The Freud / Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung (Bollingen Series, No. 94)

I loved this book mostly because I have been fascinated by Freud for many years and now I am studying Jung. To have the privilege of reading their letter back and forth is a treat. Also there are insights into current problems that Psychology still grapples over.

This is an amazing collection of letters which depict the relationship of two of the greatest psychologists of all time. Naturally, there are people who interpret this relationship in different ways, especially as a very specific situation, peculiar to the development of psychology or otherwise. I think otherwise. Life is rarely linear--it's usually Normally Distributed. Things tend to go in cycles, not straight lines. The relationship between Freud the mentor & Jung the mentee is just not that unusual. In fact, it parallels that of every child (especially males stereotypically seeking independence). There comes a time to leave the nest & for the mentee to strike out on his own--just as there is a time for a new paradigm (per Thomas Kuhn's classic, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"). This is precisely what occurred between Freud & Jung. It's almost archetypal. There's even something of a parallel between Jung & Father Victor White in Jung's "Letters." This book has some interesting quotes from each of the two psychologists: By Freud: p. 119 Take my urgent advice, arm yourself with ill temper against all unreasonable demands. p. 121 One must try to learn something from every experience. p. 169 I have long known that one can't change people. Everyone has something worthwhile in him. We must content ourselves with getting it out of him. By Jung: p. 84 What people don't know surpasses the imagination, and what they don't want to know is simply unbelievable. p. 157 one likes human beings around one and not complex-masks. And, very apropos: p. 462 Emma Jung: it is always the nearest thing that one sees worst.

This is a sad book to read. In fact, one would not expect that such a type of bad development would occur between the two most important figures of psychoanalisys. It is as if Marx and Engels had broken their friendship for life and began to fight for fame and glory in front of everybody. The spoil was huge: nothing more than the primacy for fame and glory in the first steps of psychanalisys. Sure, the letters span a pretty much limited space of time of no more than 8 years (1906-1914) but the reader has to keep in mind that what was at stake was the establishing of the foundations of psychoanalisys all over Europe and also in the whole World. What began as a cordial friendship and evolved into an almost father (Freud) to son (Jung) relationship, deteriorated into the most depressive fighting of personal primacy on many subjects. In this regard, it seems that the feud was initiated by Freud who considered Jung a type of his personal assistant to market the developments of his findingsTHe fact that this is a abridged edition does not mean nothing except that here the common reader will find the most important material exchanged by the two great men and will be saved from some meaningless material of more burocratical tone.Also of value is the introduction that ilustrates all the effort made by the two family sides to publish the letters, in spite the view by Jung that the ideal time for them to be published would be 20 to 30 years after his death. THis is a must reading for anyone interested in the history of psychanalisys.