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[KĂŒsnacht, Zurich,] 11 September 1933
Dr. Erich Neumann,
Weimarischestrasse 17,
Berlin-Wilmersdorf141
Dear Doctor,
I have reserved an hourâs appointment for you on Tuesday, 3rd October at 4 pm.
Yours respectfully,
C. G. Jung
141 From 1928 to 1932 Erich and Julie Neumann lived in HindenburgstraĂe 86 (Berlin Wilmersdorf; todayâs name: Am Volkspark). In 1932 they moved to Weimarische StraĂe 17 where they stayed until they left Germany in autumn 1933. (Information from Micha Neumann and Rali Loewenthal-Neumann.)
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CERTIFICATE142
I hereby confirm that Dr. Erich Neumann is engaged in psychological studies with me, and that my work will begin again on 15th January 1934.
KĂŒsnacht, Zurich, 14th December
[C. G. Jung]
142 Presumably written for the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police in order for Neumann to obtain a temporary permit of residency.
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29. I. 1934
To: Dr. Erich Neumann,
Zurich
Dear Colleague,
It is possible that a Dr. Ernst Harms143 will make contact with you. He is desperate for therapy, and needs it tooâas he basically consists of an intellectual halo wandering lonely and footless through the world. He would not be uninteresting, but there would be no money in it.
With best wishes,
Yours truly,
[C. G. Jung]
143 Ernest [Ernst] Harms (1895â1974): Jewish child psychotherapist. Studied with Freud and later with Jung; defended Jung against accusations of anti-Semitism (Harms, 1946). In 1934 he had already published articles on topics such as psychology of religion (Harms, 1931), pedagogy of psychology (Harms, 1931a), and German idealism (Harms, 1933a). Later works include Psychologie und Psychiatrie der Conversion (Psychology and Psychiatry of Conversion) (1939) and Origins of Modern Psychiatry (1967).
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[no date]144
Dear Dr. Jung,
When I spokeâin some dismayâwith Miss Wolff145 today about the partial validity of Dr. Ballyâs146 article and she gave me your paper âThe State of Psychotherapy Today,â147 I could not have imagined what a controversy of such fateful personal significance was about to unfold! I know I donât have to tell you what you mean to me, and how hard it is for me to disagree with you, but I feel I simply must take issue with you on a matter that goes far beyond any merely personal concerns. I will refrain from commenting on whether the reverberations that your words are bound to have were indeed what you intended, and I will be silent about whether it is truly a Goethe-inspired perspective148 to view the emergence of National Socialism in all its human-lashing, bloodthirsty barbarianism as a âmighty presenceâ149 in the Germanic unconscious. I will also ignore the fact that I am perplexed thatâthough you cited in your lecture âthe more obscure referenceâ to the ecstatic âAllah il Allahâ150 wail and that you spoke out against the idea of the âFĂŒhrer as idol,ââhere you are asserting that âa movement that takes hold of an entire nation, already has each and every individual in its grip.â151 As a Jew, I do not feel I have any licence to intervene in a controversy that no German can avoid today when they encounter this Germanic unconscious, but as it is certainly correct that we Jews are accustomed to recog nizing the shadow-side,152 then I cannot comprehend why a person like you cannot see what is all too cruelly obvious to everyone these daysâthat it is also in the Germanic psyche (and in the Slavic one) that a mind-numbing cloud153 of filth, blood and rottenness is brewing.
It may well be that the immemorial history of my people with its long recurrence of prophets, judges, Zaddikim154 and elders fills me with implausible and completely ungermanic ideas (ungermanic for sure), but, where I come from, great men have always been called upon to exercise discernment and to stand against the crowdâand it is precisely my conviction about the uniqueness of your own nature that causes me nowâ(not only in my own interest)âto ask you if this easy affirmation, this throwing yourself into the frenzy of Germanic exuberanceâis this your true position or do I misunderstand you on this point?
More importantly though, I would wish to disabuse you of the conviction that Jews are as you imagine them to be. I do not know the Jews you have treated, but I know you consider even my friend Gerhard Adler155 to be exceptionally Jewish. I believe myself to be completely certain of his agreement when I say to you that, even among our own people, things are not so unfortunate as for either of us to be considered typical representatives.
The rather sad Jewish remnants that have wound their way to you are those that remain, the most diasporic, assimilated and nationalized Jews, individuals and stragglers, but from where, dear Dr. Jung, do you know the Jewish race, the Jewish people? May your error of judgment perhaps be conditioned (in part) by the general ignorance of things Jewish and the secret and medieval abhorrence of them that thus leads to knowing everything about the India of 2000 years ago and nothing about the Hasidism156 of 150 years ago? Furthermore, is there not the remnant of a misunderstanding in a sentence such as: âThe Aryan unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish (one)â157 which allows a primitive race to claim that âthey are the ones who are.â158 The Hasidism movement as well as that of Zionism159 demonstrate the inexhaustible liveliness of the Jewish people, as only a deficient interest can overlook the outrageousness of a phenomenon such as, for example, the renaissance of the Hebrew160 language that was dead for 2,000 years and the settlement in Palestine that you, albeit tentatively and skeptically, consider to be romantic, while, as a Germanic person, you seem to wish to have a monopoly on all romanticism and illusion and value them highly. Of course I have to laugh at this exaggerated formulation, but there is much truth in what I am saying. This Jewish renaissance seems to me to be more embryonic, youthful and full of energy than the Nazi-rigid, brutally organized and stolid, extreme submissiveness of the Aryan revivals.161 Believe me, as a Jew, I quite love the Germanic potential as far as I am able to see it and get a sense of it, but to equate National Socialism with the Aryan-Germanic is perhaps ominously incorrect and I cannot understand how you reach this conclusion and whether you must reach it. Is Bolshevism also a feature of the Aryan unconscious? Or what does it imply that there, as you told me, all bad instincts have been called uponâwhich is apparently completely different in Germany.
I believe, even, that in both there are seeds of things to come, but I believe and know I have learned from you, and had it confirmed by you, that the most precious secret of every human beingânot only of the Germanic raceâis, in essence, the purely creative prescient depths of oneâs soul. Far beyond the fact that your Jewish diagnosis is not right, I simply cannot see that it is possible that the collective unconscious, in its deeper layers, can have greater or fewer tensions within it among the different races. It seems to me that, as is the case for the individual, it is contingent on the consciousness of the race that changes through history and that, expressly in the case of the Jewish people, has changed repeatedly and will change again, and this engenders new developments over and over again. I fear you are confusing Freudâwhom you have classified sociologically as European162 by the wayâwith the Jew, and therefore the use of Nazi terminologyâsimply to identify Freudâs categories as âJewish categoriesâ163âis doubly puzzling coming from your pen, especially when previouslyâbefore the rise of HitlerâFreudâs extraverted theory was contrasted with Adlerâs introverted theory.164
I do not wish to change anything in this letter. It will remain as it is written. Hopefully you will appreciate how it is intended. It seems to me that it is precisely my gratitude toward you that obliges me to be candid. I hope there is not too much âMarsâ165 in this, but that there is some âMarsâ here, I know, and I stand by it.
Yours,
Erich Neumann
144 The letter was written in Zurich between the publication of Gustav Ballyâs article on 27 February 1934 and Neumannâs departure in May 1934.
145 Toni Anna Wolff (1888â1953): Born into a wealthy and distinguished Zurich family, Toni Wolff was sent to Jung for treatment in 1910 after the death of her father the previous year. She became the soul mate, mistress, and companion of Jung and was of particular importance for him during the time of his crises and subsequent exploration of the unconscious in the years after 1913. She played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Zurich Psychological Club in 1916 and presided over it from 1928 to 1945. Patients coming to see Jung for therapy would often see her as well. When Erich Neumann came to Zurich in 1933 he underwent therapy with both. Toni Wolff also became the therapist of Julie Neumann when Erich and Julie visited Zurich in May and June 1936 (see Neumannâs letters to Jung from 30 January 1936 [19 N], and 15 April 1953 [95 N]). Neumann and Toni Wolff wrote to each other on a regular basis from 1934 until her death of a heart attack on 21 March 1953. Neumann wrote a letter of condolence to Jung (see letter from 15 April 1953 [95 N]). Toni Wolff is the author of Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche (Strukturformen der weiblichen Psyche) (1951) and the collection of essays Studies on the Psychology of C. G. Jung (Studien zur Psychologie C. G. Jungs) (1959). On Toni Wolff see Molton and Sikes (2011).
146 Gustav Bally (1893â1966): German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Studied medicine in Zurich and Heidelberg from 1913 to 1920 and had psychiatric training at the university clinic of Zurich with Eugen Bleuler and the MĂŒnsingen Sanatorium in Bern from 1921 to 1926. From 1924 on, he trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute among others with Hanns Sachs and Karen Horney. Professor at the commercial college of St. Gall from 1947 to 1956, thereafter he held the chair for psychotherapy at the University of Zurich. In 1948, he foundedâtogether with Manfred Bleuler and Medard Bossâthe Zurich Institute for Medical Psychotherapy. His published works include On the Scope of Freedom (Vom Ursprung und den Grenzen der Freiheit) (1945) and Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud (EinfĂŒhrung in die Psychoanalyse Sigmund Freuds) (1961). When Jung was elected president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine Ă€rztliche Gesellschaft fĂŒr Psychotherapie) and demanded in his editorial to the societyâs journal Zentralblatt fĂŒr Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete (Jung, 1933) that the differences between the Germanic and Jewish psychology should no longer be blurred, Bally wrote a harsh critique of Jungâs race-psychological arguments and his presidency of the AĂGP in the Neue ZĂŒrcher Zeitung of 27 February 1934 (Bally, 1934). Jung responded with a âRejoinder to Dr. Ballyâ (âZeitgenössischesâ) on 13/14 March 1934 (Jung, 1934). Despite their controversy in 1934, Bally and Jung remained in collegial contact and worked together on a regular basis as members of the Commission on Psychotherapy of the Swiss Society of Psychiatry. See introduction, pp. xxiiâxxiii.
147 Jung, âThe State of Psychotherapy Todayâ (1934a). In his text Jung reiterates and elaborates on his race psychological considerations raised in his editorial to the Zentralblatt (Jung, 1933), calling it a big psychological mistake of medical psychology to apply Jewish categories to the Christian Germans or Slavs (Jung, 1934a, § 354). See introduction, pp. xxii.
148 In Johann Wolfgang Goetheâs (1749â1832) tragedy Stella (1806), Fernando exclaims at the end: âGreat God!âyou who sends angels to us in our extremities, grant us strength to support their mighty presenceâ (editorâs translation) (âGott im Himmel, der du ...