I make horoscope calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth.
Dear Professor Freud, 12 June 1911
Since last writing to you (long enough, alas!)
I have made good use of my time.
I was at the Congress of Swiss Psychiatrists in Lausanne and spoke on “forms of unconscious fantasy.”
These things are contributions to, and elaborations of, the work in the current Jahrbuch, which, incidentally, is taking shape terribly slowly (because of the wealth of material) .
Everything I am doing now revolves round the contents and forms of unconscious fantasies.
I think I’ve already got some really fine results.
You will see that this investigation is the necessary preliminary work for the psychology of Dem. praec. Spielrein’s case is proof of that (it’s in the Jahrbuch).
Often I longed for you to be here so that I could discuss an extremely difficult case:
Dem. praec. with, one can well say, a tremendous unconscious fantasy system which I have to drag into the light of day with unspeakable effort and patience.
On top of that, constant danger of suicide.
A really devilish case, but extraordinarily interesting and instructive.
The case is particularly painful because I am now beginning to see
what I did not see with Honegger.
It seems that in Dem. praec. you have at all costs to bring to light the inner world produced by the introversion of libido, which in paranoiacs suddenly appears in distorted form as a delusional system (Schreber), as I have apparently succeeded in doing in the present case but failed to do with Honegger because I had no inkling of it.
I tell myself that this lack of knowledge of mine led to his death. What if this view should be confirmed?
I have the feeling I am practising vivisection on human beings with intense inner resistance.
It seems that introversion leads not only, as in hysteria, to a recrudescence of infantile memories but also to a loosening up of the historical layers of the unconscious, thus giving rise to perilous formations which come to light only in exceptional cases.
My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology.
I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth.
Some remarkable things have turned up which will certainly appear incredible to you.
In the case of one lady, the calculation of the position of the stars at her nativity produced a quite definite character picture, with several biographical details which did not belong to her but to her mother-and the characteristics fitted the mother to a T.
The lady suffers from an extraordinary mother complex.
I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens.
For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment.
I still haven’t finished my popular exposition for the Zurich Jahrbuch.
This week I must start work on my Brussels lecture.
With cordial greetings,
Very sincerely,
JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 23-24
