Carl Jung on Parents and Children
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)
Anonymous
Dear Fraulein N., 18 August 1936
With regrettable tardiness I am answering your letter of May 18th.
My correspondence is more like a flood than anything that can be kept within reasonable bounds.
As for your question I am reluctant to answer people I don’t know personally, so I can only go into it in a general way.
In principle I am always in favour of children leaving their parents as soon as possible once they have reached maturity.
Parents must realize that they are trees from which the fruit falls in the autumn.
Children don’t belong to their parents, and they are only apparently produced by them.
In reality they come from a thousand-year-old stem, or rather from many stems, and often they are about as characteristic of their parents as an apple on a fir-tree.
Beyond the human obligation to look after ageing parents and to maintain a friendly relation with them, there should be no other dependencies, for the young generation has to start life anew and can encumber itself with the past only in case of the greatest necessity.
With kindest regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung, ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 217-218.
