C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
Anonymous
Dear Mr. N., 22 March 1939
As you will realize it is extremely difficult to judge an individual case in which one doesn’t know the dramatis personae.
If a young man loves a woman who could almost be his mother, then it always has to do with a mother complex.
Such a union is sometimes quite useful for many years, particularly in the case of artistic persons who haven’t fully matured.
The woman in such a case is helped by an almost biological instinct.
She is hatching the eggs.
The man as the son-lover benefits by the partially sexual, partially motherly interest of the woman.
Thus such a relationship can be satisfactory in every respect for an indefinite period, but the advancing years would certainly put a definite limit to it as it is not quite natural.
It may be that even an artistic nature becomes so adult that the need of becoming a father and a grown-up man in general begins to prevail against the original son-attitude.
When that is the case the relationship is overdue.
What I say is a general rule which shouldn’t be recklessly generalized.
Man is a most peculiar experiment of nature and particularly in erotic respects simply anything is possible.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 266-267.
