I shall have to write something about the concept of collective guilt

I shall have to write something about the concept of collective guilt

C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950

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To Albert Oeri

Dear friend, 26 May 1945

Very many thanks for your kind assessment of my half-baked concoction which I myself found unsatisfactory.

You are quite right, of course: it is too pessimistic, or rather, it has a pessimistic effect on people who are brought up to expect their piece of cake still in this world.

Why aren’t they told betimes that the “prince of this world” and lord of the air” takes good care that the tastier morsels are snapped up by the wicked ones they envy so much, and that marriage is not the end but the beginning of the romance?

The misery is that you can’t tell “people” anything whatever; you can tell it only to individuals.

Nevertheless, I shall have to write something about the concept of collective guilt that will stir people up.

Thanks for the detailed news of your daughters,

especially Regula, who was much in our minds during those catastrophic times.

Please give her my greetings.

I would be interested to see her again one day.

All the best,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 370-371.

[Note: The “Half-Baked Concoction” refers to: “Now “The Postwar Psychic Problems of the Germans” in C. G. Jung Speaking”]