Here symbol formation seems to be aiming at something quite different from concept formation.
Dear Professor Freud, 19 March 1911
I have three letters to thank you for, and am answering your points in chronological order.
I will gladly take the question of the Zentralblatt in hand.
Only, I would first like to make sure of the American project.
I am having a lively correspondence with [ones’ about the organization of the American “branch.”!
No further news from New York.
The group cannot be recognized until the list of members has come in together with the “contribution.”!
The size of our European membership wouldn’t make much of an impression on Bergmann.
I have heard rumours of a group being founded in Munich.
The news about Adler is very interesting.
In Zurich, too, several members have noticed that patients use Adler’s writings as a source of resistance, also certain remarks of Bleuler’s about “certain” followers of Freud.
Adler’s question about repression and culture is a typical examiner’s question) calculated only to trap people and not to promote a truth.
Stekel’s new book hasn’t arrived yet, I had no idea that he had
written one. I am revolving in my mind whether it might not eventually become necessary to be openly critical in our own camp.
Stekel’s crass “pig-and-truffle tactics” make me sick.
They are thoroughly misleading; one really shouldn’t fly in the face of all good taste.
As I have had no further news from Berlin I take a less optimistic view of the situation, Kraus is indeed Ziehen’s deadly enemy-so far so good.
If the news proves favourable I would naturally go there without delay.
From Tiibingen I have heard that Privatdozent Busch! wants to honour me with his presence in Zurich.
He seems to have been infected via Stockmayer.
So far as your summer plans are concerned, I am making bold to take you, most emphatically, at your earlier word that you and your wife will be our guests.
I pray nothing will shake this fact.
To that end I have already postponed my military service.
Only now that I have the galleys can I enjoy your Schreber.
It is not only uproariously funny but brilliantly written as well, If I were an altruist I would now be saying how glad I am that you have taken Schreber under your wing and shown psychiatry what treasures are heaped up there.
But, as it is, I must content myself with the invidious role of wishing I had got in first, though that’s not much of a consolation.
It couldn’t be helped, I was plagued with other things that were more important to me than psychiatry proper.
I shall probably be led back to psychiatry by a circuitous route.
For more than a year now, amid unspeakable difficulties, I have been analysing a Dem, praec. case, which has yielded very strange fruits; I am trying to make them comprehensible to myself by a parallel investigation of incestuous fantasy in relation to “creative” fantasy.
Once my thoughts have matured I must seek your advice.
I am still brooding on it.
I too have received the Australian invitation.
What will you write?
I really don’t know what to do.”
The definition of symbol fits if regarded from the purely intellectual standpoint.
But what if a symbol is put in the place of a clear concept in order to repress it?
To take an example: in answer to the question, How was the first man created? an American Indian myth says: from the hilt of a sword and a shuttle,”
Here symbol formation seems to be aiming at something quite different from concept formation.
Symbol formation, it seems to me, is the necessary bridge to the rethinking of long familiar concepts from which the libidinal cathexis is partly withdrawn by canalizing it into a series of intellectual parallels (mythological theories).
This is precisely one of the problems I am brooding on now.
As you see, I approach the problem from a rather different angle.
This is one reason why Silberer’s view, which I had to reject earlier,” does not satisfy me entirely.
I have taken your “pleasure and reality principle” to heart and have had to adopt your terminology for the time being.
“Pleasure and reality principle” is indeed an excellent term with a wide range of application.
My only regret is that I was not in possession of this point of view earlier.
Coming now to the question of the Congress, Vienna would be too much of a jump from Lugano.
Rather than that I would suggest Nuremberg again, where we were accommodated very nicely last time.
For us Swiss, Vienna really is a far cry, also for the Americans and even for the Berliners.
For me personally Vienna would be very pleasant, since I like Vienna and don’t mind the long journey.
But Nuremberg, with its central position, requires roughly the same sacrifices from everybody, so I would like to suggest it to your local group.
Reduced fares on Swiss railways are out of the question, I’d say. (The Gotthard line, for instance, is a private company.)
Would you please inform your group that (exercising my authority) I should like them to put it to the vote at their next meeting whether Nuremberg is accepted or whether they propose some other city.
Please let me know the result of the vote soon.
I shall also get the other local groups to vote on this point.
On April 5th I’m going on a 16-day motoring trip with my wife to the south of France.
I am looking forward to the holiday as I’ve been working very hard.
I hope all is well with you and I am glad for your health’s sake that you don’t have too much to do.
Many kind regards,
JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 406-408
