[Letter 1 Excerpt]I see another picture of you and me joined in passionate love in absolute surrender, and coming from us and encircling us is a soft and radiant light.
Perhaps this means that the faith of the spirit and the realization of the body are two aspects of a single truth and that men who try to find that truth by either way alone can never understand the mystery.
I have a curious feeling that you have known this from the beginning and that is why you waited.
But I had to discover it through you, so to speak.
I could have said that these two things were required theoretically, but never before have I experienced it as a clear and self-evident reality.
With you I know that the intensity of erotic passion and intensity of the spiritual faith make a single whole.
This totality is for me like the birth of a new Sun in my world.
I know it always has been true and it always will be true, but it has never been true for me before in my whole life.
That is why I told you that looking back I seem to have been blind. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 228
[Letter II Excerpt]
On his return to the house in Kilchberg, Peter wrote to Anne:
Anne my darling, I am tired out and my heart feels like lead. I cannot tell you yet all the arguments which C.G. used which have caused this war within.
He was so tremendously impressive because his humanity spoke to me.
He did not say I made you love me on false pretences, but he said that to marry me as he knows me and as Cary knows me would not be a natural choice for a young and gentle woman.
He said that I could not possibly raise another family at my age and with my experience because you are at the beginning of the biological phase while I am at the end of it.
He believes that I have . allowed myself to be misled by my anima and have interpreted your feeling for me, and have even sought to awaken it, on a mistaken basis.
His idea is that owing to the collapse of your relation to your father you had no psychological means of realizing yourself as a woman.
That you absolutely needed to be fully accepted erotically by an older man whose authority and interest were unimpeachable, in order to discover your true erotic personality.
That the real meaning of your relation to me was this need of becoming aware of yourself as an erotically mature and valued personality in order to choose a husband who would be really able to appreciate your quality.
He is confident I was right in getting you to realise your fine quality as a woman, but he maintains I was wrong in wanting to possess you as my mate.
With regard to my greater experience of life and all that that means, he said either you would have to repress this fact or else you would have to create an animus against me in order to defend your less developed personality from being overwhelmed.
He believes if we can hold our love now with the rein of wisdom it will be for both of us a supreme good for all our days, because it is real and fully accepted.
But if we marry we shall surely kill Eros again because the psychological reality is too heavy for any real success.
The inequality is too great and the sacrifice of other real interests too formidable.
Oh Anne, we talked all day and I tested and retested everything he said.
But what weighs most is the fact that he spoke from love.
He never attacked me, or blamed me or disapproved.
He said here are the things you are blind to because of your desire.
These are the things you need to see because of your love.
If you really mean to be worthy of her love for you look at all the facts and let her see all the facts.
He also said that I was mysticizing [sic] sexuality and that my attitude to sex was hysterical, because I had not sufficiently differentiated spiritual motives from sex motives.
He said the mysticizing of sex had surely made a deep emotional appeal to you.
And that this would certainly lead to disillusionment and disappointment, with consequent resentment.
The upshot was, wait.
Not to fan the flames but to see if wisdom and reflection would not bring the relationship into its own real course.
I am writing all this as though by command.
Love had made me weak.
It feels almost like cutting out the pith and beauty of life.
But my love for you is real. It is greater than my own will.
The old wise man in my heart is not just opinion.
It is the fruit of a life long love and study of the human soul.
Anne, it is best that I do not come to England now. I am so weak.
I would make you love me compassionately. You must let me fight for the wise way against my own weakness.
I think you had better come out here in October and let C.G. carry on the task which I failed in. You need him Anne, to find your real self.
I cannot believe it is ever wrong to love, but oh Anne, it is hard to renounce.
Your Peter. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Pages 230-231
[Letter III Excerpt]
That is the simple truth.
There is an emotional centre which is constant and which stands apart from the tidal motions of sexuality.
It is neither an affirmation nor a plea, but a light that burns steadfastly.
[There is] a new steadiness since you gave me your passion …
I can see that when fate weaves the tie between us it is not a matter of instinct alone or feeling alone ( although both these are woven in the thread) but also a spiritual force which is concerned with generation, creation becoming.
This is the overwhelming factor which cannot be gainsaid and if that is present we have to obey or lose the most vital meaning.
…. You would just wake up and rub your eyes and see me as not in the least beautiful or heroic, but as a rather self-important, middle
aged gentleman, with considerable gaps in his teeth which art has to supply, and a pronounced tendency to long-winded psychological
explanations, lying in bed at the moment with lumbago of all things.
The fact that I love you is really true, but then you are essentially lovable, indeed, more so than any other woman I have ever seen or known or heard about.
So I have every reason to love you … I want to know that you have taken the whole tale of my 48 years into account with all that that means.
You need to look at every wrinkle of an aging horse to see what he is good for. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 235
Letter IV excerpt:
It is because of the ghosts that we absolutely need to hold on to a warm human hand and replenish the larder of faith by human
consideration and understanding. The ghost of your mother seduces you through your pity. You cannot harden your heart against
her just as I could not against Hilda and for that reason, Jung says she nearly pulled me over into unconscious suicide when I was in
Africa. We must surely find how we can release her [i.e. Anne’s mother’s] spirit and set her free. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 238
Letter V excerpt:
You had been unable to meet anyone with your whole self, or better still, as though your deepest self had not yet awoken out of timeless slumber. So that when that deep self is touched and warmed into life by a man, you would be wholly given in love and this could only happen when you felt profoundly secure and also profoundly understood…..
There is a depth in me that has never yet been given to a woman, an emotional nucleus of a curious innocence and sensibility that
no sophisticated hand could ever release. It is this which you laid your gentle hand over, cupping it in a hand of brooding warmth. I
knew that this was what I had always craved from a woman, just that cupping of the hand over that inner nucleus of feeling and the
agony I had last winter was that I had actually found the woman I had always longed for but it was too late. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 237
Letter VI excerpt:
To see that lovely creature rising splendidly out of the sea with all the pearly foam dripping from her shoulders and the warm slumbers of love in her eyes … I think love is faith and perhaps that is why despair and fear of the future seem to be a treachery. Loving is the measure of our faith in life. It is a host on the march. And your letter, Eve, has more power than a battle song. ~Peter Baynes (description of Anne Leay), Jung’s Apprentice, Page 237
C.G. is very distant and obviously with intention. He feels that I am going wrong and am cutting myself off. At least, that is what I have
gathered from Cary and Maggie … But Cary has been unusually friendly and human to me, and Emma Jung has been very nice too. Naturally C.G.’s coldness troubles me very much and as soon as he is through with this week’s turmoil, I shall ask him for a talk. I shall
tell him that if he thinks I am acting under illusion I would like to submit to analysis, for of course nothing lasting and real can be
founded on illusion. No, the truth is that I have to be tom in two because two absolutely essential parts of my life, the two most vital aspects of myself, are pulling in opposite directions. But Anne, there is no panic or disorder, because I am certain of the reality of our love. That stands like a rock and even if I have to be tom in two, that fact cannot be divided into half-truths. The pain is bad because I love C.G. and have given him all my loyalty, so that when he turns from me, as though all virtue had gone out of me, it is like an icy wind of December … I think the only way is for us to talk it out face to face. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 237
Jung made a very fine contribution to appease the storm and got the thing on the level again. He told of how he had himself been
caught by a counter-transference to a beautiful aristocratic girl and how he had a dream in which she was enthroned very high on an Eastern temple, high above him. And this he explained was how all his knowledge and interest in Oriental ideas and feelings had developed out of his transference to the girl. He had, as he said, to cut off his head and learn to submit his ignorance to his patient.
I know that his case was Maggie and I have a feeling that his coldness to me now is very largely on account of her. He is very attached to her and feels her great value because it developed literally under his hand. I think he is entirely committed to the idea of Entwichlung – psychic development. Either you are developing or you are regressing. In this talk about transference he said a man deludes himself when he thinks that a woman is in love with him. A woman does not love him but loves the future she can bring to birth through him. She loves only the boy, the growing, developing immaturity in him and the man himself as he is, is often felt to be an almost intolerable interloper between her love and this growing, incubating egg of the future. It was not quite as extreme as that but very nearly. I got the impression that he thinks the majority of women who marry are only willing to accept the man’s sexuality in so far as it is conceived of as part of the generative yearning for the future being, whether as actual children or as the psychic child which she is mothering. If this is the case, it certainly would explain the disillusionment of the ego which regularly happens in marriage. But what I wanted to say was that I am beginning to feel more and more that all these people, who like myself have been caught up and swung almost off their feet by the ideas which analysis lives upon – well all these eager folk are just too hungry for this geistige Entwicklung; so that this is the sole interest that they seek, either in themselves or others. Consequently, it is a great relief to go off to Lucerne and meet a whole pack of men who have not been inoculated. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Pages 244-245
I had a very good talk with Jung, much easier than I expected, and the constraint I had felt in him before has entirely vanished. I did
not tell him your [Anne Leay] dreams as I felt your objection was sound, but I told him the ones I sent you, except the pool with the children and ducklings which I feel is very clear and beautiful, and expresses the essence of my feeling almost like a poem. But there is a sensitiveness behind the dream which does not want to explore it to analysis. There are things which should not be treated, but left as they are. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 247
This is the crucial association. For it means there is still undisciplined libido that wants to break loose and throw everything
to the winds, a kind of animal lust for freedom a tout prix, something in my animal character that must be tamed and disciplined. This is the real test according to Jung, and my whole character and future depend on whether I master the undisciplined libido or whether it masters me. There is no escape from that problem and if I were to go into the marriage with you under the illusion that by doing so all would be well, I should be heading straight for disaster. He gave me no opinion and no counsel, as of course I knew he would not. But he said I have to weigh up and decide whether such a step will be more on the side of construction or destruction. He said in his view, I would have to pay a pretty heavy price, but it might be that the gain would be worth the price. His last words were, ‘I can never advise a man in matters like this because in the last resort it is something you have to decide between yourself and your God.’ He said this with great seriousness and with great love. I got the impression that he could say nothing now which I have not already taken into my reckoning. But if there rises new material from the side of the anima which is very likely to happen, I shall take it to him. Anyway, he realises now that I am not intending to repudiate my love for him in order to escape his criticism, or vindicate my own way. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 248
Jung … has also compromised with his evil side. But he did it with his eyes open and knew what he did. But you [he is addressing
himself] created a rainbow illusion of fantasy in order not to see what you were doing. He chose to lame himself by the constant
burden of two women neither of whom could he satisfy. But because he chose to lame himself he also harnessed himself to the
real human task and refused to climb to the heights of madness and illusion. He chose the harder way and therefore he has learned patience and humility. [I] chose the easier way of nature and therefore [my] patience is poor and [my] humility is not real. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 248=249
I was literally blasted by a storm of tears. I cried as I have not done since I was a child, except once when Hilda died. Cary was marvellously sweet to me and came into my bed and lay beside me. But I know nothing of why this had come upon me except this crucifixion between my love for you and my deep feeling for Cary. Those long deep breaths which came to me after the storm told me
of the depth from which the whole storm had arisen. It was as though all the passionate misery of all the men of my race for generations who had forsworn their love in the name of duty was sweeping through me, as though the room was full of their spirits and adding their individual sadness to mine. I cannot describe it in any other way. It seemed as though the very sensitiveness which gave me a particular insight and feeling for the poignant loveliness and sweetness you were offering me at the same time made me impotent to cut the bond which holds me to Cary. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 250