, the requested certificate.

It was reported to me that this Living Thoughts Library is not a very serious concern.482 I was under the impression that this is an American outfit. Such things are very frequently of unbelievable superficiality in America. I tentatively suggested Dr. Harding just because I was of the opinion that this was an American matter. It then turned out that it is not actually a biography that is planned but a type of anthology, i.e., 1/3 biographical notes and 2/3 excerpts from my works, so to a certain extent a disloyal competition with my own publications. This was the reason why I declined. If you possess different information and if it really is a question of an original piece and not simply cobbling together an anthology, then this would be a different matter of course. I would naturally be very much in agreement if you wrote something like this, especially if it is for Europe and takes place in German.—But I see from the letter from Mr. Mendel that in fact it is supposed to be “30–40 pages introductory words, the remaining 160–170 pages, a selection from my works.”⁴⁸³

I wish you all necessary luck for your big subject at the Eranos conference. It’s a huge soup you’ve landed yourself in there!

I have now happily written—at least in rough—my investigation of synchronicity, which has been weighing on me for a long time. But, for now, I must have it looked over by the physicists.

With best wishes,

Your,

C. G. Jung

482 Jung’s verdict is somehow contradicted by an impressive number of prominent European and American intellectuals who wrote for the series: John Dewey on Thomas Jefferson, André Gide on Michel de Montaigne, Heinrich Mann on Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann on Arthur Schopenhauer, Leon Trotsky on Karl Marx, Paul Valéry on René Descartes, Arnold Zweig on Baruch Spinoza, Stefan Zweig on Leo Tolstoy, to mention only a few.

⁴⁸³ Letter from Alfred O. Mendel to Jung on 13 November 1948 (JA).

 

79 J (A)484

[Küsnacht, Zch.] 18th June 1949

CERTIFICATE.

I hereby confirm that Mrs. Julia Neumann (1 Gordon St., Tel Aviv) has been practicing as an Analytical Psychologist with my authorization for more than ten years.

⁴⁸⁴ In possession of the Stiftung der Werke von C. G. Jung.

 

80 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 16. VII. 49

Highly esteemed and dear Professor Jung,

Firstly I would like to wish you all the best for your birthday, and hope that your health and strength have been restored to you and to us all as in the last few years. You do know that I also hope to be able to see and speak with you personally—as much as indeterminable fate will allow. Alongside the surprising and rather sinister matter of the publications, the last year has bestowed on me, in compensation, so much that is personally unexpected and not easily digestible that my relationship with you, dear Professor Jung, is indeed the firmest link that ties me personally to Europe, despite everything. It goes without saying what this means as there is, for me, no other shore than the Occidental European one. Although we still have not got an exit visa, I hope everything will sort itself out in time. I definitely hope to be able to speak with you even if you are not going to Ascona.

I hope you will understand that I have not touched the burning (in every sense of the word) topic of New Ethic again. Not even after G. Adler’s long letter in which he reported your conversation to me.485 Firstly I had to get to grips with the difficult subject of my Eranos lecture in some sort of passable way, which was not easy, and added to this were personal matters that provided striking contributions to the subject and the whole situation, and not least, I wanted some distance. So I hope to be able to speak with you in person about these complicated questions; it seems better to me than writing it all, although, as you perhaps know, I am always caught up in an internal compliance in the initial moments of personal contact, which is rather misleading.

In the meantime, Origins has finally come out and I am anticipating with some suspense the new surprises that await me. Even here I will not have succeeded in writing in a way that cannot be misconstrued by evil wishers and/or idiots. I do not have the intention or ability of attempting such a thing either, and do not even believe that anyone—you included, dear Professor, can ever write in such way. But, dear Professor Jung, I urgently ask you for one thing. If someone in Switzerland should determine, to your initial amazement, that my book is an attack on you, or on psychology or the church or anything else, then please do not read my book once or even several times more in response. (It has become such a thick tome that it rather fills me with horror.) I still cannot ward off the impression that with every book one reads over and over again, one will always be able to find something for “idiots and evil-wishers” to say against it. It is interesting to find where this label sits, but not even that is of interest. (Please do not think that, by this, I am saying that I did not agree with substantial parts of your critique.)

I would be grateful to you if you could let me know if you are able to come to Ascona as I would have to arrange my stay a bit differently if not, always provided we can leave here and that it is possible for you to find time for me.

I, too, warmly thank you—especially on behalf of my wife—for the certificate and I wish you once again all the best for the New Year; I am, with best wishes to Mrs. Jung,

In gratitude,

Your,

E. Neumann

485 Letter is missing.

 

81 MJS

Küsnacht, Zch., 23rd July 1949
Seestrasse 228

Dr. Erich Neumann,

1, Gordon St.,

Tel Aviv

Dear Doctor,

Professor Jung who is already in Bollingen and, if possible, wishes to write no letters at the moment, has asked me to write to you and to let you know that he has now made the decision not to go to Ascona as he fears that the associated demands would cancel out the entire benefits of his holidays. Despite this, he very much hopes to be able to see you and asks you to let him know as soon as possible whether you will come to Zurich before or after the conference. He hopes that you would not mind possibly seeing him in Bollingen.

Hopefully you have now received the exit visa, or will do in time.

Professor and Mrs. Jung send you and your wife warm greetings, and I join them in doing so.

Your,
[Marie-Jeanne Schmid]

 

82 J

Bollingen, 28. VIII. 1949

Dear Colleague,

As a result of all sorts of interruptions I have up till now only been able to work through a little more than half of your manuscript.486 Very difficult for a lay audience, even an educated one, as too much is taken for granted. Very interesting for me as exquisitely thought through. Only—you have the tendency of characterizing the unconscious too pessimistically. It would be advisable to immediately place a positive remark after every negative one, otherwise one gets the impression of a catastrophic tragedy without grace from above. That would just not resonate with the experience: “that God helps the brave.” Otherwise, I don’t have any substantial corrections to report so far. I am especially impressed by how thoroughly you have thought through the problems. But do not forget that behind this cloud of thought sits an audience that will hardly be in a position to follow.

In the meantime, with best wishes,

Your devoted,

C. G. Jung

⁴⁸⁶ As Jung could not attend the Eranos conference 1949, Neumann seemed to have asked Jung for his opinion about his lecture before the conference. The title of his lecture was “Die mythische Welt und der Einzelne” (“The Mythical World and the Individual”) (Neumann, 1950).

 

83 N

[around] 26th July 1950

Dear Professor Jung,

You will understand how immensely difficult it is to write a birthday letter to you, and especially for your 75th. Such a day prompts me so urgently to reflect and to try to capture what the encounter with you has meant for my life and just how much your life per se has been growing in significance, quite independently from me—how could all this be expressed in a letter.

In the autumn of ’34,487 I came to you for the first time, then in ’36 from Palestine and then finally, after 11 years and the war and many experiences, came the reunion with you in ’47. That is a long stretch of life. Of course you don’t know what it meant for me that I have always had the impression and retain it to this day, that in your eyes as well my work is meaningfully affiliated with yours, thanks to your investment in me. In my state of remote isolation I naturally did not know whether the trajectory of my development was “consistent” with yours or not; it was only when I got my hands on your and Kerényi’s book,⁴⁸⁸ many years after its appearance, that I became quite sure that Origins could not be completely “wayward.” I have tried to burden you as little as possible with my own private development, but it does belong here in this context. In this remote little country, which is diminutive, in many things narrow and barbaric, productive in much, and pregnant with the future, I stand, inwardly of course, completely alone, with a decaying Europe at my back and a dangerously emergent Asia before me. Indeed, in this situation the reconnection with you has always been a vital support.

And now you are 75 and the next world war, be it cold or very hot, stands once again at the door. Of course one wonders what one is doing actually; has any of it any point. You yourself have embedded your work and its impact in the world, and that will be amplified, less, I believe, in a jaded Switzerland or in the pseudo-certainty of America, than in a place where danger and suffering threaten to extinguish the individual. But what about us? But what about my generation? For us, everything lies in an obscurity of danger, so that it is difficult to always keep an unshaken faith that the choice is located in the individual. In a time when the claim of the collective person is asserting itself externally and internally with violence and with justification, it is often difficult enough to keep on going, because the meaninglessness of keeping the world in order by the individual and from the inside out seems so apparent. But in the meantime I am so convinced of the real paradox of the living that I can brush off these worries, and for this reason I am also certain that your work is not an end but a beginning, even if we do not know where it is actually headed. I hope you will not consider me arrogant if I admit to you that even here my enforced isolation helps. I find it appropriate and keep experiencing that, despite everything, my own vitality is soaring up out of it. My rootedness is not very effective in the sense of the possibility of seeing only the one thing. Even here, your being-more-than-European and your quest through the times and nations have helped me very much. Many remarkable things have happened to me, and I have thus experienced much in other ways and forms, and with hindsight, I know that you have been my inner leader in it all. This has often been a comfort to me, especially as I experience much in a very different and contradictory way from you, as you know. In this way, far beyond these “incidents” and “frivolities,” a transcendent sense of belonging to you has always remained inwardly apparent to me and it is possibly stronger than you imagine. Whenever we are together in person, my moon always elicits your sun in the most joyful way, so I would like to assure you of this at any rate on this “festive occasion.”

I hope very much that you will spend your birthday without too many stresses and wish you and Mrs. Jung all the best. If my wife and I come to Switzerland, as we would like to—my wife has been very ill for a long time—we will express our congratulations to you in person. I have heard a rumor that you will come to Ascona, but I fear it will be too great a struggle for you. So we are not going to raise our hopes of that for now.

Ever yours,

E. Neumann

487 Neumann is wrong. In fact he came to Jung in autumn 1933.

⁴⁸⁸ Jung and Kerényi (1941).

 

84 N

Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv,

20. VII. 51

Dear Professor Jung,

I am sending you this birthday greeting as a sign that I have not completely disappeared. I hope very much that you have now recovered from the exhaustion and hope that you will be able to come to Ascona without it being too much for you. But please take good care! Everything else is unimportant. The last year was a difficult one for me—apart from the fact that I did some pretty good work and, among other things, completed the manuscript of the Great Mother for Bollingen. Although I have always made an effort not to burden and pester you with my private matters, this time I cannot spare you, dear Professor. So I hope very much you will have a couple of hours for me—as usual. So for this reason too, I will let you know as soon as I am in Switzerland to find out when it would suit you best to see me.

Otherwise, I thank you very much for allowing me to see the draft of the new Transformations489—it has not yet arrived—so as not to repeat too many blunders in the Great Mother. With many greetings to Mrs. Jung too, and best wishes—you know it goes without saying that I send those—

I am,

Your,

E. Neumann

⁴⁸⁹ Symbole der Wandlung (Symbols of Transformation) (1952a) is the revised version of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Psychology of the Unconscious) (1912).

 

85 N

[Ascona, no date]490

Very dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

A letter that I wrote to you and Mrs. Jung weeks ago, soon after my arrival in Switzerland, has evidently got lost in your mail in Küsnacht. Therefore I am repeating my previous request. I would like to see and speak to you and your wife more than once if at all possible. We are in Zurich from 24th September until 6th October and I would like to know when and where I can visit you as my time in Zurich is occupied with work and I would like to make plans. Would you be so kind as to write to me at the Hotel Seidenhopf, 7–9 Sihl St., Zurich? I hope very much that you and your wife are enjoying good health; my wife and I have recuperated very well, firstly in Sils Maria and now in Ascona. I’m looking forward very much to speaking to you, there is always much more to talk about than we ever manage.

Goodbye, with best wishes to Mrs. Jung from my wife too,
Ever yours,
E. Neumann

We will stay here until the 21st and then go to Zurich via Basel.

⁴⁹⁰ No date or year is given. The letter must have been written between 1948, the year Erich Neumann lectured at Eranos, and 1955, the year in which Emma Jung died (27 November 1955).

 

86 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 5th Dec. 51

My dear Professor Jung,

You must excuse me that I have selfishly held on to the Job until now,491 but I had to read it a second time after a certain gap before I could send it back to you. I am sure you will not take exception if I make a few comments about it.

Firstly it is a book that grips me deeply, I find it the finest and deepest of your books, and I should also say that it is actually no longer a “book.” In a certain sense it is an argument with God, a concern similar to that of Abraham when he argues with God because of the downfall of Sodom. It is—for me personally—especially also an argument against God who allowed 6 million of “His” people to be killed, for Job is precisely also Israel, and I don’t mean that in a “small” way, I know we are the paradigm for the whole of humanity in whose name you are speaking, protesting, and consoling. And exactly the conscious one-sidedness, yes, often the inaccuracy of what you are saying is, to me, an inner proof of the necessity and justice of your attack—which is, of course, not one, as I well know.

But for all this, it seems to me that it takes the normal reader too little into account in the intermingling of points of view. In part, it is an interpretation of the Occidental inner history of the soul; in part, it is a dialogue with God; in part, a psychological analysis; in part, a myth or, better, the making conscious of the Occidental myth. For me personally, it is precisely this intertwining and interweaving, this dramatic authenticity of the “document” which is the crucial thing, but whom do you want to burden with this? For it does not purport to be like the Sermones492 (which I find Job to be the continuation of) as a text for the initiated, although it is this in a certain way.

Questions. Could it not be made clearer that Job is a prototype for suffering humanity, just as it is about the analysis of the situation of humanity at the turn of time. But then the confinement to the canonical books is still not comprehensible, why then do Gnosis and the Jewish Midrash not belong here? Is it only about the Western image of God, you do mean the general transformation of the image of God, but can one simply leave out Asia? And if so, is it not even more the God-image of Western humanity? Fine, how should one separate this, but how should one understand that the history of God is contained explicitly in the canonical texts, is it not therefore about the image engendered by these texts?

You imply this problem, but what you write in the last pages (pp. 106–7) belongs at the start, or also at the start.

The oscillation between the theological and the psychological formulation needs to be rather strengthened if it is not to seem unintentional. E.g., pp. 93–94. The problem of the “metaphysical advocate” against Yahweh often sounds too Gnostic, whereby Yahweh—despite your counterassurance—becomes all too similar to the demiurge. (Here it seems to me to be a real unresolved religious problem.) In reality, you believe in the feminine Sophia as the highest authority without admitting it.⁴⁹³ Perhaps it only seems to me to be so because this is how it is for me personally. Only the matriarchal psychology of the psyche and the Holy Ghost is comprehensible. (??)⁴⁹⁴ When you speak of the omniscience of Yahweh, it sounds always ironic. But what if he really possesses it and only gives himself archaically to the archaic because he can only become comprehensible to it in this way and if everything that you say is correct but necessary at the same time. The problem is—why was an unconscious world created, but does not the omniscience that precedes it suggest a meaningful direction though, in which the Godhead can never be manifest in a different way from one that corresponds to humanity.

If one loves people beyond their qualities, how could God’s love, which is also supposed to exist beyond his qualities, become conscious in any other way than by God seeming terrible? And if the Godhead “wanted” this, how could it be accomplished in any other way than with help from Satan who is equally necessary? Not as a “test,” but as the only situation in which the superiority of the human being—which you have already established—can appear. So, for example, I do not see Psalm 89 as a betrayal.495 At a lower lever, it is a punishment that is threatened, and on a higher—has Yahweh broken his covenant with David, with the Jews, with humanity? The manifestation of Yahweh is “bound” to the status of man, this is his covenant, your polemic against theology is often not differentiated from that against God. Did God say he is only the summum bonum?

The unity that we Jews confess is precisely the one of the metaphysical advocate and the fear- and terror-inspiring God. You portray the transformation of humanity in this numinosum as if there were no problem of transference and projection in it. In the dramatic portrayal of the development, that is fully justified, but at the end a distancing summary that is not any longer trapped in the process itself could be helpful. Of course I know that it is precisely your deep concern to “secure” human existence in this way, so that it contributes so decisively to the fate of the Godhead. Therefore one can only portray this event in a two-sided way, but the meaningful disposition of the world, or even only the potentially meaningful existence in it, may not be overlaid with a Gnostic sentiment that portrays Job’s humility, which is all too justified, as the gagging of a wise man by a monster of a God. (It is striking that the infinite goodness of God is conceptually present, but does not really appear in any one place.)

I am not defending Yahweh but the advocate in heaven whom Job himself calls upon. The analysis of Job is after all only a part, the other side is also present, which, for example, puts this Yahweh on trial in you yourself today. With the manifestation in the storm and thunder, have you not overlooked the one in the rustling of the wind although it has revealed itself as the higher form?

You know well that the question of the new ethic still grips me. What about “washing off the obnoxious darkness”496 on p. 95 and “the guilty man is selected for incarnation”⁴⁹⁷ on p. 99? (May I gently make you aware, by the way, that such a young institute as the C. G. Jung Institute will have to distance itself from you and your writings?)

The terrible trajectory of development: Yahweh, Yahweh-Sophia, Christ, divine child, may not be based on the “random” selection of interpreted places, or this line must at least become visible at the end in its absolute relevance, so that the discussion does not overshadow the [biggest] question of the Answer with adequate or inadequate interpretation of individual texts.

I very much hope, dear Professor, you will not take offense at the bluntness of my objections. None of them are central issues; it seems to me, I have only noted what occurred to me. But despite this, I hope that I have understood you, if not, I would be very grateful for details and corrections. My remarks basically tend to deepen the stormy reaction that this book will trigger so that it is not made all too easy for those who do not wish to understand. Especially the “Gnostic misunderstanding” to which Quispel⁴⁹⁸ also seems to have succumbed should be prevented as much as possible. In any case, all this must not be at the cost of the “naïveté” of the portrayal that so profoundly deepens the impression—to me anyway.

Figure 7. Gerhard Adler, Erich Neumann, and Gilles Quispel at the Eranos conference 1951 (Eranos Archive; courtesy of Paul Kugler).

In the Psyche,499 which Rascher will send you as soon as it comes out (which should happen any day), a similar process of an archetypal nature seems to me to exist. But taking place in the feminine and at the edge of antiquity. But I have only been able to hint at it and for sure it is a problem of apparently smaller numinosity. But who knows, even the divine daughter is not without deep significance. The rebirth of Sophia in ecstasy is still quite puzzling to me, but there is something about it.

I hope very much that my letter will not upset you, but I could not send Job back to you without my thanks. That these thanks bring questions with them will not surprise you.

With all warm wishes,

Your,

E. Neumann

491 Antwort auf Hiob (Answer to Job) was published in 1952 by Rascher in Zurich (Jung, 1952b). For a detailed commentary on Jung’s book see Bishop (2002).

⁴⁹² Jung (1916); see n. 179.

⁴⁹³ Sophia, Greek for wisdom, in Latin sapaientia dei, or the wisdom of God. In chapter 3 of Answer to Job (Jung, 1952b, §§ 609–24) Jung places the book of Job in the tradition of wisdom literature begining with the book of Proverbs. Other examples, cited by Jung, as texts in which the wisdom of God is expressed, are the Psalms, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Book of Wisdom, and the Wisdom of Sirach. Jung calls her “a coeternal and more or less hypostatized pneuma of feminine nature that existed before the Creation” (Jung, 1952b, § 609). According to Jung it is Job’s righteousness that reveals Yahweh’s unconscious separation from wisdom to himself: “the ‘just’ God could not go on committing injustices, and the ‘Omniscient’ could not behave any longer like a clueless and thoughtless human being. Self-reflection becomes an imperative necessity, and for this Wisdom is needed. Yahweh has to remember his absolute knowledge; for, if Job gains knowledge of God, then God must also learn to know himself” (Jung, 1952b, § 617).

⁴⁹⁴ The two question marks in brackets were inserted by Neumann.

⁴⁹⁵ Jung writes in Answer to Job quoting Psalm 89:13–14: “In view of this intense personal relatedness to his chosen people, it was only to be expected that a regular covenant would develop which also extended to certain individuals, for instance to David. As we learn from the Eighty-ninth Psalm, Yahweh told him: ‘My steadfast love I will keep for him for ever, / and my covenant will stand firm for him. / […] I will not violate my covenant, / or alter the word that went forth from my lips. / Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; / I will not lie to David.’ And yet it happened that he, who watched so jealously over the fulfillment of laws and contracts, broke his own oath” (Jung, 1952b, §§ 569–70).

⁴⁹⁶ “We therefore need more light, more goodness and moral strength, and must wash off as much of the obnoxious blackness as possible, otherwise we shall not be able to assimilate the dark God who also wants to become man, and at the same time endure him without perishing” (Jung, 1952b, § 742).

⁴⁹⁷ “The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation” (Jung, 1952b, § 746).

⁴⁹⁸ Gilles Quispel (1916–2006): Dutch theologian, professor for the History of the Early Church (Utrecht University), expert on Gnosticism. Studied classical philology and theology and was awarded a PhD degree for his thesis on Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem (1943). Quispel met Jung for the first time at the 1944 Eranos conference, to which he became the regular contributor on Gnostic topics from 1947 until 1971. It was Quispel who convinced Jung and C. A. Meier in 1952 to purchase a number of Gnostic scriptures discovered in Nag Hammadi (Egypt) in 1945. These five scriptures (Codex I) were named after Jung—against his will—and remained in Zurich until 1975, when they were returned to Egypt (on the “Codex Jung” see n. 543). Quispel became especially known for his research on another scripture from Nag Hammadi’s “Codex II,” the Gospel of Thomas. Jung wrote a foreword for an (unpublished) volume of Quispel’s Eranos lectures (Jung, 1949a). Quispel’s works include The Jung Codex: A Newly Recovered Gnostic Papyrus (together with G. Van Unnik and W. C. Puech) (1955), four lectures held at the Jung Institute published as Gnosis als Weltreligion (1951), Gnostic Studies (1974), Tatian and the Gospel of Thomas (1975), and Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica (2008). On Quispel see Van den Broek and Vermaseren (1981). An interview about his relationship with Jung was conducted by James Kirsch and Suzanne Wagner, titled “Remembering Jung: A Conversation about C. G. Jung and His Work with Gilles Quispel” (Kirsch and Wagner, 1977).

⁴⁹⁹ “Eros and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine: A Commentary on the Tale by Apuleius” (Neumann, 1952).

 

87 N

Tel Aviv, 11th Dec. [1951]

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Dear Professor Jung,

I’m coming to you this time with a request. My son is supposed to begin his medical studies in Zurich at the end of next year (at the moment he wants to become a psychotherapist), but it is very difficult to get a place there as a foreigner. I am asking you for a letter of sponsorship in which you say what needs to be said. I will also write myself and try to put my connection with Switzerland through you, Rascher, Ascona into the mix. I very much hope that such a letter from you will be the deciding factor. Miss Schmid will then send it on to Dr. Hurwitz.500 Very many thanks.

I would like to draw your attention to a picture by Blake, in case you do not know it. From the Job series. (World’s Masters New Series, Blake, Fig. 43.)501

“Job affrighted by a vision of his God. Plate ii of the Series. Job’s God is himself with a cloven hoof, which is the Great Selfhood, identified by B. with Satan. He is entwined with the serpent.”

Once again many thanks and greetings,
Your,
E. Neumann

At the same time I wish you and Mrs. Jung all the best for the New Year, i.e., especially health and productivity. The first especially for you, the second for us all.

⁵⁰⁰ Siegmund Hurwitz (1904–1994): Swiss psychotherapist of Jewish descent, medical doctor, Jung’s dentist and friend; analytical training with Jung, Toni Wolff, and Marie-Louise von Franz. Hurwitz and his wife Leni, who was one of the editors of Jung’s Gesammelte Werke, were good friends with the Neumanns. Hurwitz shared with Neumann a common interest in Jewish mysticism. His article on “Archetypische Motive in der chassidischen Mystik” was published in the third volume of Studien aus dem C. G. Jung Institut “Zeitlose Dokumente der Seele” (Timeless Documents of the Soul) (together with articles by Marie-Louise von Franz and Helmuth Jacobsohn). He presented a copy to Neumann with the dedication “Herrn u. Frau Neumann überreicht vom Verfasser” (“Presented to Mr. and Mrs. Neumann by the author”) (GEA). His refusal to join the Psychological Club Zurich was also instrumental in bringing to fall the notorious Jewish clause, which stated that the number of Jewish members should not exceed more than 25 percent. This policy went back to the 1930s and was formalized in a document from 7 December 1944. It was finally withdrawn in 1950 (see Maidenbaum, 1991). His works include Die Gestalt des sterbenden Messiahs (The Figure of the Dying Messiah) (1958), Die Erste Eva: Eine Studie über dunkle Aspekte des Weiblichen (Lilith—The First Eve) (1980), and The Dark Face of God in Judaism (1994).

⁵⁰¹ William Blake (1757–1827), With Dreams upon My Bed Thou Scarest Me & Affrightest Me with Visions (Job 7:14), plate 11 of Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (1825). The engravings of 1826 were preceded by two series of watercolors (1805/6 and 1821). See cover picture.

 

88 MJS

Küsnacht, Zch., 12th December 1951

Dear Doctor,

Although I hope that Prof. Jung will answer your letter in the foreseeable future, I would like to let you know straightaway that the manuscript has just arrived safely (held together by a good spirit, but complete) and I warmly thank you for sending it back.

May I add that your letter not only interests me deeply but has also somehow “redeemed” me, by explaining why I had the feeling in certain points that something was not right without being able to see why. It also interested me to see that your “critique” corresponds in essence with one such by Hans Schär (the clergyman), only the latter has expressed his in a very protestant unskilled way, so that Prof. Jung could not elaborate on it. I am in exceptional suspense about how Prof. Jung will react to your letter.

And now—instead of a Christmas card—I would like to send you and your wife good wishes for the New Year—which will hopefully bring you much joy and happiness, many pleasant surprises and only a strict minimum of unavoidable “bad quarter hours.”

Your,

Marie-Jeanne Schmidt

 

89 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

Pro tem: Bollingen, Ct. St. Gallen

Until 15. 1

Küsnacht, Zurich,

Seestrasse 228

5. 1. 1952502

My dear Neumann,

I thank you very much for your kind letter and the way you understand me. This compensates for 1,000 misunderstandings! You have put your finger on the correct spot, one that is painful for me: I was not able to take account of the normal reader.

He must much more make allowances for me. I had to pay this tribute to the merciless fact of my age. In the undiluted providence of the most extensive noncomprehension, no persuasion and no captatio benevolentiae⁵⁰³ succeeded, and even the Nuremburg funnel⁵⁰⁴ slipped from my hands. Not in my uniform, but “naked and bare must I give up the ghost” in full awareness of the offense that my nakedness will cause. But what will this mean in the face of this arrogance that I had to demonstrate to be able to insult even God? This has caused me greater discomfort than when I had the whole world against me. Of this latter, there is nothing more that is new to me. I have hinted at my grief and my condolence in my motto: Doleo super te frater mi.505

To your questions: It is about the canonical image of God. This affects us first and foremost, and not a general philosophical concept of God. This latter lives neither in me nor anywhere else. It is merely intellectual. God is always specific and always locally relevant, otherwise he would be ineffectual. For me, the Occidental God-image is relevant, whether I agree intellectually or not. I’m not pushing any philosophy of religion, but I am gripped, almost smitten, and am defending myself to the best of my ability. Nothing of Gnosis and the Midrashim belongs here, because nothing of that is in it. Purusha-Atman⁵⁰⁶ and the Tao only have to do with my cognitive knowledge, but not my living emotion. This is local, barbaric, infantile, and inscrutably unscientific.

The “oscillation between the theological and the psychological formulation” is in fact “unintended.” Sophia is actually more personable than the demiurge, but in the face of the reality of both, my sympathy does not count.

God himself is a contradictio in adjecto,⁵⁰⁷ therefore he requires the human being in order to become whole. Sophia is always one step ahead, the demiurge always one step behind. God is an affliction that man should cure. God thrusts himself into man for this purpose. Why would he do this if he already has everything? For sure, God must manifest his true form to man in order to reach him, otherwise man would eternally praise his goodness and justice and thereby refuse admittance to God. This can only happen through Satan but satanic action is not vindicated otherwise God would not be really recognized.

The “advocate” seems to me to be Sophia or omniscience.508 Ouranos and Tethys⁵⁰⁹ do not sleep together any more, Kether and Malchuth are separated, the Shekinah in exile;⁵¹⁰ that is the reason for the affliction in God. The Mysterium Coniunctionis is the concern of man. He is the nymphagōgós⁵¹¹ of the heavenly marriage. How can man distance himself from this event? He would then be a philosopher, who speaks about God, but not with him. The former would be easy and would give man false security; the latter is difficult and therefore exceptionally unpopular. Precisely that was my lamented fate; therefore, it needed a powerful illness to break through my resistance. I am supposed to be beneath and not above everywhere. How would Job have looked if he had been able to distance himself?

If we are talking of the Occidental, spec. Protestant image of God, then there are no texts whose more or less reliable interpretation can be considered. This is a matter of lock, stock, and barrel where one does not take a sledgehammer to crack a nut, i.e., it is a matter of a réprésentation collective about which everyone knows something.

As far as the nigredo512 is concerned, it is certain that no one is redeemed from a sin that he has never committed and that one who is standing on a summit cannot scale it. To each one, the precise humiliation that he receives is given along with his character. If he seeks wholeness seriously, then he will fall unawares into the hole designed for him and from this darkness the light will rise for him; but the light cannot be lit for him. If someone feels themselves to be in the light, then I would never persuade him into the darkness, for otherwise he would seek and find something black with his light that he is not. The light cannot see the darkness that is peculiar to him. But if it declines and the human being follows his twilight as he followed his light, he will thus find his way into his night. If the light does not decline, he would be a fool if he did not remain in it.

Your Psyche has arrived—many thanks—and I have started reading it. I will write to you about it later. So far I have been very impressed by your representation and am enjoying it.

Job and Synchronicity⁵¹³ are currently in press. For the time being my unfortunately very limited capacity is fully allocated to writing the last chapter of Mysterium Coniunctionis that will fill 2 volumes, followed by a third that will contain the Aurora Consurgens (attributed to Thomas of Aquinas)514 as an example of the reciprocal penetration of Christianity and alchemy.

Once again many thanks!

Your devoted,
C. G. Jung

Ps Hopefully you will not take offense at my having taken the liberty of leaving off your title in the address. Please do the same with me.

⁵⁰² The handwritten version dates 5 January 1952; the typescript version (signed C. G. Jung) gives the date of 7 January.

⁵⁰³ captatio benevolentiae (Latin), rhetorical device, in which the speaker addresses the audience at the beginning of his speech in order to ask for the goodwill of the listeners.

⁵⁰⁴ Nürnberger Trichter (“Funnel of Nuremberg”), proverbial saying; to use a Nürnberger Trichter means to use a device that helps drum something into someone’s head without any effort on the person’s behalf. It goes back to the book Poetischer Trichter (“Poetic Funnel”) by the Nuremberg poet Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (1607–1658), which claims in its subtitle to “infuse” the German poetry into someone’s head within six hours.

⁵⁰⁵ The motto of Jung’s Answer to Job is from 2 Samuel 1:26: “Doleo super te frater mi Ionathan decore nimis et amabilis super amorem mulierum” (Vulgate); “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (KJB).

⁵⁰⁶ purusha [trans. “male”], also atman in the Vedanta tradition, the transcendental Self or pure Spirit. “In Classical Yoga the purusha, which is styled the ‘power of Awareness’ (citishakti) is conceived as being absolutey distinct from nature (prakriti), which lacks all awareness. Yet what we call consciousness is due to a curious correlation (samyoga) between the purusha and the prakriti” (Feuerstein, 1997, p. 236). This is why Sir John Woodroffe (pseud. Arthur Avalon) could describe it as “a center of limited consciousness—limited by the associated Prakrti and its products of Mind and Matter” (Avalon, 1919, p. 49). Jung discusses the purusha in the Kundalini seminar on 26 October 1932: “So purusha is identical with the psychical substance of thought and value, feeling. In the recognition of feelings and of ideas one sees the purusha. That is the first inkling of a being within your psychological or psychical existence that is not yourself—a being in which you are contained, which is greater and more important than you but which has an entirely psychical existence” (Jung, 1932, pp. 45–46).

⁵⁰⁷ contradictio in adjecto (Latin), “contradiction in itself” or “contradiction in terms”; a contradiction between an adjective and the noun it modifies, e.g., round square.

⁵⁰⁸ Reference to Job 19:25: “For I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” Jung identifies the “redeemer” or “advocate” with Sophia: “God was now known, and this knowledge went on working not only in Yahweh but in man too. Thus it was the men of the last few centuries before Christ who, at the gentle touch of the preexistent Sophia, compensate Yahweh and his attitude, and at the same time complete the anamnesis of Wisdom. Taking a highly personified form that is clear proof of her autonomy, Wisdom reveals herself to men as a friendly helper and advocate against Yahweh, and shows them the bright side, the kind, just, and amiable aspect of their God” (Jung, 1952b, § 623).

⁵⁰⁹ Jung is wrong here. Ouranos was the father of Tethys, not her spouse. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Gaia, the primordial Greek goddess personifying the Earth, was born out of chaos. She created Ouranos, the sky, and Pontos, the sea, by herself. Seduced by the powers of Eros she lay together with Ouranos and created the Cyclopes, the Hekatonkheires, and the Titans, among which were Oceanos, representing the primal river surrounding the world, and his sister and wife Tethys, the nurturing moisture. However, in Homer’s Iliad (Book XIV, 200–210), Hera deceivingly tells Zeus and Aphrodite that she will see Oceanos, the father of all gods, and mother Tethys, in order to finish their endless strive. The passage attributes the genealogical roots of the Greek gods to Oceanos and Tethys instead of Ouranos and Gaia, which might have led to Jung’s mix-up. Jung owned a copy of Johann Heinrich Voss’s German translation of The Iliad.

⁵¹⁰ Kether, also Keter, Hebrew for crown, in the kabbalah the highest of the ten sefiroth—the attributes through which the Ein Sof (“the endless”) reveals itself—of the Great Tree of Azulit; it is the divine will for creation and beyond human comprehension. Malkuth, Hebrew for kingdom, is the lowest sefirah, also known as Shekhinah, which is the divine presence (see n. 273). Jung probably means the unity between the Shekhinah and another sefirah, the Tifereth. These two represent the female and the male principle of God, which were separated when the Shekhinah went into exile with the Jewish people. (See Jung’s letter to Ernst Fischer, 21 December 1944; Jung, 1973, vol. 1, p. 44 [German]; vol. 1, pp. 355–56 [English].)

⁵¹¹ nymphagōgós, Greek for bridal guide. In ancient Greece the paranymphos accompanied the bride and groom in a carriage from her father’s home to her new home, whereas the nymphagōgós would guide her on his own, if the groom had already been married before. Jung uses this concept to emphasize the reunion of the female and male side of God in a unio mystica.

⁵¹² nigredo, Latin for blackness, used in alchemy to describe the first stage of the alchemical process; psychologically, it equals the confrontation with the shadow as the initial stage of the individuation process.

⁵¹³ Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge) was published together with Wolfgang Pauli’s The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler (Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler) as volume four of the institute’s series titled Naturerklärung und Psyche (Jung, 1952c).

⁵¹⁴ This third volume of Mysterium Coniunctionis on the Aurora Consurgens was written by Marie-Louise von Franz (1957).

 

90 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 6. II. 52

Dear and honored C. G. Jung,

Although your letter was a great gift to me, I was not able to write to you sooner. Firstly, illness—and before, during and after it, rather too much dimming of the light. For this reason the part of your letter where you speak of one needing to follow his own dusk gripped me especially. I am trying to do it, or better said, there is nothing left for me to do than this. But there remains, it seems, nothing left but this generally.

I have written much, would have had much to write, but actually it seems to me to be only a detour and an excuse. Over and over again I am drawn to “Zen,” only I sense even there the innocuous superficiality of one’s own intention. In short, I do not know where to turn, and precisely that seems to be what is required of me. But I am ashamed to open my mouth, and that I did open my mouth, and in addition for not properly seeing what it is like to keep it shut. It is going on working, is fascinated and I will soon be able to start writing again, I fear. How good it would be to be a Chinese monk. (It does not look like anima to me, it has nothing affective about it; it is a sort of quiet despair.)

Do you know Yogananda, the Autobiography of a Yogi?515 This is also haunting me very much. Exceptionally convincing through the unmythical and the everyday of the present. I don’t even know where to go with it. With it, the problem of “magical causality”—synchronicity—behind all the immeasurably personal. The last I Ching was barely assimilable. The increase with 6 in fourth place. I don’t understand it any better than that you are the prince to whom I write this letter. The capital city is being relocated?

All the best to you, the year will bring you some storms from the external world, I hope it will not bother you, but please do not over exert yourself, the intensity of your work is overwhelming, but is it not too much? Warm greetings to Mrs. Jung, I hope Rascher has sent you two Psyches, as I would like Mrs. Jung to have a memento of that as she was my comfort in the institute.

As ever in gratitude,

Your,

E. Neumann

515 Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952): Indian yogi and guru, founder of the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (1917) and the Self-Realization Fellowship (1920); born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India; moved to the United States in 1920, where, over the next thirty-two years, he introduced the American audience to the philosophy of yoga and yogic meditation practices. His autobiographic account titled Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) became an international success. Yogananda praises Jung for his contribution to the understanding of yoga in the west: “Yoga has been superficially misunderstood by certain Western writers, but its critics have never been practitioners. Among many thoughtful tributes to Yoga may be mentioned one by Dr. C. G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist” (Yogananda, 1946, p. 226). He extensively quotes from Jung’s article “Yoga and the West” (Jung, 1936b).

 

91 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH, SEESTRASSE 228

28. II.1952

Dear Neumann,

I should have written to you some considerable time ago but I have been banished to bed once again with the flu. At 77, this is no longer such a simple matter as facilis descensus Averno, for all the more difficult is revocare gradum, i.e., the impetus to return is gradually losing its plausibility.516 I have got out of bed again for the first time today and am writing to you as one does in the three dimensional world. I must let you know in the proper way how much your Amor and Psyche pleased me.⁵¹⁷ It is brilliant,—and written with the keenest sympathy. I believe I now understand why you allow the fate of Psyche and her femininity to unfold with Apuleius on the far shores of the ancient hero world. Thus, you write it in a succinctly dogmatic way, as an event rooted in an anonymous primeval world, removed from personal capriciousness, which should and will stand as a clear example, when Apuleius experiences, in imitatio of Psyche, the descent to the under-gods and his consummation as Sol and thereby achieves the “highest authority of the masculine.” This “midday position of the sun” is a triumph with which the hero’s journey begins, namely, the voluntary abdication before the “human and the feminine” which has “proved its superiority in love.”518

Your depression seems to me to belong in the Mysterium of the afternoon. For bad books, it is enough that they have been written. Good books, however, wish to achieve something above and beyond this, and begin to pose the question to which one would prefer to leave the answering to others. It seems to me that the conversation has already begun. Ten pairs of turtles cannot withstand this. Even sinister events serve for the best if one is benevolent out of an inner necessity. After all, one should be represented before God, and there something will, for sure, become true in one. I have seldom seen a more fitting oracle. You only have to listen quietly and then you will hear what is expected of you if you only “hold on to your heart.”

Paramahansa Yogananda:⁵¹⁹ Autobiogr. of a Yogi: 100% pure coconut oil, from 40ºC in the shade and 100% humidity onward it becomes ever more credible, from the latitude of 16° South, the best psychological travel guide, involves rather too much amoebic dysentery520 and malarial anemia to make bearable the moral change of scene and the high frequency of miraculous interludes; proves itself splendidly alongside Amy McPherson⁵²¹ and her ilk as a metaphysical Luna park on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco,⁵²² is no ordinary Ersatz, but authentically Indian to all five senses and offers guaranteed century-long strolls into the great hinterland as the foreground grows increasingly darker, makes all arts of illusion superfluous and offers absolutely everything that one could wish for in the midst of a negative existence, superlatively as an antidote for desperate population growth and traffic density and impending spiritual undernourishment, so rich in vitamins that calcium, carbohydrate, and such banalities become superfluous. Mr. Martin Buber could lengthen his beard by 2 meters with this. Yes, what else could one imagine above and beyond this? Happy India! Blessed coconut-woven elephantitis islands, chapattis smelling of hot oil—aah, my liver cannot bear them any more! Yogananda fills the great void. But I did not want to write any preamble for him!⁵²³ This is just what I’m like.

Best wishes and no hard feelings!
Your,

C. G. Jung

⁵¹⁶ Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 125–29. Asking for the entry to the underworld Aeneas is told by the Sibyl of Cumae: “sate sanguine divum, / Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Averno: / noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; / sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, / hoc opus, hic labor est” (“Trojan son of Anchises, / sprung from the blood of the gods, the path to hell is easy: / black Dis’s door is open night and day: / but to retrace your steps, and go out to the air above, / that is work, that is the task.”) Jung used this quote as an epigraph for “Dream Symbols of the Process of Individuation” (Jung, 1936a).

⁵¹⁷ Neumann (1952).

⁵¹⁸ In the autumn of 1950 Neumann held a course titled “Zur Psychologie des Weiblichen: Anhand des Märchens Amor und Psyche” (“On the Psychology of the Feminine: Based on the Fairy Tale Amor and Psyche”) at the Zurich institute. Neumann’s presentations led to fierce discussions with staff members who were present, especially with C. A. Meier. On 5 October 1950, in the aftermath of this debate, Jung invited colleagues to Küsnacht in order to discuss Neumann’s presentation. Jaffé’s protocol of this meeting mentions the following participants: Marie-Louise von Franz, Emma Jung, and Liliane Frey. C. A. Meier’s absence is noted. Jung criticized these public attacks on Neumann: “One should not have discussed the problems in public. It is so finely nuanced that it is not possible to sort it out in a discussion. But above all, one can’t load these things onto N. in public. One can’t load them onto Dr. Meier either. […] Besides, one must not forget that he has been in Palestine on his own for 9 years. When he worked with me back then, many things that you are learning today had not even been uttered. When he left, we did not yet know much that we know today. And besides, we are not dealing with a theory, but a human being. You cannot do this right in the middle of a course. I would like to see the animus in you if you were to be corrected in a lecture. If I had been there, I would have attempted to rectify some things. But I would have said it only once and then shut up. N. is very sensitive, easily gets upset. But he is a creative man. And one should not upset such people. Leave him alone” (Protocol, 5 October 1950, AJP). In his discussion Jung states that if the text were a dream of a man, the figure of Psyche would represent the anima; in the case of a woman, it would represent the Self. Von Franz criticized Neumann for interpreting the fairy tale from the female psychological point of view, thereby neglecting the context of the fairy tale, which is given as a dream of the male character of the novel. In her 1970 study A Psychological Study of the Golden Ass of Apuleius she reiterates that argument in support of her view that the novel is about the anima problem of Apuleius and not about the female’s process of detachment from the mother. Although not explicitly referenced, she refers to the discussion in 1950 (Marie-Louise von Franz, 1970, English, p. 77, n. 1; German: p. 70, n. 1).

⁵¹⁹ The typescript version (in contrast to the handwritten version) gives here the following handwritten addendum by Jung: “Höchster Schwan, Yogawonne.” The meaning of Paramahansa is “supreme swan,” a title, which was bestowed upon Yogananda by his teacher Sri Yukteswar and indicates the highest spiritual attainment.

⁵²⁰ Amoebic dysentery, type of dysentery caused by the amoebia Entamoeba histolytica. The disease is transmitted through contaminated food or water and is very common in developing countries. Jung was diagnosed with amoebic dysentery in India and was admitted to the hospital in Calcutta in January 1938 (see also n. 332). Jung’s friend and collaborator, the sinologist Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930), died prematurely from the consequences of the disease in 1930.

⁵²¹ Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944): Canadian-American evangelist, well-known US celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s through her use of the radio, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (1927). The center of the Foursquare Church is the Angelus Temple (built in 1923) in Los Angeles.

⁵²² After his return from India in 1936 Yogananda resided in a hermitage in Encinitas, California, south of Los Angeles. Besides Encinitas he founded several Self-Realization Fellowship temples, among others in Hollywood and San Diego.

⁵²³ After Jung’s rejection the preface was written by W[alter] Y[eeling] Evans-Wentz (1878–1965), anthropologist and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism; best known for the English translation and edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

 

92 N

21st June ’52

Dear, esteemed C. G. Jung,

Now I am once again so much in your debt! Thanks for your last letter, thanks for the Job and for the off-prints! I have wanted to write for a long time but it wouldn’t work. Firstly I was too much wrapped up in myself and then in a work that I have been despairingly grappling with. It was in fact supposed to become the Eranos lecture, in the meantime I am writing more and more, comforted only by confirmatory I Ching castings when I feel like abandoning it, and God knows what manner of Eranos lecture will emerge from that. But there is simply nothing to be done about it. A highly “metapsychological” thing, falling between all chairs of all faculties. But I had at least to make the attempt, even if only perhaps for myself, of coming up with a unified model that gives a place to all the phenomena that till now have been rattling around at the edge of our worldview. They are all things that have exercised and bothered me for years with links to the Spirit of Psychology524 and Synchronicity,⁵²⁵ but I wish to make it clear that on my head be it. The parapsychological phenomena as well as the teleological phenomena in psychology and biology. Doubtless the depth psychological picture is rather changed by this, but I am always coming across propositions of yours that point in the same direction, only you are much more careful and scientific than I can ever afford to be. I must simply ask myself what consequences it has for our worldview if one of these phenomena is correct. Sometimes it seems to be as if I had to solve all puzzles of the world at once and the fact that all these phenomena take place to the highest degree outside of our awareness, makes the attempt to grasp it and to formulate it somehow adequately so terribly demanding, it seems to me at least; in any case I cannot remember having been gripped by a work to this degree. And at the same time a crazy uncertainty about whether all this is actually crazy, on the other hand though, also the feeling there is something to it—in brief, it’s not an edifying situation and you will now understand why I could not write. Actually it should be called: Towards a Theory of Psyche: A Meta-Psychological Experiment, the excerpt for Eranos I will naturally describe in a more harmless way.526 In reality I will only be able to discuss it with you, I fear. But you are lucky that as I won’t be finished with the draft manuscript before Eranos, I will unfortunately have to spare you for now.

There is not much to say about your Buber discussion. I find your answer—in contrast to that of Buber—very fine.⁵²⁷ But, of course, it won’t do much good. I too cannot bear him, although in all mendacity he always says something substantial. Admittedly your Gnostic strain, if one does not know you personally, is certainly strongly noticeable in your writings, as is possibly your scientific cautiousness and skepticism confusing for someone who knows you only vaguely and reads without recourse to their own experience. Anyway, it is comical enough that Mr. Glover⁵²⁸ and Mr. Buber extend these unequal hands to each other.

In this context, two “confessions” of where I have failed as a propagandist of analytical psychology. America, Pastor. Psychology, the essay on your position on religion. At first hesitatingly accepted when they wrote to me that it should not be too heavy and should be good for use in a sermon, then I sadly had to decline, but I proposed Reverend Schär529 as the right man to do this.

Furthermore, I have declined the honorable invitation to take on one of three papers for the German Therapist Congress.⁵³⁰ I am only willing to go to Germany for international matters. The past and the present of the wider and even the closer colleagues (Kranefeldt⁵³¹) is still all too present to me. I hope you will understand my perspective. On the other hand, I will be part of a discussion for a week on cultural psychology in Amersfort in Holland, at a sort of wisdom school.⁵³² They only wanted to discuss the Ethic, but I turned that down as it belongs in the large context of cultural psychology. It fills me with horror, but I should perhaps not duck out of all these things. It seems to me that I needed peace and time, and that writing is, if anything, always better than talking. My extremely demanding daily practice is plenty enough people for me.

I am very glad that I am able to see you and your wife. My wife and I both hope to exit here in time. Although I am worried about what will emerge in the work, I am sure you will understand if not the objective then at least the subjective justification of its genesis.

All best wishes,

Ever yours,

[E. Neumann]

524 Jung (1947).

⁵²⁵ Jung (1952c).

⁵²⁶ Neumann’s Eranos lecture of 1952 was titled “Die Psyche und die Wandlung der Wirklichkeitsebenen” (“The Psyche and the Transformation of the Reality Planes”) (Neumann, 1953c).

⁵²⁷ On the Jung-Buber debate in the journal Merkur (Jung, 1952; Buber, 1952) and Neumann’s correspondence with its editor (Neumann ad Merkur [DLA]) see n. 215.

⁵²⁸ Edward George Glover (1888–1972): British psychoanalyst, analyzed by Karl Abraham in Berlin in the 1920s. A leading member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in the 1930s, he opposed the psychological theories of Melanie Klein, whose daughter, Melitta Schmideberg, he analyzed at the same time. Glover resigned from the society in 1944, when the rift between the supporters of Klein and those of Anna Freud led to the development of three separate training groups. Neumann refers here to Glover’s attack on Jung in his book Freud or Jung (1950). Jung commented on Glover’s critique in a letter to Maria Folino Wald from 5 December 1951: “Glover’s book—apart from its more venomous qualities—is quite amusing: it is exactly like those pamphlets people used to write against Freud in his early days. It was quite obvious then that they were merely expressing their resentments on account of the fact that Freud had trodden on their toes. The same is true for Glover. A critique like his is always suspect as a compensation for an unconscious inclination in the other direction. He is certainly not stupid enough not to see the point I make, but I touched upon a weak spot in him, namely, where he represses his better insight and his latent criticism of his Freudian superstition. He is a bit too fanatical. Fanaticism always means overcompensated doubt. He merely shouts down his inner criticism and that’s why his book is amusing” (Jung, 1973, p. 239 [German]; vol. 2, p. 31 [English]). Other works by Glover include Psycho-Analysis (1939) and The Technique of Psycho-Analysis (1955). On Glover and the Freud-Klein controvery see Roazen (2000) and King and Steiner (1991).

⁵²⁹ On Hans Schär see n. 387. Schär did not write on Jung in Pastoral Psychology. Nevertheless, after the English publication of Answer to Job in 1954 Seward Hiltner (1956; 1956a) introduced the book and Jung’s understanding of religion to the readers. In the May issue of 1956 Wallace Winchell (1956) and J. Maxwell Chamberlin (1956) commented in the Readers’ Forum, to which Hiltner responded in a statement (1956b). Jung himself replied to the journal on the question “Why and how I wrote Answer to Job” (Jung, 1956) and responded to Walter Houston Clark’s review of The Undiscovered Self (Clark, 1958; Jung, 1959). “Psychotherapists or the Clergy,” the last chapter of Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933a), was reprinted in the journal in 1956 (Jung, 1956a).

⁵³⁰ The second congress of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie und Tiefenpsychologie (German Society for Psychotherapy and Depth Psychology) took place in Stuttgart from 8–11 September 1952. Representatives of different psychological schools were invited to discuss their theoretical differences. After Neumann’s refusal to participate, the only Jewish speaker, Alexander Müller—an Adlerian, who survived the concentration camp—was confronted with five former members of the Deutsche Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie (“Göring institute”): Carl Müller-Braunschweig, Franz Baumeyer, Edgar Herzog, Wolfgang Hochheimer, and Harald Schultz-Hencke.

⁵³¹ Wolfgang Müller Kranefeldt (1892–1950): German psychiatrist and psychotherapist, National Socialist, member of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (“Göring institute”) in Berlin since 1936. Kranefeldt was originally analyzed by Jung and was seen as Jung’s main representative in Germany before and during the Nazi era. Jung wrote the introduction to Kranefeldt’s book Psychoanalyse: Psychoanalytische Psychologie (Secret Ways of the Mind: A Survey of the Psychological Principles of Freud, Adler, and Jung) (Kranefeldt, 1930; Jung, 1930). Kranefeldt also published two articles in Jung’s Wirklichkeit der Seele (Jung, 1934c). An active member of the AÄGP and the IAAGP, he was involved in the editing of the Zentralblatt. For Neumann’s opinion on Kranefeldt see his letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, 22 May [1949] (introduction, pp. xlix–l).

⁵³² The Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte (ISVW, International School of Philosophy) in Amersfoort was founded in 1916 by the Dutch writer and philosopher Frederik van Eeden, together with Martin Buber and the mathematician L.E.J. Brouwer. Neumann lectured in Amersfoort on a number of occasions—as did Jung. Unfortunately the archives of the school—containing the details of these representations—were destroyed in World War II (information ISVW, 8 July 2013).

 

93 N

D. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 12. XII [1952]

Dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

As I have sadly heard that you have been seriously ill but that you have now recovered, I would actually only like to write to you of how glad I am about your return to health and how concerned I am that you are still over-exerting yourself so much. When I cast my eyes over your work of the last ten years then I must say that there is something almost shocking about the magnitude of this achievement alone. But I believe that I have learned from you that even being obsessed with work is, in fact, also an obsession. You see, your loyal companions around you should do more to ensure that you have peace and quiet—so that those of us at some distance could have a clearer conscience when we are there. I always nearly have a bad one when I would like to speak to you and I see how many predators you have already fed. But of course I know all too well myself that one can at the most only keep an eye out, and “it” is always much stronger than caution.

So I wish you and Mrs. Jung—also from my wife of course—only peace and health for the time being for the new, hopefully peaceful—year. There is nothing special from my end. After Europe I am now mostly doing smaller works for the time being. One on the Magic Flute is almost ready, one on Henry Moore is brewing but as yet unwritten[.]533

The “field” work from Eranos will have to stretch over years, it now seems. I cannot rush it. However, I must now finally write up the book on the psychology of the feminine.534 If the next Eranos conference makes its usual demand, then I am well supplied with work—alongside the current practice. À propos obsession see above. Healthwise I am tolerably well, if also very fragile. You should know that you are actually also a giant as far as health goes, but if it is at all possible, you should no longer allow the storms of the spirits to blow through you. Everyone will just have to get used to it.

All the best,

Ever yours,
E. Neumann

I will type from now on to spare you my handwriting.

⁵³³ “Zu Mozarts Zauberflöte” (“On Mozart’s Magic Flute”) (Neumann, 1950a); Die archetypische Welt Henry Moores (The Archetypal World of Henry Moore) (Neumann, 1961).

⁵³⁴ Neumann (1953b).

 

94 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

17th December 1952

Dr. Erich Neumann,
1, Gordon St.,
Tel Aviv, Israel

My dear Neumann,

I thank you very much for your kind letter. I am in fact rather better. I can get up again and do a little in my library but only in a very limited way. I all too easily get tachycardia attacks,535 which subside again after one or two hours, but exhaust me very much. I am not seeing any people any more and lead a rather monastic existence.

Regarding workload, I would though like to remark that one easily spots the splinter in one’s brother’s eye when one has a beam in one’s own. You really have a whole pile on your plate.

My best wishes for that and for the coming year,
Your devoted,

C. G. Jung

⁵³⁵ Tachycardia, from Greek tachys, rapid or accelerated, and cardia, heart, describes a physical condition, where the patient experiences an unusually fast heart rate.

 

95 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 15. IV. [1953]

Dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

It has proved to be as impossible not to write as to write.536 It is almost 20 years since I came to work with you and Toni Wolff in 1933. How much has changed and developed since then, but for me and for my wife too, Zurich was inconceivable without both of these luminaries joined in recent years by your dear wife too—without whom Switzerland and Zurich would be impoverished for us. Naturally we are at the margin and such an event shows this even more clearly, for the threads of our connection with Europe are in fact these human bonds that signify the important and strong bonds in the texture of our life. So much is going through our minds and our hearts,—for my wife, Toni Wolff was the only person ever with whom she spoke about herself.

I hear better news about your health, thank God, also things are quite good as far as ours goes, I am now keeping the work tempo under stronger control, whether I like it or not. If the time is there, then good, if not, then there’s nothing to be done about it.

I would like to ask some things from you, if your strength allows as far as your work on the Study in the Process of Individuation⁵³⁷ is concerned, but there is no hurry. Otherwise I am myself energetically at work, which for me is never ending.

Otherwise, nothing else today. While we, here, always think about Switzerland very much anyway, at the moment it is a rather sad obsession. The comfort is that there are many and grateful memories.

In all loyalty,

Yours,

E. Neumann

536 Toni Wolff died of a heart attack on 21 March 1953. See n. 145.

⁵³⁷ “Zur Empirie des Individuationsprozesses” (“A Study in the Process of Individuation”) (Jung, 1950) was a revised and amended version of Jung’s 1933 Eranos lecture by the same title.

 

96 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

12th December 1953

Dr. Erich Neumann,
1, Gordon St.,
Tel Aviv, Israel

My dear Neumann,

Today you have surprised me with 2 new books at once: On the Psychology of the Feminine and Cultural Development and Religion,538 which as yet I know nothing about. I am looking forward to them and will let you know what sort of reactions they arouse in me.

At the moment I am constantly being sent books that I must read because they are curiously synchronistically arranged. This, your new book belongs quite evidently in this series. For now, I would like to thank you warmly for both texts and hope that I can soon send you my new publication On the Roots of Consciousness.⁵³⁹ You will find therein some old familiar things and some new. My book on the Mysterium Coniunctionis will soon go to print. Otherwise, one muddles through.

With best wishes for the new year, I remain,
Your ever devoted,

C. G. Jung

⁵³⁸ The first two volumes of Neumann’s collection of essays Umkreisung der Mitte I / II (Neumann, 1953a; 1953b).

⁵³⁹ Volume 9 of the Psychologische Abhandlungen (Jung, 1954).

 

97 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 28. XII. 53

Dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

I wanted to write anyway for the New Year and now your letter has preempted me. As you will have determined by now, there is not much that is new to you in the essay volumes. Only a few works are unknown to you; due to Rascher’s technically quite proper suggestion of making three smaller essay volumes out of my one thick tome, it now seems like more. The Great Mother that, with God’s and Bollingen’s help, will come out in America and indeed also with Rascher at the end of the year (c. 400 pages text and about 250 images and tables), might well interest you more.540

I am very much looking forward to your new book but I am hoping for the appearance of the Coniunctio—of which I have heard so much—with very particular anticipation. I would be very grateful to you if I could possibly see the proofs, otherwise I would have to wait another year, the way things are now going. But I have the conviction that this book is very important for the Stages of Development of the Feminine, which I am writing at the moment.

While I frequently detect with amazement how much by you has now been accepted by the Freudians without you noticing, I detect with the same amazement how the Jungians do not recognize me or do not wish to recognize me. I always recall then with pleasure your prophecy about Origins: You will see, they will not read you even once, but with time it will come. So I pat my leonine ambition ever reassuringly on the shoulder and comfort myself with the fact that production is still going well, which is after all the actual enjoyment of the matter, if one can call this thing enjoyment that on the other hand is an abominable torment.

Although my all too sensitive nature is gradually compelling me to moderation, the discrepancy remains between the intuitive conception and the endless travail of every accomplishment, which then has to extend to the indexes and translations, a true cross. But since I, as a Jew, am a good Christian, it seems to me at least, I find all that perfectly in order—if I am myself in order. On the other hand, I must admit a mild horror grips me at the expanding pile of printed and written paper that rustlingly asserts a connection with me. It is truly a type of compulsion and addiction—I have been writing almost continuously since my twelfth, certainly since my sixteenth year—and while I also know that this is definitely part of my nature and, I hope, of my authentic life task, it sometimes seems to be a true paper hell.

As you will notice, I have a mild winter depression, which is not uncommon for me at this time, but at the same time I am not too bad, only rather unsteady. Besides that, I am on the verge of a writing wave and I am engaged in the solemn rites of resistance and the ultimate surrender to this wave. Are you familiar with anything like this yourself, or does this belong to my individual idiosyncrasies?

Now this has turned into a rather curiously egoistic type of New Year letter, but I think you will understand me. Therefore along with health and peace, I wish for you that the hell fires of writing and paper warm you only in a friendly way, but do not burn, and with warmest greetings to your wife in ancient loyalty, I am,

Your,

E. Neumann

540 Neumann (1956). See Neumann’s letter to Jung, 17 December 1947 (59 N) and n. 422.

 

98 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 24. I. 54

Very dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

Many thanks for sending your book The Roots of Consciousness.541 I have naturally as yet only briefly glimpsed inside and am looking forward especially to the great work on the tree.⁵⁴² Sadly I will no longer be able to use it for the section in the Great Mother, as I refuse to spend the long period till a book’s appearance on countless post revisions, which then take me quite away from current work. Besides, I am only dealing with the matriarchal aspect there—and that is already saying too much.

I hear that sadly another gastric flu has laid claim to you, but that this too is now recovered from. Belatedly I’d like to congratulate you on the Jung Codex, which seems to have been a great affair.⁵⁴³ Something quite other pleases me about this, namely, that your deep connection with Gnosticism was celebrated so festively. I have never quite understood your resistance when they wanted to make you a Gnostic like Buber and even Quispel did. Of course, you are not one, but for people who do not understand what psychology is, it seems to me for the best that they consider you a Gnostic. Doesn’t the Gnostic piscatorial ring you wear and which I love so much say something similar? In any case, when I think of my own imagination, the Gnostics always strike me as very close, closer almost than the alchemists, and it pleases me hugely when research increasingly comes upon the Jewish origins of Gnosticism. I have always suspected this, already because of kabbalah, quite apart from myself. For me this is certainly also a primal position out of which originates the Christian in Judaism, which adheres so differently and so much more intimately to the person of Jesus than the church does and what has come out of that in Christendom. This is just a small unofficial excursion on the secret significant event of the Jung Codex.

All the best and once again many thanks. Your dedication has hopefully made an impact; there is still not much evidence of “new light,” except that I know much more that I must have patience.

Warmest,

Yours,

E. Neumann

541 Jung (1954).

⁵⁴² “Der philosophische Baum” (Jung, 1954a).

⁵⁴³ The first five of fifty-three Gnostic scriptures (in thirteen codices) discovered in Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945 (Nag Hammadi Scriptures, 2007). This Codex I was acquired by Gilles Quispel in 1952 (see n. 498) with the help from C. A. Meier and the financial support of Georg H. Page and presented to Jung as a birthday present. Despite Jung’s protest it was named after him. Codex I contains the following scriptures: “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” “The Apocryphon of James,” “The Gospel of Truth,” “The Treatise on the Resurrection,” and “The Tripartite Tractate.” It was returned to Egypt in 1975. Aniela Jaffé sent Neumann a copy of Jung’s address on the occasion of the presentation of the codex (Jung, 1953) with the remark: “I am sure I don’t have to write my private opinion of the Code affair to you, but if it interests you I can send you C. A.’s conterfei which appeared in local newspapers!” (Jaffé to Erich and Julie Neumann, 13 December 1953 [NP]).

 

99 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

30th Jan. 1954

Dr. Erich Neumann,
1 Gordon St.,
Tel Aviv/Israel

Dear Neumann!

Best thanks for your kind letter! I was just occupied with a letter to Hull, who is supposed to insert a passage for me about your works in the English edition of Symbols of Transformation.544

The transition to the New Year has not gone without some difficulties: liver and intestines have revolted against the too rich hotel cuisine in Locarno, which on the other hand is a good thing as my holiday ended up 1 1/2 weeks longer than planned.

I have penetrated quite far into your Cultural Development and will be able to read further as soon as the letter mountain that has collected during my absence is demolished.

I would acknowledge without further ado the description “Gnostic” if it were not a term of abuse in the mouth of a theologian. They accuse me of the same crime of which they make themselves guilty, namely, the pretentious disregard for epistemological limits: when a theologian says “God,” then God has to be just that and just like the magician desires it to be without his feeling in the slightest compelled to be accountable to himself and his audience about which term he is making use of. In a bogus way he offers his (limited) notion of God to the naive listener as a special revelation. For example, what sort of a God is Buber talking about? Yahweh? With or without privatio boni? If it is Yahweh, where does he say that this God is definitely not the Christian God? I accuse the theologians of all confessions of this tainted way of doing holy business. I do not claim that my “Gnostic” images are a faithful and obligatory rendition of their transcendent background, and that this latter is invoked by the fact that I mention it. That Buber has a bad conscience arises from the fact that he only publishes his letters, but does not grant me a fair representation because I am just a Gnostic and at the same time he has no idea about what motivated the Gnostic.

In the meantime best wishes and greetings from
Your devoted,

C. G. Jung

544 Jung to R.F.C. Hull, 29 January 1954: “Dear Mr. Hull, Regarding ‘Symbole der Wandlung,’ may I ask you to add to my foreword, at its end on pag. 8, the following remarks: ‘Seitdem meine späteren Arbeiten sich hauptsächlich mit der Frage der historischen und ethnischen Parallelen befasst haben, haben die Untersuchungen Erich Neumann’s umfangreiche Beiträge zur Lösung der ebenso zahlreichen wie schwierigen Fragen, die auf diesem bis jezt noch wenig erforschten Gebiete überall auftauchen, gebracht. So ist vor allem sein Hauptwerk, welches die Ideen, die mich seinerzeit zur Abfassung dieses Buches veranlasst haben, weiterführt und in den grossen Rahmen der Bewusstseinsentwicklung überhaupt stellt, nämlich “Die Ursprungsgeschichte des Bewusstseins” (Zurich 1949) zu erwähnen. Seine neuere Schrift “Kulturentwicklung und Religion” (Zurich 1953) gehört ebenfalls in diesen Zusammenhang.’ Yours sincerely, C. G. Jung” (LC). Hull’s translation reads as follows (CW V, p. 6): “In my later writings I have concerned myself chiefly with the question of historical and ethnological parallels, and here the researches of Erich Neumann have made a massive contribution toward solving the countless difficult problems that crop up everywhere in this hitherto little explored territory. I would mention above all his work, The Origins and History of Consciousness, which carries forward the ideas that originally impelled me to write this book, and places them in the broad perspective of the evolution of human consciousness in general.”

 

100 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

Pro tem Bollingen,
St. Gallen Canton

22. IX. 1954

Dear Neumann,

I very much apologize that your earlier letter was not replied to. I was no longer keeping up with my correspondence as my secretary was taking an unusually long holiday due to illness. In addition my wife is unwell—with what we at first considered to be sciatica—and has had to interrupt her holidays several times. Now she has been in the Hirslanden clinic for 3 weeks with a crushed vertebral disc due to a fall 8–10 years ago. She is now having traction therapy and must remain in hospital for about another 2 weeks.

Of course I’m not keeping up with anything. I have stayed in Bollingen temporarily, but return home at the end of this month. In any case I can see you on 1st Oct. if this time suits you. If not, I ask you to arrange a suitable time with my secretary. I will of course reserve the necessary time and look forward to being able to speak with you once again.

I am quite well given the circumstances, but I am no longer so productive.

With best regards to your esteemed wife and
Warm greetings,
Your faithful,

C. G. Jung

 

101 J

13 Oct. 1954

Dr. E. Neumann,
c/o van der Mandel,
Middelduin en Dalschweg,
Bloemendaal bei Harlem545

Dear Neumann,

A certain Mrs. Blech from Nesher in Israel has produced a Hebrew translation of Psychology and Education and would like to have it checked over by me.⁵⁴⁶ I have an idea that the thing should be looked over in order to avoid any sort of misconception, but as I am in no way competent I would like to ask you whether you will perhaps have a look at the translation yourself or whether you have someone to whom you could entrust such a task. Please reply by return as I must let Mrs. Blech know soon. In case you have no desire to do it yourself or do not know of anyone who could do it instead of you, Dr. Schärf547 has expressed a willingness to provide some scrutiny. In any case I wanted to let you know of this matter first, as a translation of this text that should not contain any misconceptions will be distributed in Israel.

I hope you are having a pleasant stay in Holland.

With best wishes,
Your devoted,

[C. G. Jung]

⁵⁴⁵ From August to November 1954, Erich and Julie Neumann spent three month in Europe. In a letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, who accompanied them after the Eranos conference on their journey to the Netherlands and England, Neumann outlined his plans: “Request invitations, programmes, communications with the consulate here etc. Strangely enough it is supposed to be difficult at the moment particularly in Switzerland, but certainly not for us, I think. But request three months with two entry visas. We start on the 9th August in Amersf., on the 4th or 5th we will be in Amsterdam. Please also write to v. Waverens, of course I will also write to them very soon. I hope that will be OK until the 15th, not too demanding. Then Zurich-Ascona. Then holidays, probably also at the end with you, then the Jung Institute for a week at the beginning of October. Then England, then Holland again, with individual lectures—not yet certain. Then home directly or again via Zurich” (Neumann to Fröbe-Kapteyn, 27 May [1954] [EA]).

⁵⁴⁶ The essays “Über Konflikte der kindlichen Seele” (“Psychic Conflicts in a Child”) (1910), “Analytische Psychologie und Erziehung” (“Analytical Psychology and Education”) (1926), and “Der Begabte” (“The Gifted Child”) (1943) were republished together under the title Psychologie und Erziehung (Psychology and Education) (Jung, 1946b). The Hebrew translation by Netta Blech came out in 1958 as Psykhologiah analytit we-khinukh (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1958). Jung wrote a foreword to the Hebrew edition stating that “[n]ot knowing this language, I am unable to appreciate the merits of the translation, so I can only bid it welcome as a ‘firstling’ that is unique in my experience” (Jung, 1955, § 1822).

⁵⁴⁷ On Rivkah Schärf Kluger see n. 398.

 

102 N

[England, 2nd half of October 1954]548

Dear and esteemed C. G. Jung,

As I am myself neither timewise nor linguistically in a position to check the translation, Dr. Schärf would certainly be the correct person for it. Of course, I could also find someone to take on this task back home.

I hope Mrs. Jung is keeping well again and that you yourself are healthy and in good spirits. The Holland trip was demanding with all the lectures, but successful; now in England we are only resting.

Best wishes from my wife too,
Yours,
E. Neumann

⁵⁴⁸ See n. 545. Erich and Julie visited their relatives in London. See also n. 335.

 

103 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

9th July 1955

My dear Neumann,

My forthcoming birthday is being preceded by all sorts of fireworks and, to my astonishment and to my delight, I have found your name among those who are anticipating my celebration. At this impending opportunity that I could easily miss later in the deluge, I would like to sincerely thank you not only that you have taken to the pen for me in such a generous way, but also for that greater thing that you are achieving in your life’s work.

So that the shadow also accompanies the fine things, I have received from the world government a little senile diabetes in ideal competition with a little hypertrophy of the prostate, which offers hopeful prospects of further possibilities. I had to accept the honorable doctor of the Federal Technical University with the dignity of a man [line missing] knows, and a “docile, gentle guest” was permitted to sit at a richly considered table, rather constricted by the simultaneous presence of a small diabetes on the one hand and a small liver insufficiency on the other. The entry to the higher and highest stages of age that are not the destiny of every mortal must evidently be paid for. As a prelude to this new epoch, my poor wife had to undergo stomach surgery due to a carcinoma from which, however, she has recovered in a wonderful way and indeed with a very good prognosis. In return I am in a previously unforeseen fix. The sweet cup of joy is not without the bitter wormwood. (The wormwood is forbidden me because of its sugar content!)549

Figure 8. A picture taken on the occasion of Jung’s eightieth birthday 1955 (with Carleton Smith) (Verkehrszentrale Schweiz; courtesy of Andreas Jung).

I hear that your health is also under attack. Take care of yourself, thoroughly, please. Men like you are rarissimae aves550 whose perspective the world needs.

Please accept my best wishes,

And greetings,
Your ever devoted,
Jung

⁵⁴⁹ In the orginal German letter Jung wrote “Wermuth.” As there is no German “die Wermuth” he probably meant “Wehmuth.” Jung plays on the similar sound of “die Wehmut” (sadness) and “der Wermuth” (vermouth).

⁵⁵⁰ Latin for “rare birds.”

 

104 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 23. VII. 55

Dearest C. G. Jung,

It is terrible that for me it has now come to this, that I need your birthday as a reason to write. But this is how it is now, my ability to write letters has almost completely gone astray. The only good thing is that I at least have the opportunity of speaking with you when I am in Switzerland. That is possible and a good thing, i.e., I am also very much looking forward to it this year. Writing letters, on the other hand, is all too laborious. Of this you can be sure, what I wish for you ranges from health and joy to your remaining eternally creative once again. Every one of your books is a constant surprise! I am already completely wild about the Coniunctio!

I was pleased to hear only good things of Mrs. Jaffé and your dear wife’s health. (Mine has also been pretty good this year.)

This year I will go to Amersfoort again for a week before Ascona and to Holland for a second time after Zurich for a series of lectures. I am not looking forward to that as much as to Engadin, but the people in Holland understand me particularly well, which is a pleasure.551 I am doing a lot of work—not including my practice. Psychology of the feminine, of childhood, and on the archetype. On the whole, it is as difficult as ever to keep up with and to accomplish as there is naturally always a great deal of reading connected with it. But with time, one does manage it after all—deo concedente,552 and it comes together and gives pleasure. A Dutch newspaper that wants to run an article about me has asked me “where I deviate from you, or am of a different opinion.” As ever—and I was able to reply in this vein with great delight, I do not see any “deviations” anywhere. Even where I am taking things forward, I am standing, it seems to me, completely on your territory. And I must say, isolated as my position is, both externally and internally, I constantly consider this interweaving with your work as one of the finest gifts of my life. And I know that even where you see accents differently from the way I do that I am someone who, in your eyes, is taking it forward. I have now got used to being this and enjoy being it and I hope this is also true for you. Now this is the only thing that I can give you for your birthday; I see an infinite amount of work before me and I am ready for it.

In this spirit, a good day, a good year to you and your dear wife,

Your grateful,

E. Neumann

⁵⁵¹ Neumann was well known in the Netherlands. After his death the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant published an obituary highlighting Neumann’s frequent presentations in the Netherlands: “In het begin van de jaren ’50 bezocht hij de Internationale school voor wijsbegeerte te Amersfoort, waar hij een van de drukst bezochte sprekers was. Voorts hield hij referaten aan Nederlandse universiteiten.” (“At the beginnings of the 50s he visited the Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte in Amersfoort, where he gave lectures that were very well attended. Furthermore he gave presentations at Dutch universities.”) (26 January 1961.)

⁵⁵² deo concedente, Latin for “so God will,” “God yielding.”

 

105 AJ

28 November 1955

Dear Neumanns,

Our dear Mrs. Jung passed away peacefully yesterday (Sunday, at 10.30 am). The pulse had stopped. For the last days she has been fully anesthetized, but despite this, witnessing her departure must have been a torture that even Professor Jung has infinitely suffered from. Even he experiences it as a release. I have not seen him today as yet. The funeral is on Wednesday morning in Küsnacht church. The private family cremation a bit later. The children and grandchildren are forming a close and protective group that is lending strength in these difficult times. This is as it should be.

I will write again later.

Warmest,

Aniela

 

106 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv 10. XII. 55

Very, very dear C. G. Jung,

You will perhaps be surprised that I have not yet written to you. This is for two reasons. For a start, I am slow in such things because it seems to me so pointless in the face of your loss to speak of what we have lost. The second reason was that my mother became seriously ill in these weeks and died two days ago; she has lived with us for almost 9 years. For me all this belongs together, as different as it is also.

Although I only got to know your wife in the last years, from 1948, I think, for me Zurich has been curiously changed without her. She was the conscience, something one could rely on in gloomy Zurich, something solid and full of interest and understanding, with all due distance. (You, yourself, by the way, so that you do not misunderstand, belong for me to Bollingen and Küsnacht, not to Zurich.) The world is changing and one is getting palpably older. Both our children are now studying in Jerusalem. Everything is different. Perhaps I am getting a hint of how you are more and more forced to rise above everything so that only nature is left. It is good for me to know that at least Aniela J. is in your orbit. It was painful to me as seldom before to be so far away, for my gratitude toward your wife is great. I am happy that your wife died without much suffering, also happy for you yourself. I know this worry. My mother had a malignant stomach tumor, without knowing it, and died above all from heart failure. How much I would like to see you and speak with you! Eranos is still a long way off, but mostly it is sooner than one thinks. I think of you much; thank God I hear now and again from Aniela J. what you are doing and how you are.

My wife sends her best greetings. What you might not know is she was very attached to yours without having ever spoken very much.

As ever,

Yours,

E. Neumann

 

107 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

Küsnacht, Zurich, SEESTRASSE 228

15 Dec. 1955

Dear Neumann,

Please accept my deeply felt thanks for your warm letter! Allow me to express to you for my part my sympathy on the loss of your mother. Unfortunately I can only lay barren words before you, as the shock I have experienced is so great that I am unable either to concentrate or to rediscover my ability to express myself. I would like to have told your friendly open heart that two days before the death of my wife I had—what one could call—a great epiphany that, like lightning, illuminated a secret to me, extending down through the centuries, that was embodied in my wife and that had influenced my life in unsearchable depths and to the highest degree.553 I can only think that the epiphany originated in my wife who was then mostly unconscious and that the tremendous illumination and redemption of my insight in turn rebounded to her and was also a reason why she was able to die so painlessly and regally.

The speedy and painless end—only five days from the final diagnosis to her death—and this experience have signified a great comfort to me. But the tranquility and the audible silence around me, the emptiness of the air and an interminable remoteness are hard to bear.

With best wishes to your wife also and my warmest thanks,

I remain,
Your ever loyal,

C. G. Jung

553 In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung reports a vision, which he had after Emma’s death: “I experienced this objectivity once again later on. That was after the death of my wife. I saw her in a dream that was like a vision. She stood at some distance from me, looking at me squarely. She was in her prime, perhaps about thirty, and wearing the dress that had been made for her many years before by my cousin the medium. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever worn. Her expression was neither joyful nor sad, but, rather, objectively wise and understanding, without the slightest emotional reaction, as though she were beyond the mist of affects. I knew that it was not she, but a portrait she had made or commissioned for me. It contained the beginning of our relationship, the events of fifty-three years of marriage, and the end of her life also. Face to face with such wholeness one remains speechless, for it can scarcely be comprehended.” (Jung, 1961, p. 276.)

 

108 AJ

8th Feb. 1956

Dear Dr. Neumann,

I am about to forge myself a path through the forest of the contents of the cupboard and with Jung’s agreement have begun to return manuscripts back to their author. On the one hand, in order to create more air and space (which is very necessary) and also so that these valuable texts will not get bogged down in the cupboards and possibly be forgotten. I am sending you what I find by registered post as business papers. In my experience the transit of such packages is very slow so I imagine you will not receive anything before the middle or end of March.—À propos: has the Mysterium Coniunctionis arrived with you now? If not, I would be grateful if you could let me know because I would then make a complaint to the post office.

Here, things are going quite well so far. Jung is indeed tired and is going on holiday at the end of the week, but he has reclaimed a part of his activity; thus he has written a foreword for the new edition of the Words of the Buddha (Artemis Press),554 has had a discussion with Burghölzli psychiatrists (for 3 hours!), and has finished his stone.⁵⁵⁵—Now he is complaining that he is not doing enough.

But this is probably a quite good sign. The only thing to which he has an insurmountable resistance are letters, or the duty to reply to them.—I’m afraid it is now and again my task to hold him to it! But I have got used to the fact that there is a “higher” justice that has nothing to do with a Prussian regime.—And so things are actually going (unbidden) quite well. Regarding the institute here, I am—purely as far as the quantitative goes—in holiday mode. And the other does also come into it—or much more: falls away. With all necessary touching of wood I can say: I am enjoying it. Hopefully it will remain so!

I hope you and your wife are well and I also hope that the Siberian cold has not got as far as you. I thank you very much that you have let me have the recommendation of the art gallery. A carpet of Jung’s (from his possession) is also on display there.556

Most warm greetings to you and your wife,
Yours,
Aniela Jaffé

⁵⁵⁴ Jung did not write a foreword for the edition, but a statement in the publisher’s brochure announcing the publication of Karl Eugen Neumann’s Die Reden Gotamo Buddho’s (Jung, 1956c).

⁵⁵⁵ Jung carved a stone in memory of Emma. The inscription reads “She was the foundation of my house.” It was placed in Bollingen between the tower and the shore of the lake, left from the covered loggia (see Hannah, pp. 327–30).

⁵⁵⁶ The exhibition on Modern Swiss Tapestries (Moderne Schweizer Bildteppiche) took place in the Helmhaus Zurich from 14 January to 12 February 1956 (Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, 1956). The tapestry in question was Rosa Gerber-Hinnen’s depiction of the Sermon on the Mount (1935–39). The Psychological Club bought it as a birthday present for Jung in 1945. Presented with the gift Jung gave a short interpretation on its motif (“Bemerkungen zu einem Wandteppich” [JA]), which was published in a newspaper article by Elsie Attenhofer (Attenhofer, 1975) as well as in a children’s edition of the Sermon on the Mount with illustrations from Berger’s tapestry (Ruetschi, 1988). During Jung’s lifetime the tapestry hung in the smaller living room of the Küsnacht mansion, but it was returned to the Psychological Club after his death (information from the Jung family). The tapestry was first shown at the Helmhaus exhibition “Die Frau als Schöpferin und Bewahrerin von Kulturgut” (“The Woman as Creator and Custodian of Cultural Artifacts”) (8 September–2 October 1946) organized on the occasion of the Dritter Kongress für Fraueninteresse (3rd Congress for Women’s Interests) (Guyer, 1946); see also Jung’s unpublished correspondence with the art historian Doris Gäumann-Wild [JA]). Today the tapestry can be seen in the lecture hall of the Psychological Club Zurich (information from the president, Andreas Schweizer).

 

109 AJ

11 September 1956

Dear Dr. Neumann,

Many thanks for your card. The weather does not seem to be treating you too badly and I warmly wish you a good recovery. Enclosed the letter from you. You belong apparently to the monsters who do not write a date (or date without a year). This is why the search was protracted, but successful in the end. I am not sending the “entire correspondence.” If you are exhausted anyway why do you want to invoke all tempi passati again? One has enough to deal with in the present! It was only my suggestion too.

I hope that the gentleman from St. Gallen has reached you. In the Seidenhof they told me that they had been sending letters on to Bern up until yesterday (10th).

I am also becoming very ready for a holiday and am looking forward to “far away.”

To you and your wife, warmest greetings,
Yours,

A. J.

Your dream interpretation very much had—and is continuing to have—an effect. It came at just the right moment.

 

110 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 12th Nov. 56

Dearest C. G. Jung,

I would like to send you just a quick greeting, as at the moment peace reigns and we are all well. My son who participated in the Sinai campaign557 is studying medicine in Jerusalem again, and the work here is continuing. Your telegram moved and comforted me, a thousand thanks for it, it arrived quickly and reached us at a time when such a sign of solidarity was more necessary and affected us more deeply than at any other time. A letter about the problems that we discussed when I was last with you is slowly taking shape, it needs time.

I hope you are well, even in Switzerland the fear of Russia seems to have increased very much, it hangs above us like a cloud, but this seems to belong to our fate. In an emergency, the I Ching has always orientated me, it is curious that one is so immersed in a situation of being in an outpost, inside and out. It is indeed demanding, but one does not have the feeling that it is without meaning.

With warmest greetings,

Yours,

E. Neumann

557 The Sinai campaign, also known as the Suez crisis, took place after Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping on 26 July 1956. This, together with Nasser’s support of regular raids into Israel by the Palestinian Fedayeen and Egypt’s recent arms deal with the Soviet Union, triggered Israel’s wish to conduct a military campaign in order to occupy the Sinai Peninsula. The attack started on 29 October. Isreal’s war effort was secretly coordinated with France and Britain, who waited until the Israeli troops had reached a certain distance to the canal in order to send ultimatums for withdrawal from the area to both parties (30 October). Thus Britain and France were provided with an official reason to enter the conflict and attack the Egyptian forces. Under pressure of the United States and the Soviet Union a cease fire was announced on 6 November and the Anglo-French and, in March 1957, the Israeli troops had to withdraw, being replaced by UN peace-keeping units. Although the campaign was seen as a major success for Israel, it damaged the relationship between France and the United States and led to the resignation of the British prime minister Anthony Eden for his attempt to mislead the parliament (Gilbert, 2008, pp. 320–28).

 

111 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 25. V. [57]

Dearest C. G. Jung,

It has now been some time since I received and, of course, also read your fine text Present and Future.558 In my opinion you have succeeded in an enviable way in saying the most vital thing in a popular, comprehensible form. Precisely because I know so well how difficult that is, it is important for me to place at the beginning this “technical” thing that is, however, so essential in reality. Despite this, I have the impression that you are a little too pessimistic or better, that you could be understood to be pessimistic. In my opinion, individuation is, after all, a collective process within humanity that takes precedence. That this is a process that takes a century should not discourage one, if one knows how young the consciousness of man actually is and that these processes of the collective psyche always call for long development times. For me personally it was a pleasure, besides, that your text extends a hand to my New Ethic, which fared so badly, even if in secret, of course. For if a reader of your work now asks himself, so what can actually be done, then he comes up against the problems that compelled me to this work back then in the second world war, with Rommel⁵⁵⁹ at the door. But, in fact, this genesis is not quite correct, for the deeper causes were internal images where it was all about evil and the “ape men” as destroyers, internally and externally.

The delay in my reply was caused by the fact that I wanted to complete a book that I have been working on for several years, the exemplification of the origins history, of child psychology, and of the ontogenetical construction of the personality.560 (Please do not be afraid of the typo “ontological,”⁵⁶¹ I just had to read some Heidegger.⁵⁶²) I have now pretty much got far enough with this after a small break due to exhaustion that, freed from this work, the Eranos lecture can take me in its, I hope, friendly embrace. Strange hobbies one has.

I heard via Mrs. J. that you are quite well, thank God; that you continue to work constantly arouses my admiration, and your recurring communications that you can now no longer write are to all our delight only the—so understandable—exclamations that accompany the work. I am looking forward to hearing about what you are now up to when I am in Switzerland again. My notes with questions to you in connection with my lecture on the problem of reality have sadly come to nothing,563 the other work pushed itself forward, but I fear I will still have to bother with them once again despite this.

Please do not be angry about either my delayed thanks or the brevity of my letter, but I will not steal any more time from you than is necessary, especially as I will hopefully see you soon and in good health and speak with you.

As ever, most warmly,
Yours,
E. Neumann

⁵⁵⁸ First published in Schweizer Monatshefte 36, no. 12 in March 1957 (Jung, 1957).

⁵⁵⁹ Erwin Rommel (1891–1944): German field marshal of World War II, commander of the Deutsche Afrikakorps. His 1941 campaign in North Africa was highly successful and was only brought to a hold by Field Marshal Montgomery’s troops at El Alamein, sixty-six miles west of Alexandria, at the end of 1942. Rommel was involved in the failed putsch against Hitler of 20 July 1944. Because of his huge popularity Hitler feared a public trial and execution and forced Rommel to commit suicide. The truth was concealed to the public and Rommel’s burial was used for Nazi propaganda purposes.

⁵⁶⁰ Neumann (1963). See also introduction, pp. lv–lvi.

⁵⁶¹ Neumann wrote ontological instead of onto-genetical, which he crossed through.

⁵⁶² Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): German philosopher, who, in Being and Time (1927), developed the concept of a fundamental ontology. According to Heidegger it is the task of philosophy to trace back the origins of Sein (being, essence) to the Dasein (existence). In later years he changed his understanding of the primacy of the Dasein, which is known as Heidegger’s Kehre (turn). During the first year of the National Socialist rule in Germany, Heidegger was rector of the University of Freiburg. His notorious inauguration speech of 27 May 1933, titled “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (“Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität”), in which he endorsed the concept of the leader, has been widely read as proof of his affiliation with the Nazis. Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism in 1933–34 and the avoidance of any public admission of guilt after the war has been fiercly discussed (Wolin, 1998), also in regard to his relationship with the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). In 1925 Heidegger, then lecturer in Marburg, had an affair with his student Arendt (Arendt and Heidegger, 1999). Probably to avoid a scandal the married Heidegger urged Arendt to continue her studies with Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg, where she formed a friendship with Karl Frankenstein, Erwin Loewenson, and Erich Neumann (Young-Bruehl, p. 66). A photograph of Neumann and Arendt can be found in Loewenthal-Neumann (2006, p. 158). When Neumann died in 1960 Arendt wrote a poem in her diaries: “den 30. Nov. 1960 / Erich Neumanns Tod. Was von Dir blieb? Nicht mehr als eine Hand, / nicht mehr als Deiner Finger bebende Gespanntheit, / wenn sie ergriffen und zum Gruss sich schlossen. / Denn dieser Griff verblieb als Spur / in meiner Hand, die nicht vergass, die / wie Du warst noch spürte, als Dir längst / Dein Mund und Deine Augen sich versagten” (30 November 1960 / Erich Neumann’s death. What remains of you? Nothing more than a hand, / nothing more than the expectancy quivering in your fingers, / when they grasped and closed in greeting. / For this grasp remained as a trace / in my hand, which did not forget, which / still sensed how you used to be when / your mouth and your eyes long since failed you” (Arendt, 2002, p. 613).

⁵⁶³ Presumably Neumann refers to his 1955 Eranos lecture titled “Die Erfahrung der Einheitswirklichkeit und die Sympathie aller Dinge” (“The Experience of the Unitary Reality”) (Neumann, 1956a). A revised version was published in his collection of articles Der schöpferische Mensch (Neumann, 1959).

 

112 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

3rd June 1957

Dr. E. Neumann,
1 Gordon St.,
Tel Aviv,
ISRAEL

Dear Neumann,

I was very pleased to hear from you once again and to hear that you have read my small brochure. It seems to have been a hit here as there is already a second print run underway.

In relation to the so-called New Ethic we are basically quite in agreement, but I prefer to express this delicate problem in a rather different language. It is not really a question of a “new” ethic. Evil is and always remains the thing one knows one should not do. Man overestimates himself unfortunately in this respect: he thinks it is within his discretion to intend good or evil. He can persuade himself of this, but in reality he is, in view of the greatness of these opposites, simply too small and too unconscious to be able to choose the one or the other in free will and under all circumstances. It is much more the case that he does or does not do the good that he would like to for overwhelming reasons, and that in the same way, evil just happens to him like misfortune.

Ethics is that which makes it impossible for him to do evil intentionally and encourages him to do good—and indeed often with little success. I.e., he can do good and cannot avoid evil, although his ethic causes him to test the powers of his will in this regard. In reality he is the victim of these powers. He must admit to himself that under no circumstances can he absolutely avoid sin, as he also on the other hand may hope to be able to do good. Now, as evil is unavoidable, so one never completely evades sin and it is a fact that one must accept. It gives cause not for a new ethic, but for differentiated ethical considerations, namely, to the question: how do I behave toward the fact that I cannot escape sin? The instruction that is given in Christ’s words: “If thou knowest what thou doest …”564 shows a way to the ethical surmounting of the problem: I know that I do not wish to do evil and do it all the same, not from my own choice but because it overpowers me. As a human being I am a weakling and vulnerable so that evil can overwhelm me. I know that I do it and what I have done and know that I will stand in the torment of this contradiction for my lifetime. I will, where I can, avoid evil and will always fall into this hole. But I will endeavor to live as if this were not the case; I will therefore grin and bear it and will by this means be pleasing to the Lord, like the unfaithful householder who knowingly produced a false account. I do not do this because I wish to deceive myself or even the Lord, but so that I do not cause any public offense for the sake of my brothers’ weakness, and I preserve my moral standing and human dignity to some degree. I am therefore in the situation of a human being who experiences a terror in the middle of a dangerous situation and would prefer to flee if he does not pull himself together for the sake of the others and feigns courage to himself and the others by which the situation can perhaps be saved. In this case, while I have not made my panic imaginary, I have hidden my good success behind the mask of courage. It is an act of supreme hypocrisy, therefore another sin, but without which we would all be lost. This is not a new ethic, but simply a more differentiated one with fewer illusions, but the same as it always was.

You can relate these subtle considerations to Zeus, but not to the ox.565 They are in fact subtle because they presuppose very special conditions. They achieve their validity only for the man who is really conscious of his shadow, but for one who treats his shadow either as a casual inconvenience or who trivially dismisses it out of a lack of scruples and moral responsibility, it signifies a dangerous possibility of the aberration of moral judgment as is characteristic for the man who, as a result of his moral defect, possesses a corresponding intellectual inflation. One can relieve oneself of some conflict by closing the moral eye for “all guilt avenges itself on earth.”

I am just occupied with a work that has a completely different theme, but the discussion has meant that I had to also mention the ethical problem. I could not do otherwise than embark on a repudiation of the expression “new ethic,” without naming names.⁵⁶⁶ This is once again one of those sins, a faithlessness as it were, which imposes itself like a disaster at the moment when I had to protect the disproportionately higher aspect of our psychology from the coarseness of vulgar appreciation and, this, to general advantage. The entire difficulty lies in this case in the slipperiness of the language. Therefore one is forced to strew sand, which occasionally also lands in the eyes of the audience.

I am looking forward to your application of the origins history to the psychology of children. There would indeed be illustrative material there.

I feel myself very uncertain in relation to the question of pessimism and optimism and must leave the solution to fate. The only one who could decide this dilemma, that is dear God himself, has withheld his answer from me so far.

Hopefully you are well dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles. Tout cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.567

With best wishes,

Your ever devoted,

C. G. Jung

⁵⁶⁴ According to an apocryphal text of the New Testament, Jesus while defending his disciples who have been picking corn on the Sabbath (Luke 6:1–5; Matthew 12:1–9; Samuel 21:1–6) is reported to have said to a man working on the Sabbath: “Man, if indeed thou knowest what thou doest, thou are blessed: but if thou knowest not, thou are cursed, and a transgressor of the law” (James, 1924, p. 32) This agraphon—a saying of Jesus that has not been included in the canonical Gospels—is found in addition to Luke 6:4 in the Codex Bezae from the fifth century. Jung discusses the text in Answer to Job (Jung, 1952b, § 696), stating that this logion—by replacing the moral criteria of law and convention through consciousness—already exceeds the traditional ethical teaching of Christianty. Jung cites this passage also in a letter to Walter Robert Corti (30 April 1929; Jung, 1973, p. 65) and disccuses its meaning in his seminar on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Jung, 1934–39, pp. 993–96). It is also quoted in the chapter “Späte Gedanken” (“Late Thoughts”) of Memories, Dreams, Reflections. When Neumann read the draft of this chapter, he saw in it a confirmation of his New Ethic (see 118 N). See also Bishop (2002), pp. 134–35.

⁵⁶⁵ Jung refers to the Latin proverb “Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi,” translated as “What is permitted to Jove (Jupiter) is not permitted to an ox.” It is probably a medieval rhyme adaptation of Terence’s account of Jupiter’s rape of Europa: “Aliis si licet, tibi non licet” (“If others are allowed to, that does not mean you are”).

⁵⁶⁶ Jung might be referring here to his lecture on “Das Gewissen in psychologischer Sicht” (“A Psychological View of Conscience”) (Jung, 1958a), which was part of the lecture series on “Das Gewissen” (“Conscience”) held at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich in the winter term 1957/58. Jung’s lecture was read by Franz Riklin and later published in the institute’s volume titled Conscience. The reference to Neumann’s ethical concept was left aside after Jung had read Neumann’s response to his letter (see letter 114 J).

⁵⁶⁷ “Cela est bien dit,” répondit Candide, “mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.” (“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”) The finishing sentence of Voltaire’s Candide, which is Candide’s final response to the optimistic summary of his friend Pangloss, a caricature of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: “There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.”

 

113 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 14. VI. 57

Dear C. G. Jung,

I am very moved by your quick reply to my letter, and since the problem broached concerns me very much I would like to try to clarify my position somewhat in the debate with you. While I concur in much, I have the feeling that, for me, it is still about something else than it is for you, or that something threatens to obliterate for me what I have to hold on to when compared with your formulation. Let’s start with the main event. The New Ethic was the attempt to process a series of phantasies that roughly corresponded timewise with the exterminations of the Jews, and in which the problem of evil and justice was being tossed around in me. I am still gnawing away at these images at the end of which, in brief, stands the following. I seemed to be commissioned to kill the apeman in the profound primal hole. As I approached him, he was hanging, by night, sleeping on the cross above the abyss, but his—crooked—single eye was staring into the depths of this abyss. While it at first seemed that I was supposed to blind him, I all of a sudden grasped his “innocence,” his dependence on the single eye of the Godhead, which was experiencing the depths through him, which was a human eye. Then, very abridged, I sank down in opposite this single eye, jumped into the abyss, but was caught by the Godhead, which carried me on the “wings of his heart.” After that, this single eye opposite the apeman closed and it opened on my forehead. (Bit difficult to write this, but what should one do.) Working outward from the attempt to process this happening, I arrived at The New Ethic. For me, since then, the world looks different. Your formulations in the letter are also valid for me, but they do not go far enough. “As a man, I am a weakling and susceptible to being overcome by evil” is superficially all too true, but does not go far enough. I have subsequently had to do “evil,” for these images are to be fulfilled personally, but I did not experience it as a sin but as a necessary action. That has changed nothing in the suffering I have caused and into which I have fallen, but my feeling experience was different. You write: “I will avoid evil, when I can, and will still fall into this hole all the same”—as I see it, I do not fall, but jump, and I know that the danger exists that I will die, but my prayer goes that “wings of the heart” may hold me. This means that I am, in my action, within and not outside of the Godhead,568 because it is not about an action of the ego, but about a happening that I must hand myself over to. If the issue of “Job” is relevant, according to which the Godhead wishes to come to consciousness, an aspect of its subjectivity is evident, then I have to live with the single eye of the Godhead and also to experience the darkness of the abyss. But then evil is not a sin, but part of the world to be experienced. That is not “putting a brave face on it,” but reverence before the numinosum of the Godhead, in which I am also implicated with the knowledge that there is no justice and no judge because the measure of God’s eye surpasses all this. A moral attitude and human dignity no longer consist in “not exciting any bother,” hiding something etc., but in enduring the responsibility for action in the certainty that behind it all there is one hidden who is superior to me who guides me, and what is required from man is to follow the instructions in vigilance and in willingness even to be destroyed. To tear down old gods is not a sin, but it is exactly the reverse that is a sin,—not to place oneself at the disposal of the new aspects of the divine. It could appear that my other temperament defends itself against “strewing sand,” I also do not believe in the possibility and necessity “of protecting the disproportionately higher aspect of our psychology from the coarseness of vulgar understanding.” “Our” psychology is that of modern man, whom should one protect against whom in this? If one cannot believe in man in spite of everything—do you not emphasize that he is the seat of the divine?—what then is the point of psychology anyway? The theologians are a more evil enemy than the profanum vulgus,569 whose suffering is great and that therefore opens them up. Do not be so bitter, I have heard precisely from you that ordinary people have understood your alchemy and the educated have not. I have learned from you that one does not need to hide secrets, as they will do it for themselves. I believe that the old concept of sin has become untrue, it is no longer effective, and that is not due to the decline of man but to his new understanding of himself and of God. Are these not also “new”? The settlement of the debt that I also believe in is simply not a punishment but the expression of a moral in man that compels him to integration in which even evil is included. If you thus express yourself against The New Ethic, then please name names and I will reply if it is necessary, in good faith, for I believe that faithlessness exacts revenge, and would not even know why it would be necessary between us.

In old faithfulness and friendship,
Yours,
E. Neumann

⁵⁶⁸ [handwritten note:] “one is never outside”

⁵⁶⁹ “odi profanum vulgus et arceo” (“I loathe and shun the uninitiate crowd”), Latin, from Horace, Odes III, 1.

 

114 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

29th June 1957

Dear Neumann,

Many thanks for your detailed letter. I have studied the same thoroughly and have decided in response to drastically modify or delete my small side excursion from my work.570 I see that this problem is so substantial and even urgent, that it is impossible for one to illuminate it in a few words. There would be so much to say about it that one should either explore it fully in all its complexities or be silent about it. I myself would hardly know where to begin as so infinitely many factors come into play. Quite for this reason it seems to me also so exceedingly difficult to express anything really of general validity about it. I also feel something like resistance in me about making the shortcomings of my intellect liable for this supreme problem; it is a question of a numinous issue par excellence, a type of temenos⁵⁷¹ where one can only whisper in conspectus genii.⁵⁷²

Given enough time and work strength, the problem of the Ethic could form the content of an extended conversation and indeed not only between two, but among several. Albeit not among a great number at the same time, but as a particular debate between pairs; this in order to allow as many aspects of the question as possible to emerge. The individual differences that would reveal themselves in such a discussion are indeed very considerable, which is also to be expected with such complexity. In the face of this difficulty I cannot think, in writing, i.e., in letter form, of discussing the questions thrown up by you in an appropriate manner. Every letter would achieve the scope of a small treatise. That sadly exceeds my capability even though the matter would interest me very much. So it is not a lack of engagement on my part but much more an excess of it that hinders me from elaborating on your letter.

In the hope that you understand my point of view, I am,

With warm wishes,
Your devoted,
C. G. Jung

I assume that I will be able to welcome you here again on the occasion of the Eranos conference.

570 See n. 566.

⁵⁷¹ Temenos, Greek from temnō (τέμνω), “to cut,” means a piece of land that is cut off and dedicated to the worship of a god, a sacred precinct such as a sanctuary or temple. Jung uses the word in a psychological sense to describe the space created between the analyst and the patient in the therapeutic process. It provides a designated container for the encounter with the unconscious (Jung (1943, § 63), which puts both into the presence of unknown and unpredictable forces. Furthermore, the term temenos is used in connection with the realm associated with the numinousity of the Self. The mandala is understood as a symbol for the temenos, for the protection of the center of the personality against outer forces (Jung, 1935b § 410).

⁵⁷² in conspectu genii, Latin, in the presence of the guiding spirit.

 

115 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

Tel Aviv, 20. XII. [1957]

Dearest C. G. Jung,

I am writing to you by hand this time because this is just a greeting and an inquiry.

Despite sputniks573 and flying saucers, I wish you and us a peaceful and healthy year. Since your admirable capacity for work has always remained loyal to you, despite your grumbles to the contrary, may it continue so to your and our pleasure and gratitude.

Now the question. Since my congress lecture⁵⁷⁴ also concerns the genetic-phylogenetic aspect of analytical psychology, I would like to inquire of you what Fordham’s⁵⁷⁵ for me, suspect, sentence is on about: “This clear identity of the view Jung held till recently when, under pressure from biologists, he abandoned the heredity of archetypal images” (Journal, II 2 p. 197 below).⁵⁷⁶ You abandoned the heredity of “perceptions” long since, not recently. What is F. referring to[?] What, if anything, has changed in your views. The “sun phallus” example cannot be refuted by “biologists.”577 You will understand that the problem is important to me. F. seems to me rather hasty. In this way he also dismissed Origins with one wave of his hand because ontogenesis does not correspond to phylogenesis without his having noticed that it is about that of humanity here, not about the connection with animal evolution.⁵⁷⁸ I have never had the impression until now that my writings deviate from this in relation to the genetic connections, therefore await your answer with anticipation. With F.’s comment one can easily go further and let the entire “collective unconscious” go by the board, which can get highly dangerous, both subjectively and objectively.

Once again all the best, we are pretty well, my wife and I hope the same is true for you,

Ever yours,

E. Neumann

⁵⁷³ The USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1 (Russian for “companion”), on 4 October 1957. In these days of the cold war the successful launch caused widespread fear of the technologically advanced powers of the Soviet Union in Western Europe and the United States (“Sputnik crisis”).

⁵⁷⁴ The First International Congress for Analytical Psychology was held in Zurich from 7 to 12 August 1958. Neumann was invited to give one of the ten extended lectures. The title of his presentation was “Die Deutung des genetischen Aspekts für die Analytische Psychologie” (“The Significance of the Genetic Aspect for Analytical Psychology”) (Neumann, 1961a). On details of the congress see Adler (1959; 1961a). Due to Neumann’s efforts Israel became a charter group member of the IAAP in 1958 (Thomas Kirsch, 2000, p. 181).

⁵⁷⁵ On Fordham see n. 366 and introduction, pp. lvi–lviii.

⁵⁷⁶ Fordham reviewed the collection of essays titled New Directions in Psycho-Analysis, edited by Melanie Klein, Paul Heimann, and Roger Money-Kyrle (Klein, Heimann, and Money-Kyrle, 1956) (Fordham, 1957a). He argued that the Kleinian school of psychoanalysis was getting closer to analytical psychology than to classical psychoanalysis (p. 200). In regard to a contribution by Heimann he stated that this “clear identity of the view Jung held till recently when, under pressure from biologists, he abandoned the heredity of archetypal images, together with the new view of counter-transference already described, led me to consider how much further the Kleinian school has approached analytical psychology and what differences remained” (pp. 197–98).

⁵⁷⁷ Neumann refers to the case of Emile Schwyzer (1862–1931), a patient at the Burghölzli diagnosed with paranoid dementia. Jung reported on this case in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido) (1912) to support his theory that the mythological material of the phylogenetic level repeats itself in images of dreams and psychotic delusions on an ontogenetic level: “The patient sees in the sun a so-called ‘upright tail’ (i.e., much like an erect penis). When the patient moves his head back and forth, the sun’s penis also moves back and forth and from this the wind arises” (Jung, 1912, § 173). Jung showed the similarities between Schwyzer’s delusion and a mithraic vision first rendered by Albrecht Dieterich in A Mithras Liturgy (1903), a text that Jung claimed could not have been known to the patient due to a lack of education. But it has been argued by Shamdasani (2003, p. 216) that Schwyzer was far from unknowledgeable in things mythological, as Johann Honegger’s (1885–1911) presentation of the case at the Second International Psychoanalytic Congress in Nuremberg demonstrated (“Analysis of a Case of Paranoid Dementia”). Jung’s further argument of the unavailability of the mythological material to the patient—Jung, at first, mistook the second edition of Dieterich’s book from 1910 as the original—has also been questioned, as similar material had already been presented by Creuzer in his influential Symbolism and mythology of the ancient peoples, particularly the Greeks (Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen) (1810–12). There is also a discrepancy between Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, where Jung refers to Honegger as his source, and later accounts—e.g., in Symbols of Transformations (1952a) and The Concept of the Collective Unconscious (1936/37, §§ 104–10), where he stated that he himself was told the story by Schwyzer in 1906. See also Shamdasani (1990).

⁵⁷⁸ On Fordham’s critique of Neumann see introduction, pp. lvi–lviii.

 

116 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

3rd January 1958

Dear Neumann,

While thanking you for your kind New Year’s wishes, I would like to hasten to correct Fordham’s statement. The exciting novelty is that Fordham has evidently discovered that archetypal perceptions are not inherited; however, it is the archetypes themselves, namely, the underlying archetypal forms that are. I am always and everywhere coming up against the fact that epistemology is deficient. People cannot see the difference between image and reality. A problem that is completely obvious—as an artist once said to me—by never ignoring the difference between the portrait and the original. Absolutely nothing has happened “recently”: I have changed nothing in my understanding. It is merely Fordham himself who has been taken in by his own concretism. I have read the sentence in the original. Who the “biologists” could be is an absolute mystery to me. I have at least not sensed any “pressure.” I will write to Fordham on this point.579

I, too, most warmly wish you and your family a good and fruitful New Year.

Ever yours,

C. G. Jung

P.S. By the way, à propos: Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer, appears to have written a novel in which a cloud endowed with intelligence approaches the earth. Evidently, flying saucers have also got to him. My text is now in print and unfortunately I can no longer mention this particular joke.580

Greetings and good wishes once again.

Yours,
C.G.J.

⁵⁷⁹ Jung’s letter to Fordham is missing, but in his letter of 30 May 1958 Fordham deemed it necessary to defend his position: “I want to bother you further on your views about heredity, for I believe these could be clarified by annotations in the forthcoming volumes 8 and 9 of your Collected Works. May I start by classifying the theories of heredity that have gained general acceptance: (a) the genetic theory, now widely accepted; (b) the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, now generally rejected; (c) the theory of transmission by verbal and other means. You state in more than one place that inheritance comes about through repeated experience but the inherited entity, being the primordial image or archetype, is evidently not the experience itself since it is the possibility of experience. This view does not appear to fit in with any of the ones I have enumerated above, since theory (a) does not allow for the inheritance of experience, but the genes create the experience. Theory (b) handles only the characteristic, that is, the experience. I note that the biological references you give are scanty. […] I suspect that your sources were more philosophical than biological when you say, as you did in your last letter, that ‘I always knew that images should not be inherited’” (Fordham to Jung, 20 May 1958 [MFP]). This prompted a harsh reaction by Jung in his letter of 14 June 1958: “I don’t flatter myself to have a theory of heredity. I share the ordinary views about it. I am convinced that individual acquisitions under experimental conditions are not inherited. I don’t believe that this statement could be generalized, since changes in individual cases must have been inherited, otherwise no change would have come about in phylogenesis; or we would be forced to assume that a new variety, or a new species was shaped by the creator on the spot without inheritance. Concerning archetypes migration and verbal transmission are self-evident, except in those cases, where individuals reproduce archetypal forms outside of all possible influences (good example in childhood dreams!). Since archetypes are instinctual forms, they follow a universal pattern, as the functions of the body. […] It is true that I have set aside hitherto general biology. This for good reasons! We know yet far too little about human psychology as to be able to establish a biological basis for our [views]. […] The real connections with biology are only in the sphere of the unconscious, i.e., in the realm of the instinctive activities. […] For our purposes it is highly indifferent, whether archetypes are handed down by tradition and migration, or by inheritance. It is an entirely secondary question, since comparable biological facts, i.e., instinctual patterns with animals are obviously inherited. I see no reason to assume, that man should be an exception. The assumption therefore, that the (psychoid) archetypes are inherited, is for many reasons far more probable than that they are handed down by tradition. Instincts are not taught, as a rule. The childish prejudice against inherited archetypes is mostly due to the fact, that one thinks, archetypes to be representations; but in reality they are preferences or ‘penchants,’ likes and dislikes” (Jung to Fordham, 14 June 1958 [MFP]). Finally, Fordham conceded to Jung “that the subject of heredity is of no empirical importance at the present time” and that “heredity is a necessary part of the definition of archetypes” (Fordham to Jung, 24 June 1958 [MFP]). On the question of the heredity of archetypes and the relationship between analytical psychology and biology, see Stevens (2002).

⁵⁸⁰ The book in question is Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud (1957). Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) was an English astronomer, cosmologist, writer, and broadcaster. He was the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at St. John’s College, Cambridge (1958–73) and director of the Cambridge Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (1967–73). Hoyle famously opposed the Big Bang theory of the origin of the cosmos, championing his own “Steady State” theory. Other fictional works incluce Ossian’s Ride (1961), October the First Is Too Late (1974), and Comet Halley (1985). In his afterword to the 2010 edition of The Black Cloud Richard Dawkins expressed his opinion that this book is “one of the greatest works of science fiction ever written, up there with the best of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark” (Dawkins, 2010, p. 212). Regardless of his remark to Neumann, Jung extended the epilogue to “A Modern Myth” substantially and dedicated the final pages to a psychological reading of Hoyle’s novel (Jung, 1958, §§ 810–20). Jung’s library contains Hoyle’s Frontiers of Astronomy (1955) and the German edition of the The Nature of the Universe (1950).

 

117 N

11th October 58

Dearest C. G. Jung,

I almost have a bad conscience that I have not emerged out of contemplation before now. I wanted to write even from Tel Aviv and at least thank you for the off-prints. As I had to write the lectures for the 3 congresses, Zurich, Eranos, and Barcelona,581 naturally, alongside my practice, I was quite unable to read and was not inclined just to “pretend” to thank you. But in Zurich I was able to read the piece of autobiography written by you.⁵⁸² But congress, people—I did not permit myself to speak with you in your exhaustion. Then came a month of congress in Barcelona and a wonderful trip through Spain whose abundance is still giving me much to think about as not only were landscape, art, and history very striking, but on top of that, so was the Jewish problem, with the synagogues transformed into churches and the many modern Hebrew inscriptions on the walls where “one” scribbles the names. To say nothing of the bullfight and its completely unexpected impact in contrast with the humane bias against it.⁵⁸³

Figure 9. Neumann lecturing at the Eranos conference 1958 (Eranos Archive; courtesy of Paul Kugler).

Now we are recovering in the mountains in a small place in the Valais alps. On c. 20th October we will be in Zurich, I have a “Fear” lecture at the Institute on 4th Nov. that I must still write.584 But I would like to be able to speak with you twice, if it is at all possible for you, I am also writing to Aniela J., and am looking forward to it very much. My link with you is, as you know, not dependent on writing and speaking, or no longer dependent, I should say, but meeting with you always brings me a substantial affirmation that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. I hope you understand what I mean. Even the Jungian Congress,⁵⁸⁵ which was so positive, only confirmed this for me. For me, there is only you yourself as a “connecting point” in the center, as far as the task of the work is concerned.

I hope to see you again soon and in good health.

As ever,

Yours,

E. Neumann

⁵⁸¹ Neumann refers to the following three conferences: The First International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Zurich, 7–12 August 1958 (see n. 574; Neumann, 1961a); “Mensch und Frieden” (“Human Being and Peace”), Eranos conference, Ascona, 14–22 August 1958: Neumann’s lecture was titled “Frieden als Symbol des Lebens” (“Peace as the Symbol of life”) (Neumann, 1959a); and the Fourth International Congress of Psychotherapy, Barcelona, 1–7 September 1958: the congress in Barcelona was dedicated to the topic of “Psychotherapy and Existential Analysis” and led to the foundation of the International Federation for Medical Psychotherapy under Medard Boss. Neumann’s lecture was titled “Das Schöpferische als Zentralproblem der Psychotherapie” (“The Creative as a Central Problem of Psychotherapy”) (Neumann, 1960). In his review Erwin Straus describes the aim of the conference as follows: “Obviously, then, Daseins-Analyse raises almost as many questions as it answers: Must we accept Heidegger’s ontology as the final word? Or what modifications are possible and necessary? Is Binswanger’s Daseins-Analyse the legitimate application of Heidegger’s Analytik des Daseins? If not, is Daseins-Analyse the only form of Existential Analysis? These were some of the major problems which—more or less clearly formulated—confronted the Barcelona Congress and for which Sarro, Boss, Minkowski, Ey, Ibor, Neumann, and other speakers offered their solutions” (Straus, 1959, p. 161), and he remarks that “Neumann (Tel Aviv) impressed the audience with a lecture in which he presented creative man as the central problem of psychotherapy” (Straus, 1959, p. 163).

⁵⁸² Most chapters of Memories, Dreams, Reflections resulted from interviews Aniela Jaffé conducted with Jung. However, according to her introduction, Jung wrote parts of it by himself. In April 1958 Jung completed the three chapters on his childhood, school years, and the time of his medical studies. These must have been the parts to which Neumann alludes in this letter. The chapter titled “Late Thoughts” was written by Jung at the beginning of 1959. Jung sent it to Neumann in February 1959, who discussed the content in his letter from 18 February (118 N). In addition, Jung also wrote the chapter on “Kenya and Uganda” in the summer of 1959. Those chapters were heavily edited by Jaffé, before they were incorporated in the manuscript. On the problematic status of Memories, Dreams, Reflections see Shamdasani (1995).

⁵⁸³ On their journey through Spain Erich and Julie Neumann were accompanied by their daughter Rali and one of her friends. Among other places they visited Toledo, Sevilla, and Granada with their rich Sephardic history from the Muslim reign. The visit of the corrida (bullfight) in Barcelona was part of the entertainment program of the International Congress of Psychotherapy. (Information from Rali Loewenthal-Neumann.)

⁵⁸⁴ Neumann gave a paper at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich as part of the 1958–59 lecture series on “Die Angst” (“The Fear”). His lecture was titled “Die Angst vor dem Weiblichen” (“The Fear of the Feminine”) (Neumann, 1959c).

⁵⁸⁵ The First International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Zurich, 7–12 August 1958 (see n. 574).

 

118 N

18. II. 59

Dearest C. G. Jung,

What a month! After quite a long time, I have just landed in an “episode” of active imagination, and added to that comes your manuscript with the chapters on the afterlife.586 Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for it. I have no “opinion” about this, nor about this entire book, but am deeply moved once again. For me, it is the finest thing you have written. I must however admit that this is for personal reasons because I do not know anything else in writing that is closer to me and to the nature of my life experience. You will not perceive this as immodesty for it is not here a question of differences in dimension, but of the nature of life experience, and you know well how closely the “myth” I wrote when I was 16 led to all of this, and if I survey my development as I get older and trace its stages, I have a very similar experience of life as the one that speaks out of this book.

If I now bring some comments, “objections,” etc., you will understand these as questions that cannot be avoided. They must be asked, for the depth of these things that affect me cannot not remain without reaction, and it seems to me that I must direct this question back to you. But none of my questions should place a burden of a reply on you; you know, that in all these things I have nothing to expect from you but everything from myself. Some of it seems to me to be explained by my Jewish and thus more Eastern background that does not quite overlap with your Christian and more Occidental one. But despite this, I am still posing these questions because it seems to me that in some places as if deeper answers are conflicted in you yourself with—perhaps?—less deep ones, if I understand you correctly. I definitely do not mean the necessary paradox of statements here.

If I am formulating it simplistically in the form of opposing theses, then you will please not misunderstand me. But I can, I hope, formulate it more succinctly in this way. It does indeed look as if I wish to correct you, perhaps another person sees something from his distance that is more difficult to assess for oneself. At the risk of making myself very unpopular with you, I would like then to raise some issues with the thesis so beloved of you of the “becoming conscious of God,” and moreover, some issues that arise out of your own material. Could it not be the case that precisely the thesis of your consciousness should be compensated for? A thesis whose aspect of development is perhaps still tied to a particular time? If the Self contemplates you as the ego, then the Self is not unconscious. If you are told, which amounts to the same thing, C. G. Jung is a projection of the Great Unknown, then he is clearly communicating that he is not unconscious, it seems to me. In reality it could then only be a question of a variation of the myth of man as conceived by you. If we humans are complexes of the divine unconscious, which he or it becomes conscious of while we make conscious our individuality with our human consciousness, the accent on the individual would be still greater without our having to formulate the Self or God as unconscious. If we were the unconscious complexes of God that are endowed with consciousness and the possibility of consciousness, our task of consciousness and integration would also be sacred. The function of the cells of an organism, of our organism, does not imply that we are unconscious, although we cannot “replace” this function. The small unique experience of the individual is impossible to the great as the great, through metastasis into the small and smallest the great experience differentiates itself unendingly just as the image of the whole is reflected in a different way in a fragment. These infinite variations of infinitely more different unique experiences add something to absolute knowledge without our being able to say that absolute knowledge is unconscious. Am I making sense, have I misunderstood you very much?

This is roughly where my objection to “incarnation” comes from. “Late Thoughts” p. 9.587 This incarnation is identical with the creation of man in the image of God as an ego-Self. It is not incarnation but its becoming conscious and its realization, which leads to the new phenomenon of the birth of God in which the divine as a divine individual and a unique singularity manifests itself in man. The incarnation is already preexistent in the ego-Self unity in which the numinous ego-nucleus of the ego has the capacity for consciousness. If the task is that man becomes conscious of his Self and his creator, then it comes closer to the other mythically formulated phenomenon that the creator and the Self thereby create a new experience that did not exist beforehand, as the complex: this individual, this uniquely configured nucleus of consciousness and of the ego were not yet in existence. For me in any case, it is a fact that the Jewish historical “development” in this mortal world is becoming ever more problematic for me, the “actualization of messianism” in individuation is becoming ever more crucial. The same is true for the historical revelation as for the historical incarnation. What is relevant are the stages of development of consciousness in the development of the individual, otherwise everything “historical” belongs to the constellation of the ego as time, like family and constitution. The realization of the ego-Self unity is vertical. From there on, I have issues about your sentence: “On Life after Death,” p. 31: Natural history tells us […]588 Of course, taken as a whole it is indisputable, “haphazard and casual transformation” seems to me, however, to be a Darwinist remnant that I do not believe in without having a counterthesis to hand. This aspect of the 19th century will perhaps be superseded by a completely different theory in which your conception of the archetype as well as absolute and extreme knowledge will play a crucial role. The development theory takes as its starting point the inadequate and only the rational experience of the historical ego and was not capable of explaining the development, not through chance, selection, and mutation. This is why to speak of an “apparently senseless biological turmoil”589 seems to me to be a metaphysical statement from you that you otherwise avoid. If the purpose of individual life presupposes such an advanced development in the direction of the Self, then it seems to me we may not any longer go beyond this question after the individual purpose. We are not responsible for it as an isolated, unique historical ego, and the mythical statement of the unconscious sounds completely different. Besides this we have, moreover, no satisfactory explanation, but the composition of the natural kingdoms in which the experience of the world is becoming ever more extensive seems to me to speak against the fact that the way toward the manifestation of meaning, thanks to warm-bloodedness and brain development, has been found by accident. Precisely because the psyche and the archetypes have developed with their meaning content in the development of nature, this meaning is not something foreign to nature but rather belongs to it from the outset—it seems to me. Your word: “Who has created, who has imagined” is also relevant here.

I hope you are not angry with me for raising “issues,” but it all concerns me too much to be able to keep my mouth shut. Precisely the radical emphasis of the individual as a “unit of salvation,” as it were, seems to me the upper waterline to the lower collective line. For this reason I am glad to rediscover also in your work the—unavoidable—“new” ethic in “Late Thoughts” p. 2.⁵⁹⁰ This problem of evil will not let me off the hook and is forever making a reappearance in my imagination. Most difficult to swallow. “The murderer can have an epiphany by murdering and the murdered by being murdered,” and if I am told “It makes no difference to the light of God if it burns on a black or a white candle,” then I have almost dropped out of the Western world, almost out of Judaism, and I do not know from where else but not out of myself—or so I hope. The light wishes to illuminate, it creates dark bodies with the possibility that they will radiate light, is that a primordial mess? I believe the horizontal historical view confuses everything here, life itself is, after all, devouring and being devoured. The only thing that remains open to question is why creation, the answer, radiating in infinite variety what only radiates in itself in an unreflected way, is ancient, but satisfies me.

Most dear C. G. Jung, so please forgive the ambush, but this is how the constellation of my February has been. You know that my gratitude for your book is only greater because it compels me to respond.

In old solidarity,

[E. Neumann]

586 Neumann refers to chapter 11 of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, titled “Über das Leben nach dem Tod” (“On Life after Death”) (Jung, 1962).

⁵⁸⁷ Not in the chapter “Late Thoughts,” but in “On Life after Death” (Jung, 1962, pp. 293–96 [German, p. 319]).

⁵⁸⁸ The passage belongs to the chapter “Late Thoughts”: “Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundred of millions of years and devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes—the second cosmogony. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain—found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge” (Jung, 1962, p. 312).

⁵⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁹⁰ Jung (1962), pp. 303–6.

 

119 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

10th March 1959

Dear Friend,

Many thanks for your comprehensive and thorough letter of 18/II! What Mrs. Jaffé sent you was a first draft, which I had not yet revised at all, an attempt at nailing down my volatile thoughts. Sadly the exhaustion of my great age forbids me from an equally comprehensive excursus as your letter.

[I]

The question: an creator sibi conscious est?591 is not a “favorite idea” but a most painful experience of almost immeasurable impact that cannot easily be debated. If someone projects the Self, for example, then it is an unconscious act, for projection arises empirically only out of unconsciousness.

Incarnatio describes in the first instance the birth of God, which took place in XPo,⁵⁹² psychologically, therefore, also the realization of the Self as something new, not present before that. The previously created human is a “creature” even if “in the image of God,” in whom the thought of filiatio and of the sacrificium divinum is not explicitly present. It is, as you say, a “new experience.”

“It once happened by accident and at random that …”593 this sentence should characterize the entire process of creation. The archetype is no exception to this. The starting point was that indistinct masses organized themselves into a circular shape. Thus the original type appeared as the first form of formless gas, for everything formless can only appear in a specific form or order.

The concept of “order” is not identical with that of “meaning.” Even an organic being is, despite its inherent meaningful structure, not necessarily meaningful overall. If the world had come to an end in the Oligocene period,⁵⁹⁴ then it would have had no meaning for man. Without the reflective consciousness of man, the world is of gigantic meaninglessness because man, in our experience, is the only being who can detect meaning.

We cannot claim to know of what the constituent factors of biological development consist. But we know well that warm-bloodedness and brain differentiation were necessary for the emergence of consciousness and, with that, also for the revelation of meaning. It cannot be imagined what kind of coincidences and risks creation went through, over millions of years, to evolve from a lemur tree dweller into a man. In this chaos of coincidence, synchronistic phenomena were probably at work, which in contrast to and with the help of the known laws of nature were able to achieve syntheses in archetypal moments that appear amazing to us. Causality and teleology collapse here, for synchronistic phenomena behave like coincidences. But their being consists in the fact that an objective process coincides in a corresponding way with a psychic event, i.e., for example, a physical process has a meaning in common with an endopsychic one. This sentence implies not only a (ubiquitous?) latent meaning that can be recognized by consciousness but also, for that preconscious time, a psychoid process that coincides in a corresponding way with a physical process. But here, meaning cannot yet be recognized by any consciousness. It is through the archetype that we come closest to this early, irrepresentable, psychoid stage of conscious development; indeed, the archetype itself gives us direct intimations of it. Unconscious synchronicities are also, from experience, absolutely possible, in that one is in many cases unconscious of their occurrence or one must be made aware of them by an outsider.

II

Since the nomological probability gives no grounds for surmising that higher syntheses such as the psyche, for example, could emerge by chance arrangement595 alone, we thus need the hypothesis of a latent meaning to explain not only the synchronistic phenomena but also the higher syntheses. Meaning is always unconscious and can only be discovered post hoc;⁵⁹⁶ this is why the danger also always exists that meaning will be insinuated where nothing of the sort is present. We do need the synchronistic experiences to be able to justify the hypothesis of a latent meaning that is independent of consciousness.

Since a creation without the reflective consciousness of man has no recognizable meaning, with the hypothesis of latent sentience a cosmogonic significance is extended to man, a true raison d’être. If, on the other hand, the latent meaning is attributed to the creator as a conscious plan of creation, then the question arises: why should the creator contrive this whole world phenomenon as he already knows what he could be reflected in and why should he reflect himself since he is already conscious of himself? To what end should he create a second, inferior consciousness alongside his omniscience? In a sense, billions of dull little mirrors of which he knows in advance what the picture will be like that they will reflect back?

After all these considerations I have come to the conclusion that being made in the same image does not only apply to man, but also to the creator; he is similar to or the same as man, i.e., among other things, as unconscious as he is or even more unconscious since according to the myth of the incarnatio he even feels compelled to become a man and to offer himself as a sacrifice to man.

I must end here in the awareness that I have only touched on the main points (as it seems to me) of your letter, which is in part difficult for me to understand. It is not carelessness but rather my molesta senectus597 that impose economy on me.

With best wishes,
Your devoted,
C. G. Jung

⁵⁹¹ “But is the creator conscious of himself?” In Jung’s letter edition Aniela Jaffé transcribes this sentence with “an creator sibi consciens est?” (Jung, 1973, vol. 3, p. 238 [German]); vol. 2 p. 493 [English]). She published the letter again in the German version of her book Der Mythus vom Sinn im Werk von C. G. Jung (Jaffé, 1967, pp. 179–81)—also rendering “conscience.” When Roderick Main republished the letter in the appendix of his study Jung on Sychronicity and the Paranormal, he followed Jaffé’s letter edition (Main, 1997). The original handwritten letter states “conscious.”

⁵⁹² The Greek capital letter Χ and Ρ are the first two letters of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ. Together they formed a cross like monogram representing the Christ character of Jesus: ☧,

⁵⁹³ Jung refers to this passage of Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years and devouring and being devoured” (Jung, 1961, p. 312).

⁵⁹⁴ Oligocene, geologic epoch of the Paleogene period, from about 34 million to 23 million years before the present. The beginnings of the species Homo is usually dated with 2 millions year to the present.

⁵⁹⁵ The typescript version (B) differs from the handwritten letter (A). (B) gives “Zufälligkeit” (“randomness”) instead of (A) “Zufallsanordnung” (“chance arrangement”).

⁵⁹⁶ The typescript version (B) renders “meaning seems always to be unconscious at first and therefore can only be discovered post hoc.”

⁵⁹⁷ molesta senectus, Latin for “arduous age.”

 

120 N

Dr. Erich Neumann,

Analytical Psychologist

11th Sept 59

Dear C. G. Jung,

I wanted to write a big response to your letter, I wanted to thank you for the invitation to our daughter Rahli598 which pleased me very much, to congratulate you on your birthday—I have done nothing of this. But this was not due to neglect but was the consequence of an emergency, which you will appreciate. You see, I became ill for more than 9 weeks and after that I wasn’t even able to take care of anything other than my practice for a while. However, a big lecture for the Protestant Academy in Tübingen (first time in Germany!) and the Eranos lecture were unwritten.⁵⁹⁹ So then a manuscript of 120 pages came out rather precipitously out of which I pulled both lectures. We are now in Wallis in the mountains and I certainly hope to see you at some point between the end of September until mid-October, wherever and however. We will then be in Zurich, the Institute, Club, etc. I will however write straightaway to Aniela J. so that she can “fit me in.” Perhaps we will then have chance to continue something of what both letters have raised.

I hope my script will be decipherable, I have done my best anyway.

In old cordiality,

Yours,

E. Neumann

598 Rali Loewenthal-Neumann came to Zurich for the first time in 1950 to recover from a tuberculosis infection. From 1956 to 1960 she studied psychology in Zurich. She visited the seminars and lectures at the Jung Institute and took part in the social activities of the Jung circles. When Jung heard about his friend’s daughter studying in Zurich, he invited her to pay him a visit in Küsnacht. They sat together in the garden and spoke for half an hour. Jung was interested in the political situation in Israel and the well-being of Rali’s father. The meeting took place in summer 1959. (Information provided by Rali Loewenthal-Neumann.)

⁵⁹⁹ The conference of the Evangelische Akademie did not take place in Tübingen, but in Tutzing at the Starnberger Lake from 28 July 1959 to 4 August 1959 (see Neumann’s letter to Rascher, 20 July 1959 [RA]). Neumann’s contribution to the Eranos conference 1959 was titled “Das Bild des Menschen in Krise und Erneuerung” (“The Image of Man in Crisis and Renewal”) (Neumann, 1960a). Both texts together formed the basis of Neumann’s posthumously published book Krise und Erneuerung (Crisis and Renewal) (1961b).

 

121 J

PROF. DR. C. G. JUNG

KÜSNACHT, ZURICH SEESTRASSE 228

23. Jan. 1961

Dear Mrs. Neumann,600

Finally I am getting around to thank you for your kind letter and now to express my condolences to you also in writing for the great loss that has befallen you. A dark year lies behind us: you have lost your husband and I a friend and, besides this, my youngest son-in-law.⁶⁰¹

I regretted very much that I did not see Dr. Neumann once again last autumn. But at the time I was unwell myself and am still not over all after effects. To this is added the exhaustion of great age, which one would like to deny. Following on from the death of my son-in-law I was particularly shattered by the unexpected and, for me, sudden death of my friend and companion on the way in whose fate I participated in tranquility and from a distance. I still remember well our last conversation at which you were also present. May the New Year grant you consolatory fortunes!

Most warmly,
Your devoted,

C. G. Jung

⁶⁰⁰ Letter to Julie Neumann addressed by Jung as “Liebe Frau Doktor.”

⁶⁰¹ Konrad Hoerni-Jung (1910–1960), married to Jung’s youngest daugther Helene Hoerni-Jung.