Carl Jung’s Letter to James Joyce
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)
Dear Sir,
Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.
Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist).
Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about 3 years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I’m profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned
a great deal from it.
I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter.
I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run in the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches.
I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman.
I didn’t. Well I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger who went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck.
At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.
With the expression of my deepest appreciation,
I remain, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page
Carl Jung, James Joyce, Lucia Joyce
To Patricia Graecen
Dear Mrs. Graecen 29 June 1955
I n fulfilling your wishes I have corrected the pages of your MS here enclosed.
The question of the letter to Joyce is mysterious.
I am rather certain that I never wrote to him but the remark about Molly’s monologue is definitely authentic, though where and to whom I made it is beyond the reach of my memory.
I am sorry.
If you know anything of my anima theory, Joyce and his daughter are a classic example of it. She was definitely his femme inspiratrice,
which explains his obstinate reluctance to have her certified.
His own anima, i.e., unconscious psyche, was so solidly identified with her that to have her certified would have been as much as an admission that he himself had a latent psychosis.
It is therefore understandable that he could not give in.
His “psychological” style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help talking and thinking in such a way, while Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces.
Which incidentally explains why he himself did not go over the border.
But his daughter did, because she was no genius like her father, but merely a victim of her disease.
In any other time of the past Joyce’s work would never have reached the printer, but in our blessed XXth century it is a message, though not yet understood.
Very truly yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266
Like Nietzsche, like the Great War, and like James Joyce, his literary counterpart, Freud is an answer to the sickness of the nineteenth century. That is indeed his chief significance. For those with a forward-looking view he offers no constructive plan, because not even with the boldest effort or the strongest will would it ever be possible to act out in real life all the repressed incest-wishes and other incompatibilities in the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 15 Para 52
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