Had Freud been more tolerant of the ideas of others I would still be standing at his side today.
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To B. Cohen
Dear Dr. Cohen, 26 March 1934
I would like to thank you for your understanding and decent article in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt.
Such an event at a time like this, when stupidity is celebrating veritable orgies, is a rarity.
Your criticism of my lack of knowledge in things Jewish is quite justified.
I don’t understand Hebrew.
But you seem to impute a political attitude to me which in reality I do not possess.
I am absolutely not an opponent of the Jews even though I am an opponent of Freud’s.
I criticize him because of his materialistic and intellectualistic and-last but not least-irreligious attitude and not because he is a Jew.
In so far as his theory is based in certain respects on Jewish premises, it is not valid for non-Jews.
Nor do I deny my Protestant prejudice.
Had Freud been more tolerant of the ideas of others I would still be standing at his side today.
I consider his intolerance and it is this that repels me-a personal idiosyncrasy.
The editorial comment, for which you are not responsible, treats itself to the joke of taking my reference to the Chinese as an anti-Semitic allusion.
What do these people know of the Chinese?
They have no inkling that I have been cudgelling my brains over the I Ching ever since 1919.
At present I am a … 3 who cannot be interpreted politically.
If one nevertheless does so, one falls from one astonishment into the
next.
My relation with Germany is very recent and is due to idiotic altruism and not at all to political sentiment.
The problem of “anti-Semitism”has been thrown up for the psychotherapists but not for the political daily press.
Or must it always go on as it used to in France, when they wouldn’t accept the concept of Dementia praecox because it was “made in Germany”?
Thirty years ago a French scholar told me: “Savez-vous, il y a des frontieres politiques meme en science.”
In psychotherapy the last thing one should do is to tar everything with the same brush.
Infinite nuances are needed if justice is to be done to human beings.
Very sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 154-155