Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
To Michael Fordham
Dear Fordham, 18 June 1954
Your letter brings bad news; I am really sorry that you didn’t get the post at the Institute of Psychiatry although it may be a small consolation to you that they took at least your pupil, Dr. Hobson.
Well, after all, you are approaching the age when one has to become acquainted with the difficult experience of being superseded.
Times go on and inexorably one is left behind, sometimes more, sometimes less, and one has to realize that there are things beyond our reach one shouldn’t grieve for, as such grieving is still a remnant of too youthful an ambition.
Our libido certainly would go on reaching for the stars if fate didn’t make it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that we shouldn’t seek completion without, but within alas!
One becomes aware that there is so much to improve in the field of the inner man that we must even be grateful to adversity that it helps us to have the necessary amount of free energy to deal with the defects of our development, i.e., with that which has been “spoiled by the father and by the mother.”
In this respect, loss of such kind is pure gain.
Cordially yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 177-178.