After a walk through the woods to what looked like a fairy tale castle by the side of the lake, the great wooden door was opened to my knock by the huge old hired man, smoking a pipe and with an axe in his hand.
In lame German I asked for Herr Doctor, and in idiomatic English he introduced himself – not the dignified professor I had expected.
As we stood on the beautiful shore he put me somewhat at ease, chatting about his building of his hideaway.
My hesitance and inhibitions were replaced soon after by the conviction that here was a very fallible, rigid old man, as we got into an enormously heated argument about the international situation.
Having helped me realize he was quite human and that it was quite safe to show some feeling, he escorted me up to an elegant Swiss tea which we shared with Emma Jung.
They enquired at length about the situation in Germany, no doubt the reason he was willing to see a non-German coming recently out of that country.
I knew nothing of the controversy regarding his questionable sympathies for the Germans, but certainly at that time I got no impression that he had ever been warm in any way toward Nazism, rather that he only tried to understand what it all meant at a deeper level.
Finally we were alone for about an hour, during which he dealt graciously and helpfully with my impossible enquiry as to what I should do with my life, knowing nothing about me, and yet no doubt knowing much just by observing.
Instead of answering my questions he gave me other, better questions to ask myself over the succeeding months.
Most of all as I later mused over the experience of being with this extraordinary man, I felt there must be great worth and depth in an association with his work.
Eleven years later I . . . completed my analytic training in London. ~George Hogel, J.E.T. Page 118.