On November 2, 1945, Jung wrote to Cary Baynes:
“We have landed indeed, after the nightmare of the war, in the precincts of hell.
The war was a long drawn out suspense, in which everything seemed to be still existent yet provisional.
One lived from day to day, never certain of to-morrow.
An incredible atmosphere of horror was secretly present everywhere.
When peace came at last, the immediate of oppression vanished, but only to make room to a feeling of almost cosmic doom.
The atomic bomb or at least the thought of such a monstrous menace fitted the picture completely.
We are still the island in a sea of abomination and we feel like relics of a faraway Golden Age. It is wonderful that we still can enjoy the beauty of high culture, but we know, that it is a remnant and that it’s days are counted . . . Carol Baumann has given me some news about Kristine Mann.
I hope that her suffering will soon come to an end.
The soul seems to detach from the body pretty early and there seems to be almost no realization of death.
What follows is well-nigh incredible.
It seems to be an adventure greater and more expected than anything one could dream of.
Whatever we do and try in analysis is the first steps towards that goal.
That is the only thing, which has accompanied me across the threshold.” ~Carl Jung to Cary Baynes, 2 November 1945, (Cary Baynes papers).
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