Life And Work Of Erich Neumann Quotations

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Angelica Lowe – Life and Work of Erich Neumann

I was born on 23 January 1905 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, as the son of the merchant Eduard Neumann and his wife Selma née Brodnitz. I am a Jew and hold Prussian citizenship. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 23

In the end, I do not believe in God, but am sure of him. The absurdity of the world, and its unimaginability, which is nevertheless related to something, forces itself upon me, just as it remains within us. This, in my eyes, is the devastating aspect of Christianity. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 33

In the unspeakable godlessness of the world, they [Christians] crucify a prophet and worship him as God, merely to create something like themselves, a human being. The Jews are not so naive. We felt God once, and once one has experienced that connection there is nothing else to be content with. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 33

Nothing will be able to destroy the Jews, for they will always search for the One. This “urge” is stronger than any other. There is no God, at least not for the time being. That is precisely why this urge is so strong … ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 33

Again and again I am surprised by my dislike of the purely scientific … my urge towards what I would almost call religious efficacy. Not that I wish to preach or anything of the sort. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 34

Yet I feel God in everything … This is now an evil phrase, but I do not know how to express it any better … Here, too, lies a source of my awareness of the selectness of the Jews. I feel it in my essence that my ancestors have had an intimate relationship with God for thousands of years. All Jews must have that, for we are those upon whom he relies. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 34-35

We thrive on closeness, on living the moment to the full, which is infinitely rich and independent. That’s the private part. Erwin [Loewenson] is rather opposed to such a thing and probably calls it individualism, yet that is mistaken. … I often feel superior to him. Especially when he talks about women. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 38

If I may say so, based on my own experience, and that of the friends of my youth, these contradictions lay between the conscious general assertions staunchly defended in domestic debates and the unacknowledged, largely also expressly denied emotional attitudes. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 40

Believe me, my “precociousness” comes more from deep down than from anything wide ranging … I was too proud, that is, perhaps hurt too soon when I realised that I was not a woman’s equal. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 48

In view of the influx of Eastern Jews … new definitions of their existence as Jews had to be searched for. They were about to transcend the limits of their own smug, solid bourgeois German identity. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 49

When people think all is well with me, it’s always the opposite. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I’m also accused of not wearing my heart on my sleeve. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 52

In general, people believe I’m egotistical. There’s nothing I can say to dispute that. It’s possible, except that I believe that my ego isn’t limited to myself. It’s wider. And there’s so much that I need to do. You change me a lot, for the better I think. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 52

Please remember: You’ve [Julie] made me infinitely rich. What it is, I don’t quite know, but sometimes I even believe to be in your debt. The fact that you’re alive is reason enough for me to believe that the world makes sense. Wherever such groundedness and purity can exist, there’s still a long way to go before all is lost. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 52

I have had several opportunities of observing Mr. Julius Spier at work, and must admit that the results he has achieved have made a lasting impression on me … Spier’s chirology is a valuable contribution to character-research in its widest application. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 53

I still don’t feel that you are strong enough to cope with my negativity. It’s entirely mine. And if one had understood this negativity, only then would one have understood me completely. I’m quite positive … but my foundation lies in “darkness” (that’s what I called it during puberty and I’m sticking with that word). ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 52

In essence, my professional opportunities lie in the human sphere, hence my constant resistance to the constraints of scientific tasks, which threaten to devour everything. … I have the feeling, indeed the awareness, that I am capable, at least to a certain extent. Yet this is not my essence. Only unswerving commitment can take me further. And scientific work never demands my totality. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 59

When you [Jung] speak of the omniscience of Yahweh, it sounds always ironic. But what if he really possesses it and only gives himself archaically to the archaic because he can only become comprehensible to it in this way and if everything that you say is correct but necessary at the same time. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 65

I have an infinite number of relationships with people and can see into so many fates. Sometimes I am very sad that I am unable to grasp this artistically, but it is impossible. I believe that none of this is pointless in my case, because I will very much need my knowledge of human nature and therefore never feel that there is something wrong with me in this respect. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 67

On the one hand, those who consciously experienced the war and no longer wish to suffer from it, because they know what this means (or rather because they accept it as experience; in any event, however, they are willing to come to terms with the war experience); on the other, those who did not consciously experience the war and therefore suffer from it without knowing. ~Gerhard Adler, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page Adler 69

I am not defending Yahweh but the advocate in heaven whom Job himself calls upon. The analysis of Job is after all only a part, the other side is also present, which, for example, puts this Yahweh on trial in you yourself today. With the manifestation in the storm and thunder, have you not overlooked the one in the rustling of the wind although it has revealed itself as the higher form? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 65

And you know well how closely the “myth” I wrote when I was 16 led to all of this, and if I survey my development as I get older and trace its stages, I have a very similar experience of life as the one that speaks out of this book. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 81

I slid into these things [i.e. his preoccupation with the Jewish situation—Active Imagination] … in my engagement with images from the unconscious that I paint at longer and shorter intervals. A large part of my thoughts originates in the effort of capturing these images conceptually. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 81

Dear Dr. Jung, it still seems too crass simply to thank you for what I have received from you; I am ambitious enough to say that I hope to be able to give something to you in return too. I don’t think it is that I cannot say thank you—this is just not enough. This is connected to the fact that I did not know what to do when you gave me the gift of the The Sermons. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 79

… It is precisely my conviction about the uniqueness of your [Jung] own nature that causes me now—(not only in my own interest)—to ask you if this easy affirmation, this throwing yourself into the frenzy of Germanic exuberance—is this your true position or do I misunderstand you on this point? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 83

… Believe me, as a Jew, I quite love the Germanic potential as far as I am able to see it and get a sense of it, but to equate National Socialism with the Aryan-Germanic is perhaps ominously incorrect and I cannot understand how you reach this conclusion and whether you must reach it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 83

May your [Jung] error of judgment perhaps be conditioned (in part) by the general ignorance of things Jewish and the secret and medieval abhorrence of them that thus leads to knowing everything about the India of 2000 years ago and nothing about the Hasidism of 150 years ago? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 83

Jung claims that the Jew has a special tendency and capacity to recognize the negative, the shadow, and he even thinks that while the Aryan needs more illusions, the Jew is more capable of living with negative knowledge. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 84

The Jew is greatly embarrassed about that aspect in man that touches the earth and that receives new strength from below … where does he touch his earth? ~Jung to Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 85

Zionism must also take the difficult path of making the negative conscious. Only then will a definitive and profound construction of Eretz-Israel and a rebirth of the Jewish person be possible based on his creative foundation. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 85

They [the archetypes—A.L.] are thus, essentially the chthonic portion of the psyche, if we may use such an expression—that portion through which the psyche is attached to nature, or in which its link with the earth and the world appears at its most tangible. The psychic influence of the earth and its laws is seen most clearly in these primordial images. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 91

The constant fear that evidence of the negative aspects of the Jews could be abused by the enemies of Judaism has influenced and prevented the Jew from any movement toward consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 86

This spiritual movement forms a subterranean current that invisibly nurtures living Judaism —invisibly, because the inner face of Judaism has become disguised by a rigid and lifeless orthodoxy. This current comes to light again as a secret rivulet in the individual, but perhaps also as the gushing source of a beginning. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 86

The Jews are coming to a—terrible—civilization. It cannot be changed. The traditionlessness of this struggle that has no core gives everything a rather ghostly demeanor. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 98

I am really no “legitimate” representative of Judaism, although you [Jung] are absolutely a legitimate representative of the Occidental World; I know therefore how unevenly the weights are distributed. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 98

As has been clearly evident to me though, individuation does not belong to the category of confession but to that of growth. Of course I [know] this and everyone “knows” it, but the elemental fact of Jewish soil equating to Jewish reality is only just dawning on me. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 102

The radical prophetic demand for an orientation within the human heart toward the inner voice, toward the voice of God, toward the law that is placed within him, needs to be mentioned in this respect. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 104

To some degree, I have also been absent to myself and have not come back to myself fully even now […], but am more or less swallowed up by the work with individuals and the private work on the Jewish [material]. At the same time neither the one thing nor the other any longer seems as important as it did, say, a year ago. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 111

I am not as completely swallowed up as this somehow rather inhuman letter strikes me at this time. Please believe me about the personal matters. It is almost unhealthy to almost only have oneself to check things out with, so that this letter is a bit too much like an “analytic session”. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 111

On the whole I would be able to say much about the [Neumann’s] dream. […] Especially the “sacral” killing of my pilgrim soul by the prince is rather sinister, just as the pilgrimage is all in all rather surprising. […] This seems to be most tragic. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 112

At the foot of the castle the prince asked (something like): So you think I am letting the pardes be worked on incorrectly? He, the pilgrim, said humbly, as if excusing himself: No, only I have learned to do it in a different way, you should clear the weeds. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 113

The Wotan association does not refer to the Germanic regression in Germany, but is a symbol for a spiritual development that involves the entire cultural world (Wotan as the wind God = Pneuma). ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 114

The situation here is exceedingly serious, as I see it. The original spiritual, idealistic forces who established the country, the core of the working class and of the land settlements are being repressed by a growing wave of undifferentiated, egotistic, short-sighted, entrepreneurial Jews, flooding here because of the economic opportunities. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 119

It is strange to recognize that my generation will only be an interim generation here—our children will be the first ones to form the basis of a nation. We are Germans, Russians, Poles, Americans etc. What an opportunity it will be when all the cultural wealth that we bring with us is really assimilated into Judaism. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 124

Thereby the shadow was finally “liberated,” and here in Palestine it can reveal itself for the first time as, here, there is no external pressure. This will not be pleasant—perhaps we will all be killed, but it’s no use—it simply must be out in the open at least and worked through. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 124

It is truly a type of compulsion and addiction—I have been writing almost continuously since my twelfth, certainly since my sixteenth year—and while I also know that this is definitely part of my nature and, I hope, of my authentic life task, it sometimes seems to be a true paper hell. […] Are you familiar with anything like this yourself, or does this belong to my individual idiosyncrasies? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 125

By the way, Jung, who is obviously under pressure from the institute, has decided to amend his short preface for the worse. Very well. Please could you [Olga Frobe] tell Frau von Keller that her “prophetic” words, that I must now go my own way like a rhino, comfort me time and again (Jung is still very nice to me, even touchingly so, yet he is clearly not reliable—an old man). ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 129

My Eranos calendar has shifted considerably; previously, the “pre-Eranos” era began roughly in spring, now it begins as soon as we reach home, and I can already start looking forward [to the next conference]. ~Erich Neumann to Olga Frobe, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 131

He [Erich] returned thrilled from Eranos, not only from the conference, but also from the human atmosphere. Afterwards a new era began. Eranos, after Eranos, before Eranos, and I was always allowed to be present and to experience how your topic for the coming year did not let go of Erich and occupied him until he began writing. ~Julie Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 131

I regretted very much that I did not see Dr. Neumann once again last autumn. […] Following on from the death of my son-in-law I was particularly shattered by the unexpected and, for me, sudden death of my friend and [fellow traveller] in whose fate I participated in tranquility and from a distance. ~Carl Jung to Julie Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 135

But, you see, my position toward Judaism is extremely revolutionary and even my attempt to create the continuity through to the modern Jewish person from the openness of revelation to antiquity via the inner Hasidic revolution is, as I of course will know myself, a new interpretation—how can I help myself in this paradox? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 112

When I was in Palestine in 1933, I was unfortunately able to see what was coming all too clearly. I also foresaw great misfortune for Germany, even quite terrible things, but when it then [happens], it still seems unbelievable. Everyone is shocked to their core as it were by what is happening in Germany. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 110

The final problem in Judaism cannot be affected, it seems to me, and not theorized. I for one must realize it in a Jewish reality, as filthy and as beautiful as it is and will be. A theoretical occupation of the earth is really Jewish, intellectual with goodwill. I am beginning to understand what it means that you said to me that I needed to get into the collective. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 101-102

I think you must be very careful when evaluating your specifically Jewish experiences. While there are, for sure, specific Jewish traits in this development, it is at the same time a general one that is also happening among Christians. It is a question of a general and identical revolution of minds. The specifically Christian or Jewish traits have only a secondary meaning. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 110

Of course, I have very little to do, although there is still something, but I am not worried as I had reckoned with an extended lead-in time. I am preparing a great deal, am absolutely not unproductive, and now—and this is new—and for this, along with infinitely more, I thank the work with you—it is no longer work “for me”; on the contrary it wants to [enter] reality. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 118-119

Having to descend into the earth really means to fall into hell, and many dreams, images, and fantasies of modern man show the witch-like character of the earth and the devilish nature of its spirit. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 170

Isaac’s father-son psychology is characteristic for the Jew, in whom it is still found to this day as the Isaac complex. For him the law and the old serve as a refuge from the demands of reality. The law becomes “Abraham’s bosom,” and the Torah a sort of masculine spiritual womb from whose clutches nothing new can be born. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 165

[The Hero] is one who brings the new and shatters the fabric of old values, namely the father-dragon which, backed by the whole weight of tradition and the power of the collective, ever strives to obstruct the birth of the new. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 166

It has always been the incomparable charm and awe-inspiring greatness of the Bible—disregarding its determinative religious content for a moment—that it is governed by a powerful closeness to the earth, an undistorted view of good and evil, which no other people or time in the world knows. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 162

The intuition of the contrast between ruach and bassar, pneuma and sarx—“spirit and flesh”—is the basic intuition. It underlies the entire biblical world of feeling and is its universal condition, its primary a priori. ~Rudolf Otto, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 163

A true prophet is only someone to whom are whispered the contents of the collective unconscious, the inherent activity of which determines the historical process. This is the deepest foundation for the idea of YHWH as the God who determines history. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 164

We hardly realise that he [Neumann] has departed from us. Since 1947, Eranos had been his spiritual home, which he found nowhere else. In his humanity lay such a rich experience of the inner world, about which he spoke to us, constantly, that we gradually went hand in hand with him, so to speak. ~Olga Frobe on Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 153

To our conscious minds the archetypal realm appears in terms of the differentiation of groups or symbolic opposites … It is in terms of opposites and of the multiplicity of qualities that we experience what really exists in the form of a unity of opposites beyond all qualities. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 158

Tragically, however, the process in which the western world finds itself presupposes a reconnection with the pre-Christian, that is, the pagan collective unconscious … The western world must become conscious of its pre-Christianized layers. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 160

Whereas all other peoples continue to exist, and have time to undergo such developments, the rootless and homeless Jew faces the danger of not surviving this age. And there is a danger that Judaism will perish as a result. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 161

And yet the poisonous wave of these other peoples’ hatred of the Jews, which threatens to corrode the psychic structure of the Jew, can be averted only if Judaism places itself on maximum alert, and only if it establishes, through radical self-contemplation, a meaningful connection with its deepest levels. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 161

Greatly simplified, this psychology reveals a highly belligerent, cruel, and primitive group, whose defining characteristic is that it is powerfully possessed by the earth. Quite possibly, this hunger for land corresponds to the transition from nomadic life to a settled, agricultural life. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 162

Why don’t you [Olga Frobe] fantasise about Hermes with music and relax on your bed so that it can “go through”? It’s nice to assume the air of a long-distance healer, isn’t it? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 148

Eranos is my individuation. That was so when it began, has remained the case throughout its further development, and so it is today with the greatest intensity. It seems to be my destiny to make my way to individuation in this way. And I had to do it alone. ~Olga Frobe, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 146

The world lives by continuous repetition of the divine act of creation, creation out of nothingness. This nothingness is the source and regeneration point of all life. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 183

The differentiation of “my” evil from the general evil is an essential item of self-knowledge from which no-one who undertakes the journey of individuation is allowed to escape. But as the process of individuation unfolds, the ego’s former drive towards perfection simultaneously disintegrates. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 202

I am willing to defend The New Ethic—which apparently no longer has any friends in Switzerland—in open battle against the whole institute. Protestants, Catholics, baptized Jews, unbaptized Jews, and even Jungian analysts if any show up. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 203

They smiled in a rather superior way about my provincial attitude, which was thought not quite up to it simply because I made a value judgment about where one ought to allow the wisdom of the unconscious to prevail, beyond good and evil. But they seemed to me all too often to mistake the unconsciousness of the ego for the wisdom of the unconscious. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 203

… from the point of view of historical development, the supra-personal collective contents appear both phylogenetically and ontogenetically before the formation of the personal contents relating to the ego … The myth precedes the family romance. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 199

Behind the prophet’s state of possession, as behind anything possessed by the spirit, stands that which wants to become loud, which wants to express itself, which is destined to intervene in life as word or saying. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 198

The encounter with the “other side,” the negative component, is marked by an abundance of dreams in which this “other” confronts the ego in such guises as the beggar or cripple, the outcast or bad man, the fool or ne’er-do-well, the despised or the insulted, the robber, the sick man.” ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 200

Darwin’s “proof” of man’s kinship with the apes, Biblical criticism and the thesis which interprets spirit as an epiphenomenon of the economic process, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and Freud’s Future of an Illusion—all these have contributed to the destruction of the old values. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 201

If the fathers remained orthodox, they had to reckon with their sons’ rebellion. Whereas if they assimilated, they were discredited by anti-Semitism, and their sons returned to Judaism. Under no circumstances could they turn their backs on Judaism. … anti-Semitism would not allow that to happen. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 197

As this Other, however, we are discontinuously new in every moment in an ahistorical reality, which, like us, is new in every moment. It is … a core event that actually forms the basis of our experience of existence, as far as we do not dismantle it as a reflecting ego consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 187-188

Not the slightest external affirmation exists for this experience. It is based entirely and solely on the religio in which the ego has found its way back to the self as its self, which at the same time is the self … in which man emerges as a creative man and at the same time as a mystical man. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 188

Redemption of the sacred sparks in every Now, in every Here, that is the essential task. And this task confronts not only the world, with its general need of redemption, but every individual, for each individual soul has its own particular sparks that demand to be redeemed. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 185

Elsewhere, we shall demonstrate to what extent Hasidism, after almost 2,000 years, involves a delayed ripening of essential aspects of early Christianity within Judaism. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 176

The way forward, as I see it, is certainly as hard as it is dangerous. I actually fear that all our repressed instincts, all our desires for power and revenge, all our mindlessness and hidden brutality will be realized here. Indeed the ongoing development of the Jews failed precisely because, on the one hand, they were united in a collective-religious bond and, on the other, they were under pressure from other nations as individuals. After the emancipation they

caught up unnaturally quickly and powerfully with the Western trend toward the individual (secularization, rationalization, extraversion, the break with the continuity of the past). ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 124

In the face of this apparently historic necessity, the chaos here becomes not only bearable to me but I also feel myself to be infinitely closely bound up with it; I emerge out of this to my own “people.” I must, though, confess that I am quite often afraid at the same time. I feel myself here to be quite accountable and I still know that my place is here, quite independently from whether the Jews will grant me this place one day or not. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 124

Only infernal reality makes it extremely difficult to formulate things because I need time to do it and an occasional half day simply is not enough. In future, when a large group of relatives must be provided for and, on top of that, the economy is declining along with the practice, it will be a lot worse for sure. But on the other hand one’s concentration increases because of it and a certain despairing—joyful will to come to terms with reality precisely as

an introvert and, what is more, as an intuitive. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 125

Summer 1947 is still as clear to me as Erich was in your archive, completely fascinated by the pictures of the Great Mother; you came along in your own way and told us to stay for lunch. I refused only because we were expected somewhere else, but Bänzinger whispered to me: “We” should accept, since it was a great honour to be invited so spontaneously by you; from then onwards, we belonged, and you and Eranos became a spiritual home. ~Julie Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 126

Your [Olga Frobe] generous offer to welcome me and my whole family in Ascona deeply touched me and my wife. Thank you very much for that! Especially in these difficult and often disappointing times, the sheer fact that you have made this proposal is encouraging and almost comforting. Once more, thank you very much, although making this prospect materialise seems inconceivable to us. So far, the bombing of Tel-Aviv has been a minor, yet disturbing matter (for those affected, it is of course terrible, even if the numbers aren’t large.) Hopefully, there will soon be peace, and they won’t sell us again. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 127

The day after I sent you [Olga Frobe] my manuscript, your two packages arrived. The joy was very great, and was clouded only by the quiet worry that you will soon have to be locked up for your wastefulness. Didn’t we specifically say you shouldn’t send us such gorgeous packages? Gluttonous as man is, you have plunged us into serious internal conflicts, in which the joy of good things quarrels with our concerns about your wastefulness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 127

Jung is very touching towards me, and making an effort in a way that really perturbs me. Of course this ought to matter more to me than the fact that he is weak on details and, as I believe, not always right. Nevertheless, the whole thing has a tragic importance for me, because it reveals that Europe is becoming reactionary and is taking control of Jung. Catholicism, individualism—well, these are values, but also forces, and it all rhymes so sadly and so smoothly with fascism and National Socialism. Jung’s carelessness has already made it tremendously difficult to extricate him and his work from this not only

embarrassing but also disastrous proximity. I fear that the folks in Zurich, including Kranefeldt with his “Archetypus sinaiticus” of 1933, who has been reintegrated into the club, will not improve the world’s situation. And nothing exists here without the greatest danger. Anyway, all the best to you. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 130

Although I only got to know your wife in the last years, from 1948, I think, for me Zurich has been curiously changed without her. She was the conscience, something one could rely on in gloomy Zurich, something solid and full of interest and understanding, with all due distance. (You, yourself, by the way, so that you do not misunderstand, belong for me to Bollingen and Küsnacht, not to Zurich. […] It was painful to me as seldom before to be so far away, for my gratitude toward your wife is great. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 130

The good contact with you [Olga Frobe], as well as with the Bänzigers, for example, is very comforting. Even if you overestimate my role for Eranos, it has become a friendly island to which I belong, unlike Zurich, unfortunately, after recent experiences. Nevertheless, I also have made many positive experiences there. They comfort me. Oddly, I seem to need that. How strange. This, however, has to do with the fact that we are of course living on the very edge and, apart from our practice, we barely ever have anyone round or see people. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 131

Time and again, he told me, “why must I always write about the ‘final things,’ why can’t I do case discussions like so many others, and also expect myself to do likewise. But it bores me, and I must write like this, even if it goes beyond me”; Eranos was the forum where he could talk about these final things. Now I know, since he had to die so early, not only why he had to write, but also why he did with such intensity. ~Julie Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 135

31 November 1960 On the death of Erich Neumann

What was left of you?

No more than a hand,

no more than your quivering fingers,

which closed firmly to bid the time of day

For this grip remained as a trace

In my hand, which did not forget,

Which continued to feel even after

Your mouth and your eyes had long failed ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 137 Hannah Arendt

I have always failed in my attempts to answer this question. There is no rational formula. However simple the Eranos event might be, it is so complex and so connected with deep springs … Let’s stroll through the garden, across to the hall. Have a look around … We start from the large terrace, where the round table awaits us for dinner. This table is the centre of Eranos, its heart and soul, where its many discussion take place.

Here, dinner really means “to receive,” in both senses of the word … Let us pass this table and head out into the garden … On the narrow path, we have now reached the lecture hall, whose doors and windows are open. Do you see the speaker, who, gripped by his subject, lays aside his manuscript and speaks freely? … The audience listens attentively, only the waves beat quietly, rhythmically, down on the shore. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 140 Olga

In the meantime, I have also recognized that Jewish symbolism—at least that of Western Jews—is consistent with that of European people, that here something secular is taking place. Of course, I knew this before, but the problem of the singularity of the Jews would have been simpler if a specific symbolism could have been demonstrated. I have abandoned this and stand without preconceptions before something that is incomprehensible to me. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 111

The hallmark of Esau’s world is visibility, and it includes the outer, the ordinary, the unholy world. Jacob is neither like Esau nor like the peoples of the world, but instead he is turned toward that world which not only proves to be the coming world, the otherworld, but also the inner and invisible world. Jacob, the Jew, looks inward, toward YHWH and his inner demand. But this does not mean that YHWH reveals himself only within. Unlike the gods, however, he never manifests himself in images or in the man-made, nor does he become concretized in any part of the outer world where he can be worshipped. 102-103

I did not, by any means, come here with any illusions, but what I have found extraordinary was that I haven’t found a “people” here with whom I fundamentally feel I belong. I might have known that before, of course, but it was not the case, and the fact that the Jews here as a people, as a not-yet-people, seemed so extremely needy was a shock at first … As a people, the Jews are infinitely more stupid than I expected … Please don’t misunderstand

me—I am not reproaching the Jew[s]. How could it be any different? We come, as individuals, from who knows where and are then supposed to be one people. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 97

I got far too caught up in “praise of the Jews” and did not take into account nearly enough the fact that, at the same time, the Jews are always the most disappointing people of world history. And indeed not only that—all too many are willing to pay for the attitude toward the future with an impoverishment of the present …We are not only living off the interest of old capital but now that this has been largely devalued by the inflation of emancipation, we are inclined to live on credit, while hoping for an upturn or even invoking one. This won’t do, of course. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 97

I see quite factually the Jews are in a quite peculiar situation that is calculated to force them to find new and groundbreaking solutions, but one should not be awarding them laurels in advance, while it is still so terribly questionable whether they will succeed or whether they won’t just fail as they nearly always do. No real disappointment in the failure of the Jews could dissuade me from believing in them because, out of the making conscious of their failure, a step forward has always emerged, but I wouldn’t want to be a “gushing enthusiast in Israel”—that is not my role but rather my danger. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 97

Judaism, then, is facing a crisis that threatens its very existence. Not because economic or political expulsion is at stake—this, of course, is the Jewish fate, although previously it never spelled an existential crisis—but because Jewish religion is no longer an effective force in the world, just as little as, or even less than, Protestantism. This situation affects modern Jews and modern Western Christians alike, because currently emerging developments in their unconscious will prompt new philosophical and religious influences. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 99

I have done some more philosophical work, and am once again scared by my daimonion. What had occurred to me intuitively a year or more previously, without me noticing, now suddenly became clear. My entire work forms a coherent inner unity. Even the wrong thing, in fact this of all things, clearly points in one and the same direction. All of sudden there transpired “The Philosophy of Messianism,” for which everything else had merely been

preliminary work. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 36

On the one hand I am absolutely his [Erwin Loewenson] student. I would be unthinkable without him; yet time and again, without any vanity whatsoever, I believe a difference exists somewhere, also philosophically. However, I consciously apply myself to support him. I do not seek to gain any independence from him, since this is not my cause, nor indeed barely our cause, but the cause. And it would be to its detriment. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 38

I find it very strange that the Jews have no heroes in the same sense as the other peoples. (In the Bible this is another matter.) I do not think this can be explained by inferiority etc. Strangely, they have almost never resisted pogroms, etc. Here exists a centredness on God, which strongly points towards fatalism (or is it guilt or perhaps even a weariness of life?) Here lies a danger! Zionism should not “just” become heroic! Everyone must feel this

responsibility in their blood, and must live as if the Jews could die without them—but I do not believe this is true. The Jews are not dying. We don’t know their sources. If, however, the split-off, reformed Western Jews could become people like us! The Jews do not die that easily. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 38-39

It dawned on me that we [Julie Neumann] shared the rare conviction that unreserved closeness was indeed possible. And that’s why we made it so difficult for ourselves … because it’s a very fundamental change that we’re demanding of ourselves. Put briefly, we take matters so much more seriously than almost everyone else. … “Hallowing” what for others is “everyday fare” is what I have learned from you in an utterly new way. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 52

If ever I had thought that studying philosophy would turn out to be futile, this idea itself turns out to be hugely mistaken. The past year in particular has been hugely important for me in this respect. Studying the history of philosophy has challenged me to confront a myriad of problems, interconnections and perspectives.

These, moreover, have barely begun to penetrate my world. I am well aware that they are being laid out within me in a far reaching manner and will hence gradually expand. Just how exactly this will work, how the theoretical, religious, practical, scientific, human and Jewish measures will engage and become entwined with each other is of course less than conceivable. I am, however, certain that everything will find its place, and that each position will energise the others. …

Without knowing anything at all, I am quite sure of this. Incidentally, you have no inkling to which extent you will help me. You have already corrected so much of where my thinking has gone astray. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 59

The development toward the ego and consciousness leads in every sense to isolation; it leads to the isolation and suffering of the ego. But in its extreme, it leads also to the isolation and specialization of consciousness, to its complete absorption by the purely individual, to a split, purely egoist existence, which can no longer apprehend the broad contexts of life or its connection with the creative void and is not accessible to mystical experience. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 61

No mortal can escape the tribunal, which is absolutely superior. Of course the existence of a deep region, a Trans, can be denied, … but this takes effect beyond all statements. The assertions, attitudes of faith and non-faith, of knowledge and volition, are all “placed on record”; that is, they determine the deep layer’s mode of action. It is of crucial importance whether a person is aware of the tribunal or not; this largely determines the way in which the tribunal behaves towards him. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 62

Here, too, the magisterial figure of the woman is transcendental … while the good-natured man is the keeper of coal, that is, of the warmth that makes life possible without freezing or dying. Here, as in the Kabbalah, the masculine principle represents grace, the feminine principle justice. Saying that, we ought not forget that this is also grace in the deepest sense of the word … Precisely since justice is the law of the world, salvation lies both inside and outside. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 64-65

In 1927, I undertook training analysis with Jung. We were soon forced to admit that studying books and empiricism alone did not suffice. … In Küsnacht, sitting opposite Jung, I suffered several mental shocks. His first question was: “Can you tolerate things that have a false bottom?” I vividly recall my dismay. Next: “Where is God, inside or outside?” … On another occasion, after I had relaxed somewhat: “Do you also know that—if you touch God

—the devil is sitting in the next corner? ~Kathe Bulger, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 77

The fact that Jews here as a people, as a not-yet-people, seemed so extremely needy was a shock at first. On the other hand, though, the landscape gripped me in such a compelling way that I couldn’t ever have thought possible. Precisely from the place I hadn’t expected it, a vantage point emerged. I haven’t fully made sense of this. Anyhow, as you prophesied, the anima has gone to ground. She made an appearance all nice and brown, strikingly African, even more impenetrable to me, domineering—with a sisterly relationship—to many animals … this gives me strength, however, I feel strongly. Even dreams are

confirming it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 78

Before I came to you, I was rather sad that I was not able to go to a Jewish authority because I wanted to go to a “teacher” and I found it typified precisely the decline of Judaism that it had no such authoritative personality in its ranks. With you, I became aware of what was prototypical in my situation. According to Jewish tradition, there are Zaddikim of the nations, and that is why the Jews have to go to the Zaddikim of the nations—perhaps that is why they do not have any of their own left. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 78

In 1916 I felt an urge to give shape to something … The whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, crammed full of spirits … As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: “For God’s sake, what in the world is this?” Then they cried out in chorus, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what sought” … Then it began to flow out of me, and in the course of three evenings the thing was written. As soon as I took up the pen, the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 79

Since we ourselves are the Pleroma, we also have these qualities [e.g. life and death— Angelica Löwe] present within us; inasmuch as the foundation of our being is differentiation, we possess these qualities in the name and under the sign of differentiation, which means: First—that the qualities are in us differentiated from each other, and they are separated from each other, and thus they do not cancel each other out, rather they are in action. It is thus that we are the victims of the pairs of opposites. For in us the Pleroma is rent in two. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 80

The still youthful Germanic peoples are fully capable of creating new cultural forms that still lie dormant in the darkness of the unconscious of every individual—seeds bursting with energy and capable of mighty expansion. The Jew, who is something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 82

The “Aryan” unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish; that is both the advantage and the disadvantage of a youthfulness not yet fully weaned from barbarism. In my opinion it has been a grave error in medical psychology up till now to apply Jewish categories—which are not even binding on all Jews—indiscriminately to Germanic and Slavic Christendom … Freud … did not understand the Germanic psyche any more than did his Germanic followers. Has the formidable phenomenon of National Socialism, on which the whole world gazes with astonished eyes, taught them better? Where was that unparalleled tension and energy while as yet no National Socialism existed? ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 82

I know I don’t have to tell you what you mean to me, and how hard it is for me to disagree with you, but I feel I simply must take issue with you on a matter that goes far beyond any merely personal concerns. I will refrain from commenting on whether the reverberations that your words are bound to have were indeed what you intended, and I will be silent about whether it is truly a Goethe-inspired perspective to view the emergence of National Socialism in all its human lashing, bloodthirsty barbarianism as a “mighty presence” in the Germanic unconscious …

As a Jew, I do not feel I have any licence to intervene in a controversy that no German can avoid today when they encounter this Germanic unconscious, but as it is certainly correct that we Jews

are accustomed to recognizing the shadow-side, then I cannot comprehend why a person like you cannot see what is all too cruelly obvious to everyone these days—that it is also in the Germanic psychic … that a mind-numbing cloud of filth, blood and rottenness is brewing. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 82

I fear that you are confusing Freud—whom you have classified sociologically as European by the way—with the Jew, and therefore the use of Nazi terminology—simply to identify Freud’s categories as “Jewish categories”—is doubly puzzling coming from your pen. … I do not wish to change anything in this letter. It will remain as it is written. Hopefully you will appreciate how it is intended. It seems to me that it is precisely my gratitude toward you

that obliges me to be candid. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 83

At the highest level, this trait shapes the historical consciousness of the Jews. Already in the Bible, the Jewish people know that their history is one of experiencing guilt in ever new ways. It is in the prophets, who were truly connected with the primal cause, that this motif reaches its creative incarnation. Time and again, they have raised the negative, dark side into people’s consciousness. If one misunderstands this basic attitude as a feature of galut

psychology, then one is doing Judaism no favour, since this deprives it of its basic moral instinct, which still reaches into the one-sidedness of Freudian psychology. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 84

Our contact with the unconscious chains us to the earth and makes it hard for us to move, and this is certainly no advantage when it comes to progressiveness and all the other desirable motions of the mind. Nevertheless I would not speak ill of our relation to good Mother Earth. Plurimi pertransibunt—but he who is rooted in the soil endures. Alienation from the unconscious and from its historical conditions spells rootlessness. That is the

danger that lies in wait for the conqueror of foreign lands, and for every individual who, through one-sided allegiance to any kind of -ism, loses touch with the dark, maternal, earthy ground of his being. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 91

Christianity split the Germanic barbarian into an upper and a lower half, and enabled him, by repressing the dark side, to domesticate the brighter half and fit it for civilization. But the lower, darker half still awaits redemption and a second spell of domestication. Until then, it will remain associated with the vestiges of the prehistoric age, with the collective unconscious, which is subject to a peculiar and ever-increasing activation.

As the Christian view of the world loses its authority, the more menacingly will the “blond beast” be heard prowling about in its underground prison, ready at any moment to burst out with devastating consequences. When this happens in the individual it brings about a psychological revolution, but it can also take a social form. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 92

In my opinion this problem does not exist for the Jews. The Jew already had the culture of the ancient world and on top of that has taken over the culture of the nations amongst whom he dwells. He has two cultures , paradoxical as that may sound. He is domesticated to a higher degree than we are, but he is badly at a loss for that quality in man which roots him to the earth and draws new strength from below. This chthonic quality is found in dangerous concentration in the Germanic peoples. Naturally the Aryan Europeans has not noticed any signs of this for a very long time, but perhaps he is be

ginning to notice it in the present war; and again, perhaps not. The Jew has too little of this quality—where has he his own earth underfoot? The mystery of earth is no joke and no paradox. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 93

In response to some remark I made yesterday, Gerhard [Adler] said: This is what you have over me, your unconditional self-confidence. I am always embarrassed when I am told that. Because I do not like people finding me quite so “arrogant.” In fact, it is not arrogance at all. For my self-confidence, which I have without a doubt, is identical with my inferiority, even if it involves no “inferiority feeling.” I am most certainly self-critical.

I know my negative points, but keep turning them into what drives me, not what troubles me. When I think about what I want and should achieve, I am quite sceptical. Saying that, I know that I will always have a central connection, even if no one else sees it. Still, I believe I possess something indestructible. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 32-33

Thus, the full uncertainty about any future and yet still having the feeling of being in the right place gives me—at least now and again—a remarkably paradoxical inner confidence, from which I believe that there could be a new, lively beginning in the individual and in the collective. And exactly because what has been experienced collectively and repeatedly with what has been historically effective, this connection between the most individual and the

ancient has something strong and almost joyful about it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 101

Gropingly I feel for contours, difficult because I am myself only gradually starting to grasp where analytical psychology cannot fully be the ground on which I stand. That does not mean that I am not standing on the ground of analytical psychology, more than ever I believe I sense its central significance for me.

What is self-evident is becoming clearer to me—that analytical psychology itself has a foundation that is in part so self-evident that it can only become conscious of itself in part. Switzerland—Germany, the West, Christianity. Not a discovery, and yet it is one after all. I must learn to distinguish myself. It is difficult when so much weight lies on the other side, it is certainly easier to do as “your Jews” do and to , such as Westmann, Kirsch, but this would only mean avoiding one own’s individuation that must be achieved, despite everything, on the collective archetypally different foundation. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 101

a remarkably paradoxical inner confidence, from which I believe that there could be a new, lively beginning in the individual and in the collective. And exactly because what has been experienced by the individual has such a strong connection with that experienced collectively and repeatedly with what has been historically effective, this connection between the most individual and the ancient has something strong and almost joyful about it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 109

Those gathered in the lecture hall, surrounded by that magical garden, for about 550 hours, sitting silently on the hard, woven chairs common in Ticino, and seeking to escape the quiet or loud murmuring of the lake to devote themselves entirely to the words of the speaker, know about the tension that one had to endure there … A tree with golden fruits happened upon them and struck root within each of them, of which they were unaware; a new, promising “tree of knowledge,” which stands outside the “paradise of unconsciousness”. ~Jolande Jacobi, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 143

At the very beginning, in 1933, a certain curiosity attracted one, of course, a certain pioneering spirit. It was said that famous men and some less famous ones, but no less skilled and knowledgeable, would make eastern and western knowledge fertilise each other, in the notorious Ascona, at the “Great Mother’s,” in her unique lecture hall, built especially The bright, whitewashed lecture hall, shaded by deep blue curtains, teemed with all sorts.

Quiet souls, true scholars, mystics, snobs, enthusiasts, starry-eyed idealists, prophets, wannabe members of the in-crowd and many anonymous, contemplative and knowledge hungry people filled the hall to the last seat. The vast majority of women, young and old, fair and arid, fearful of suffering and artificially prepared, stuck out a mile … From the outset, C.G. Jung, an experienced guide to the labyrinth of the human soul and an interpretive mediator of its manifestations, occupied a central position. ~Jolande Jacobi, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 143-144

Olga Fröbe was unforgettable for anyone who stayed here more often or for a longer period. I was never a great Jungian and cannot claim to speak in Jungian categories, but I must say that for us Olga Fröbe was the living representation of what Jungian psychology calls anima and animus. … It was almost crucial that she sought speakers who identified with her subject. She called this “emotion.” She wanted emotional, inspired speakers, not professors.

… And yet, it was the tension between distance and identification, which became so palpable for all of us at Eranos, which shaped my own work at these conferences for many years, for example. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 146-147

When I returned to Europe for the first time, in 1947, after the Second World War, after eleven years, I was sure that after everything that had happened, Europe would seem strange and uncanny. Time had not stood still for me either, and it seemed more than questionable whether I would manage to reconnect with the past. Living far away and on the periphery, I felt as I did everywhere else, also in Ascona at the conference.

In one place, however, I find firm ground, for myself, as well as for my existence and work, and that was at the Eranos archive, whose pictorial world both delighted and seized me. Afterwards … I was completely surprised when I was invited to talk about the “mystical man” at the next conference and to write a book about the visual representations of the “Great Mother,” which you had collected in the archive. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 147

It is clear that Eranos always places you [Olga Frobe] at risk of gorging yourself on archetypes. Presumably, you always need to work on the archetypal, which is not so much relevant to Eranos as it is to yourself. Please continue to work on detachment! This is very important. It is terrific how you keep making progress with yourself! ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 149

Dearest Olga! What a pleasant surprise! How wonderful that you [Olga Frobe] have succeeded in doing just that. And how miraculous that you have managed to create a representation, one that is so clear, so forceful and so completely new. One senses from how much you have thus freed yourself, and also how much we may hope is still to come. I can very well imagine how much effort this has involved, and yet how wonderful it must be for you to have accomplished all of this from within yourself.

Just how worthwhile has the great suffering of your loneliness been for you personally, and which has always received wonderful affirmation at Eranos as a transpersonal achievement. … In any event, you have now grounded the story of Eranos in its most personal foundation. Congratulations to all of us. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 149

Let me come to an important point: your Eranos project. Of course you have to talk about it, since it can’t be done in writing. It is very interesting, although your plans are far too ambitious. Also, you must be careful not to compete against the Jung Institute in Zurich. This must be avoided at all costs from the start; otherwise, there will be nothing but trouble. Ascona can only be advertised as a specialised workplace affiliated with the Institute. The city libraries required to perform such work are irreplaceable. Nevertheless! Your idea is very appealing and hugely important. Nevertheless, I believe it will require significant funding. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 151

I am very curious to hear about your [Olga Frobe] meeting with Jung. Unfortunately, our relationship is quite tense at present. As you may have heard, the Jung Institute, or rather its board of trustees, presided over by C.G., has found it necessary not to publish my Origins and History itself, so as to avoid compromising itself with me, the author of such church- and state-endangering ethics. A delightful letter that arrived from C.G. prior to this decision, in which he distanced himself most ironically from these concerns, has not done anything to persuade me that this matter is nothing but a disgraceful mess …

I sent an indignant and sharp letter to Jung, to complain that it is truly outrageous that he has conceded his position. I have not yet heard from him.

Thus, I don’t know whether I have been “ditched” or whether I may expect to receive an answer, which I very much hope I will. However, I received some consolation in the same post as Meier’s indecent and clumsy letter: Routledge and Kegan Paul will be publishing the English edition of my New Ethic. Nevertheless, I’m sad all the same. This is how cowardly and opportunistic circumstances were in Nazi Germany. Mind you, while it was really dangerous there, it is simply business in Z.—and completely misunderstood for that matter, but that is no consolation. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 150-151

Rascher sent me a pile of reviews that are all stupid and depressing. Nobody notices what matters. Only one of them, most certainly a Jew, a Michael Grünwald, has at least noticed something of moral seriousness, while the rest are horrified Christians or fools … if, however, I have to stomach the fact that the book is “too conscious, too intellectual, too cold,” I would at least have wished that someone had grasped the urgency of its problem; none of this is the case, though. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 151

I wrote to Brody a long time ago and sent him a request from Jerusalem University to consider sending them a copy of the Eranos series as a gift, to agree to a purchase at a reduced price, or whatever. I also asked him, of course, since we really have no funds in Israel. Naturally, I also mentioned that I could very well understand if he declined the request on principle.

Since I have not heard from him, I would like to know if my letter arrived or if B. has taken offence; saying that, I wouldn’t know why; in short, I would like to know what is going on. ~Erich Neumann to Olga Frobe, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 151-152

A fanatical attachment to the land is evident in all ancient accounts, a determination to claw oneself into the earth and cling to its fertility. Several fundamental motifs emerge repeatedly in these narratives: fertility of the soil, the land of milk and honey, fertility of the herds, fertility of the tribes, becoming like the dust of the earth, like the stars of heaven, like the ocean sand. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 162

Of particular importance in this respect is the loss of the feminine side of consciousness in favor of radical masculinization, an extreme emphasis on active and rational components. This is particularly evident with regard to introversion. Originally, Judaism had consciously emphasized an inner, feminine stance toward the irradiating impulse and the word of God.

This stance had been symbolized most strongly in the image of the people as the bride of God. This attitude of stillness, maintaining silence and preparing oneself for inner experience, poses no contradiction to the active assimilation and realization that are then demanded, but this attitude now began to disappear.

Even introversion became active, speculative, and rational, geared toward working through what was found, rather than being expanded by a new thing breaking in. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 164

always and pre-eminently the man with immediate inner experience who, as seer, artist, prophet, or revolutionary, sees, formulates, sets forth, and realizes the new values, the “new images.” His orientation comes from the “voice,” from the unique, inner utterance of the self, which has all the immediacy of a “dictate.” Herein lies the extraordinary orientation of this type of individual … The important thing … is that the archetypal canon is always created and brought to birth by “eccentric” individuals. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 165

Images and symbols, being creative products of the unconscious, are so many formulations of the spiritual side of the human psyche … The inside “expresses” itself by way of the symbol … Myth, art, religion, and language are all symbolic expressions of the creative spirit in man; in them this spirit takes on objective, perceptible form, becoming conscious of itself through man’s consciousness of it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 167

The personal human-creative spirit experiences itself as that upon which the divine gaze has fallen and as that which is instituted by the transpersonal-creative spirit. Man knows that in his own transformation that which is transforming him is also transforming and that through his openness he opens up new paths into the world for the creative spirit.

Thus, the ego not only experiences itself as being “meant” by the self, but also understands that it, too, is part of the ego-self unity. This basic dialogical structure of the human psyche, as a mythical image of godlikeness and of the dialogue between the human and the divine, belongs to the basic religious experiences of mankind. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 167

Together with his great works, “The Origins and History of Consciousness” and “The Great Mother,” his extensive contributions to the Eranos yearbooks form his noblest spiritual legacy … The proud Jew that he was, in his talks, if memory of our work there [Eranos] serves me well, he never forgot to refer to his Jewish heritage, to which he felt bound and committed. ~Gershom Scholem, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 169

Whoever refuses to accept consciously the problem of the earth that burns in us and of the deus absconditus that burns in it, ends up in the same abyss through the collective “earthing” of modern man. It is just that he plunges as a lamb in the flock or as a wolf in the pack into the precipitous slide towards collective human catastrophe that characterizes our age. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 170

Modern man’s outlook has withdrawn from a heaven that no longer casts light on him and has returned to earth and to himself, and precisely because of this light that shines from below out of darkness and depth is becoming more and more valuable and significant to him. If we now consider the emerging, numinous images with the appropriate religious care, this light is a female light from the earth, a light of Sophia. But this light of Sophia is identical with a newly emerging “Spirit of the Earth”. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 171

The plight of modern Jews—who like all modern humans lack direction, yet find themselves caught up in an age shaken to its foundations by catastrophes, lacking historical continuity, and plunged into a bottomless sociological pit—compels us to try to reconnect with the past in our own way. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 175

The history of Hasidism is the history of the tzaddikim, the righteous men, and of their disciples. Leadership—in the proto-Hasidism of the beginning—means the circle-forming, disciple-making power of the “perfect man,” whose central radiance surrounds him with force fields of followers. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 176

According to Jewish tradition, there are Zaddikim of the nations, and that is why the Jews have to go to the Zaddikim of the nations—perhaps that is why they do not have any of their own left. This Jewish situation, the beginning of an exchange, of an understanding sub specie die [“under the sight of God”]—this is what makes this “letter exchange” so important to me. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 176-177

It is by descending into the depths of his own self that man wanders through all the dimensions of the world; in his own self he lifts the barriers which separate one sphere from the other … With every one of the endless stages of the theosophical world corresponding to a given state of the soul—actual or potential, but at any rate capable of being felt and perceived—Kabbalism becomes an instrument of psychological analysis and self-knowledge. ~Gershom Shalom, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 177

Upon the past, upon the Fathers, Zion, and the Kingdom, lay the splendor of perfection, fulfillment, and closeness to God. Upon the future, the time of the Messiah, the future Zion, and the coming rule of God, lay the splendor of hope and justification. The present, however, every present, lay in the shadow of intrusive provisionality and the inauthenticity of exile. In the best and highest case, it amounted to expectation and preparation. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 178

In this connection, I should like to refer to a Hasidic story which has occupied my mind for very many years. It is a story told by a rabbi about a simple Jew, to whom the prophet Elijah had appeared. But the appearance of Elijah “signifies the real initiation of the individual into the secret of the doctrine.” The rabbi was asked how this could possibly be true, since the appearance of the prophet had never been vouchsafed to Master Ibn Esra, a man who

was spiritually on an altogether higher plane. The rabbi replied that a larger or smaller part of the “allsoul” of Elijah enters into every soul, according to his temperament and inheritance. And if the person concerned, when he is growing up, trains his part of the soul of Elijah, then Elijah will appear to him. The simple man to whom Elijah had appeared had realized his small part of the soul of Elijah, whereas Ibn Esra has not realized his much larger part ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 178-179

Apocalypticism, which, as an unquestionably anarchic element, has ventilated the house of Judaism; the realisation of the catastrophic nature of all historical order in an unredeemed world, has, in a way of thinking deeply anxious to establish order, undergone a metamorphosis in which the destructive power of salvation appears only as unrest in the clockwork of life in the light of revelation. ~Gershom Scholem, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 181

the spontaneity of the nonego, which manifests itself in the creative process and is by nature numinous. The encounter with the numinous constitutes the “other side” of the development of consciousness and is by nature “mystical”. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 182

The world of Hasidism rests on the deity’s creative nothingness. Its dynamics not only secretly animates every creature and thing in this world, but also can be attained by the human being at every moment, if he breaks through the world’s foreground into this nothingness. It is as if the structure of the world becomes transparent to the seeing eye, which now sees the great lifelines through which divine nothingness, always and everywhere, flows in and pervades the world.

The inconstancy of what is given, the nonstatic, incessantly changing, undetermined nature of the world, is the one major, basic religious concept of Hasidism. Life in this world is only possible, so to speak, if one realizes the reality of this inconstancy and adjusts to it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 182-183

The Word of God, if there is one, represents an absolute authority, about which one might just as well say that it rests in itself and is moved in itself. … The Torah appears in this context as a fabric woven from the name of God. It represents a mysterious unity whose primary purpose is not to transmit a specific meaning, to “mean” something, but rather to express the creative force concentrated in the name of God and which is present in all that is created as his secret signature in some variation or another …

The Word of God must possess an infinite fullness, which is conveyed through it. And yet, this communication, and this is the essence of the kabbalistic view of revelation, is incomprehensible. Its aim is not communication, which is also incomprehensible. … Thus, the key to revelation lies in the diverse views of what the Word of God, and at the same time that of man, means. No single definable context of meaning appears therein, but an infinite abundance of such contexts, in which this word spreads out for us ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 184

Originally, Messianism was bound up with a historical process ending in the emergence of a savior who, after the transformation crisis of the apocalypse, ushers in the eschatological age of redemption. This conception can easily be shown to be a projection of an individuation process, the subject of which, however, is the people, the chosen collectivity, and not the individual. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 184

The ego in its isolation is floundering in despair. It is overwhelmed by the process of collectivisation which fragments the individual into collectively serviceable but otherwise irrelevant segments; and when, in the knowledge of his own impotence, the individual silently accepts this violence, he becomes a victim of terror, not only in Russia or Nazi Germany, but everywhere. Everywhere Western Reason has triumphed, and as it continues on its triumphant march, a consciousness shaped in its image effects the transformation and domination of the world; these changes bring with them industrialization and collectivization, which atomize and rape the individual. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 186

And the terrible state of emergency that has gripped the entire people and will continue to do so will inevitably force the inner source energies to be called either into action or to their peril. It is both as clear to me that we will not be wiped out, as it is also that immeasurable numbers of us must perish in the process. And to watch this from the sidelines is a terrible torture. The reports that crowd in on one on a daily or hourly basis, and, sadly, the reports of eyewitnesses, mak

e one glad to experience firsthand the terrible propensity of human beings to dissociate themselves from overwhelmingly bad feelings. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 186

While this passage marks his reaction to the terror inflicted on the Jewish people, Neumann’s Eranos lecture talks about the collective traumatisation of the war generation: Modern man experiences much suffering, has seen too much suffering; his eyes are filled with horror. The death of masses of human beings, the torturing to death of millions, has broken his psychic endurance. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 186

Reemergence of direct revelation but now in the individual, in direct connection firstly with individuation and secondly with the collective problem of revelation in Judaism … Highly apparent is the strong presence of the religious problem in the first half of life in a strongly collective-toned manifestation, more or less unconnected with one’s private problems into which it grows in the course of the work. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 186

I fear I am not a good Jew, although I am not quite certain, but on my path through life I have learned to experience and to venerate the divine as something formless and creative. This path in life has perhaps brought me closer to an understanding of the self-revelations of YHWH, in whose sign the Exodus from Egypt took place and every exodus from Egypt takes place, namely the strange divine name Ehyeh asher ehyeh: I am who I am. Since every human being can speak only of his own experience when the question of meaning arises, I, too, can speak only of my personal experience and say what this Ehyeh means to me. ….

But I am convinced that the point of consciousness with which I as an ego am endowed springs directly from this Ehyeh asher ehyeh, I am who I am, which is the name of God. This numinous I-point of consciousness which has me, which engenders me in every moment as an ego, is the actual self-ego-structure of my imperishable being. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 188

For me Neumann symbolized a wall against the terrible psychological effects of the holocaust, which I went through. He deeply believed that there is renewal out of the hell. He meant salvation for me. ~Dvora Kutzinski, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 189

This ultimately quite untheological stance has always aroused the resentment of Christian and Jewish moralizers. Entangled with the here and now, this unconcern and piety are great enough to permit the tribal father, who wrestles with and defeats the angel, nevertheless to skillfully increase his property, just as they allow the lawgiver of Sinai to be a manslaughterer and at the same time a timid person. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 196

It is a powerful vitality that lets the God-filled Samson, a Nazarite, be killed by a foreign prostitute, while still holding him to be filled with God, and that almost grants permission to King David, the people’s and God’s favorite, to commit adultery, to murder, and to be a coward.

If one compares this with the heroic endeavors of other peoples, for instance, the Neo-Germanics, one understands a point that is striking but otherwise not immediately obvious: namely, how passionately a mistaken theology bestowed its poison upon the Jewish people of the Old Testament, whose lack of feigning evoked its disapproval and misjudgment. Here, too, Nietzsche saw both sides correctly: the greatness and autochthony of the Old Testament on the one hand, and the clericalizing of its critics on the other. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 196

Nietzsche’s thinking promised a way out of these indissoluble tensions: His Zarathustra was viewed as a prophet whose second coming marked a fundamental ethical correction: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra represents an individual who, at his own peril, formed concepts of good and evil, which subsequently evolved into ever more general concepts. Thus, he was the one who would cancel out those terms of reference. Having been a teacher for thousands of years, he would create a new future. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 197

The second essay contains the psychology of conscience: this is not, as you may believe, “the voice of God in man”; it is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture … But above all, until the time of Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-ideal. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 198

This relationship is by no means peculiar to the son-religion of Christianity and the father religion of Judaism. The same archetype governs the murder of the Pope-Father (this, of course, is what the Pope really is) by Luther the heretic and, in Judaism (looking at it from the opposite point of view), the son-revolution of Hasidism against the typical paternal position of rabbinism. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 200

For me personally it was a pleasure, besides, that your text extends hand to my New Ethic, which fared so badly, even if in secret, of course. For if a reader of your work now asks himself, so what can actually be done, then he comes up against the problems that compelled me to this work back then in the second world war, with Rommel at the door. But, in fact, this genesis is not quite correct, for the deeper causes were [inner] images where it was all about evil and the “ape man” as destroyers, internally and externally. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 201

The New Ethic was the attempt to process a series of phantasies that roughly corresponded timewise with the exterminations of the Jews, and in which the problem of evil and justice was being tossed around in me. I am still gnawing away at these images at the end of which, in brief, stands the following. I seemed to be commissioned to kill the ape man in the profound primal hole. As I approached him, he was hanging, by night, sleeping on the cross above the abyss, but his—crooked—single eye was staring into the depths of this abyss.

While it at first seemed that I was supposed to blind him, I all of sudden grasped his “innocence,” his dependence on the single eye of the Godhead, which was experiencing the depths through him, which was a human eye. Then, very abridged, I sank down opposite this single eye, jumped into the abyss, but was caught by the Godhead, which carried me on the “wings of his heart.”

After that, this single eye opposite the ape man closed and it opened on my forehead. (Bit difficult to write this, but what should one do.) Working outward from the attempt to process this happening, I arrived at The New Ethic. For me, since then, the world looks different. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 201

When the ego realises its solidarity with the evil “ugliest man,” the predatory man and the ape man in terror in the jungle, its stature is increased by the accession of a most vital factor, the lack of which has precipitated modern man into his present disastrous state of splitness and ego-isolation—and that is, a living relationship with nature and the earth. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 202

Some of the reservations against your teaching are based on the unrevolutionary and all too bourgeois stance of your students who always wish to anticipate the wisdom of the “third half of life” before they have the struggles of the first behind them. … I do not wish to conceal from you that it sometimes seems to me that you are yourself rather complicit in this. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 203

In my opinion this problem does not exist for the Jews. The Jew already had the culture of the ancient world and on top of that has taken over the culture of the nations amongst whom he dwells. He has two cultures, paradoxical as that may sound. He is domesticated to a higher degree than we are, but he is badly at a loss for that quality in man which roots him to the earth and draws new strength from below. This chthonic quality is found in dangerous concentration in the Germanic peoples.

Naturally the Aryan European has not noticed any signs of this for a very long time, but perhaps he is beginning to notice it in the present war; and again, perhaps not. The Jew has too little of this quality—where has he his own earth underfoot? The mystery of earth is no joke and no paradox. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 209

The encounter with the “other side,” the negative component, is marked by an abundance of dreams in which this “other” confronts the ego in such guises as the beggar or cripple, the outcast or bad man, the fool or ne’er-do-well, the despised or the insulted, the robber, the sick man, etc. etc. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 213

I once dreamed, almost three years ago, that you said to me: “I would like to eat some more fruit with you.” This sentence got into me in its own or in my own way, and independently of the complexity of its meaning, it has been a strong incentive for me. For, as paradoxical as it may be, it was a challenge to me, and for me, the book is a fruit, which I am sending you herewith “to eat.”

Should you have a taste for it, it would be a great pleasure for me. And if “eating together” could find expression in an introduction from you, my egotistic interpretation of the dream would come fully true. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 217

The isolation of my existence in Palestine is probably greater than you imagine, and I fear a part of the deficiencies of which I was fully conscious on sending the manuscript to you has to do with this basic fact of my life. I have virtually no opportunity of discussing any scientific matters with peers, and this may be evident. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 217

I have also been giving some thought to how we can get you back to Europe again. But for the time being I can’t see any way this can be done. The situation is extremely difficult and everything is uncertain. While we are still living on our cultural island as before, everything around us is nothing but destruction, physically as well as morally. To do something reasonable oneself, you have to close your eyes. Germany is indescribably rotten. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 218

You [Jung] can imagine how pleased I was about your letter letting me know that Rascher has accepted my book. What is more, I am really touched by the active engagement you are showing toward me and my productions. ~Erich Neumann t, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 218

The whole thing came upon me like a landslide that cannot be stopped. The urgency that lay behind it became clear to me only later: it was the explosion of all those psychic contents which could find no room, no breathing-space, in the constricting atmosphere of Freudian psychology and its narrow outlook. I have no wish to denigrate Freud, or to detract from the extraordinary merits of his investigation of the individual psyche. B

ut the conceptual framework into which he fitted the psychic phenomenon seemed to me unendurably narrow. I am not thinking here of his theory of neurosis, which can be as narrow … One of my principal aims was to free medical psychology from the subjective and personalistic bias that characterized its outlook at that time, and to make it possible to understand the unconscious as an objective and collective psyche … Thus this book became a landmark, set up on the spot where two ways divided. Because of its imperfections and its incompleteness it laid down the programme to be followed for the next few decades of my life. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 218-219

The evolution of consciousness as a form of creative evolution is the peculiar achievement of Western man. Creative evolution of ego consciousness means that, through a continuous process stretching over thousands of years, the conscious system has absorbed more and more unconscious contents. ~Erich Neumann to Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 219

He [Neumann] has woven his facts into a pattern and created a unified whole, which no pioneer could have done nor could ever attempted to do. As though in confirmation of this, the present work opens at the very place where I unwittingly made landfall on the new continent long ago, namely the realm of matriarchal symbolism … Upon this foundation he has succeeded in constructing a unique history of the evolution of consciousness, and at the same time in representing the body of myths as the phenomenology of this same evolution. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 219-220

Differentiation of the ego, separation of the World Parents, and dismemberment of the primordial dragon set man free as a son and expose him to the light, and only then is he born as a personality with a stable ego. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 220

Interpreted as sin, apostasy, rebellion, disobedience, this emancipation is in reality the fundamental liberating act of man which releases him from the yoke of the unconscious and establishes him as an ego, a conscious individual. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 221

Man experiences the “masculine” structure of his conscious as peculiarly his own, and the “feminine” unconscious as something alien to him, whereas woman feels at home in her unconscious and out of her element in consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 221

In relation to the ego, the mother image has both a productive and a destructive aspect, but over and above that, it preserves a certain immutability and eternality. Although it is twofaced and can assume many shapes, for the ego and consciousness it always remains the world of the origin, the world of the unconscious … Whereas man’s ego and his consciousness have changed to an extraordinary degree during the last six thousand years, the unconscious, the Mother, is a psychic structure that would seem to be fixed eternally and almost unalterably. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 221

Besides his personal father there is a “higher,” that is to say an archetypal father figure, and similarly an archetypal mother figure appears beside the personal mother. This double descent, with its contrasted personal and suprapersonal parental figures, constellates the drama of the hero’s life. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 222

In addition to his dual parentage, another essential attribute of the hero is his “double nature”: He is a human being like the others, mortal and collective like them, yet at the same time he feels himself a stranger to the community. He discovers within himself something which, although it “belongs” to him and is as it were part of him, he can only describe as strange, unusual, god-like. In the process of being exalted above the common level, in his heroic capacity as doer, seer, and creator, he feels himself like one “inspired,” altogether extraordinary and the son of a god. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 222

It is no accident that all human culture, and not Western civilization alone, is masculine in character, from Greece and the Judaeo-Christian sphere of culture to Islam and India. Although woman’s share in this culture is invisible and largely unconscious … The masculine trend, however, is towards greater co-ordination of spirit, ego, consciousness, and will. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 222-223

On the contrary, the whole point of the ritual is that the procreative spirit should be experienced as something remote and different … The initiations of puberty, like all initiations, aim at producing something suprapersonal, namely that part of the individual which is transpersonal and collective. Hence the production of this part is a second birth. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 223

The fight with the dragon is thus the fight with the First Parents, a fight in which the murders of both father and mother, but not of one alone, have their ritually prescribed place. The dragon fight forms a central chapter in the evolution of mankind as of the individual. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 223

He shows, first, that the hero’s fight is the fight with a mother who cannot be regarded as a personal figure in the family romance. Behind the personal figure of the mother there stands … what Jung was later to call the mother archetype. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 223

Though Oedipus conquers the Sphinx, he commits incest with his mother, and murders his father, unconsciously. He has no knowledge of what he has done, and when he finds out, he is unable to look his own deed, the deed of the hero, in the face. Consequently he is overtaken by the fate that overtakes all those for whom the Eternal Feminine reverts to the Great Mother: he regresses to the stage of the son, and suffers the fate of the son-lover.

He performs the act of self-castration by putting out his own eyes … It signifies the destruction of the higher masculinity, of the very thing that characterizes the hero; and this form of spiritual castration cancels out all that was gained by his victory over the Sphinx. The masculine progression of the hero is thrown back by the old shock, the fear of the Great Mother which seizes him after the deed. He becomes the victim of the Sphinx he had conquered. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 224

the world of collective values; it is historical and related to the fluctuating level of conscious and cultural development within the group. … [The fathers] preside over the upbringing of each individual and certify his coming of age. Always the fathers see to it that the current values are impressed upon the young people … The advocacy of the canon of values inherited from the fathers and enforced by education manifests itself in the psychic structure of the individual as “conscience”. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 225

It is no uxorious gorilla father who, as paterfamilias, drives out his son … no wicked king packs off his son to slay the monster, which is himself, as the nonsensical psychoanalytical interpretation would have us believe. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 226

…the ego remains totally dependent upon the father as the representative of the collective norm—that is, it identifies with the lower father and thus loses its connection with the creative powers … it remains bound by traditional morality and conscience, and, as though castrated by convention, loses the higher half of its dual nature. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 226

Having read your first volume, the only troubling terminology to strike me was that of the “castration complex.” I consider the use of this term to be not only an aesthetic error, but also an erroneous overvaluation of the sexual symbolism. This complex is a matter of the archetype of sacrifice, a term that is much more comprehensive, and that takes into account the fact that, for the primitive, sex does not have, by far, the same significance as it does for the modern individual …

The expression “castration complex” is, to my taste, much too concretistic and therefore one-sided, even though it definitely proves to be applicable in a whole series of phenomena … We must place the existence of the psyche as a sui generis phenomenon in the first place and understand the instincts as being in a specific relationship to this. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 226

In castration, there is the threat to the ego and consciousness by the terrible mother of the unconscious. The ego is supposed to be sacrificed, against which it defends itself. This dramatization of the situation, as an expression of the conflict of the psyche is not in any way denoted by the concept of sacrifice, but it is very much so by the castration symbol.

Not until the hero stage does the archetype of sacrifice become relevant, it seems to me, as a fulfilled act assumed by the ego … The concept of sacrifice belongs, just like the taboos etc. to the “offering” in the sense of a positive relationship of the ego to the Self and thus belongs on the side of consciousness—strengthening—expansion, etc. The castration symbol stands in the first part where it is a question of a disempowerment of the ego consciousness and of a danger of violation by the unconscious. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 227

Neumann hopes to have persuaded Jung and invites suggestions if he has failed in his attempt. Jung replied 11 days later. Expressing his understanding of Neumann’s request, he uses their discussion to expand and clarify his own terminology and to introduce a possible correction: I cannot repudiate the justification of “castration complex” terminology and even less its symbolism, but I must take issue with “sacrifice” not being a symbol.

In the Christian sense it is even one of the most significant symbols … With incest it is the same thing, which is why I had to use the additional term hierosgamos. Just as only the twin concepts “Incest-Hierosgamos” describe the whole situation, so also “castration-sacrifice.” Could one say castration symbol instead of castration complex, to be on the safe side? Or castration motif (like incest motif)? ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 227

It is a tremendous step forward when a feminine, “sisterly” element—intangible but very real—can be added to the masculine ego consciousness as “my beloved” or “my soul.” The word “my” separates off from the anonymous, hostile territory of the unconscious a region which is felt to be peculiarly “my” own, belonging to “my” peculiar personality. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 229

His father a god and his mother the bride of a god, a personal father who hates him, then the killing of the transpersonal First Parents, and finally the liberation of the captive—these are the stages that mark the progress of the hero. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 230

Pegasus is the libido which, as winged spiritual energy, carries the hero Bellerophon … to victory, but he is also inward-flowing libido that wells forth as creative art. In neither case is the release of libido undirected; it rises up in the direction of spirit … Pegasus is therefore a spiritual and transcendent symbol in one. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 230

The path of evolution, leading mankind from unconsciousness to consciousness, is the path traced by the transformations and ascent of the libido. On either side there stand the great images, the archetypes and their symbols. As man progresses along this path, ever greater units of libido are supplied to his ego consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 230

As though a Copernican revolution had taken place within the psyche, consciousness faces inward and becomes aware of the self, about which the ego revolves in a perpetual paradox of identity and nonidentity. The psychological process of assimilating the unconscious into our present-day consciousness begins at this point, and the consequent shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self signalizes the latest stage in the evolution of human consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 232

After passing through all the phases of world-experience and self-experience, the individual reaches consciousness of his true meaning. He knows himself the beginning, the middle, and end of the self-development of the psyche, which manifests itself first as the ego and is then experienced by this ego as the self. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 232

And yet, this consciousness can be attained only with the help of the images of the soul. They are the “creative centre.” These psychic images form the actual reality of every culture, whose task is to help this psychic reality to achieve “realisation.” Art, religion, science: Everything draws on these images. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 232

His [Freud] psychology of the feminine is therefore a patriarchal misconception and his lack of understanding of the nature of religion and of artistic creation comes from the same unawareness of the creative psyche which, mythologically, is connected with the Mother- Goddess and the prepatriarchal level of the unconscious. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 234

Firstly it is a book that grips me deeply … It is—for me personally—especially also an argument against God who allowed 6 million of “His” people to be killed, for Job is precisely also Israel … I know we are the paradigm for the whole of humanity in whose name you are speaking, protesting, and consoling. And exactly the conscious one-sidedness, yes, often the inaccuracy of what you are saying is, to me, an inner proof of the necessity and justice of your attack —which is, of course, not one, as I well know. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 234-235

God was now known, and this knowledge went on working not only in Yahweh but in man too. Thus it was the men of the last few centuries before Christ who, at the gentle touch of the pre-existent Sophia, compensate Yahweh and his attitude, and at the same time complete the anamnesis of Wisdom. Taking a highly personified form that is clear proof of her autonomy, Wisdom reveals herself to men as a friendly helper and advocate against Yahweh, and shows them the bright side, the kind, just, and amiable aspect of their God. ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 235

The preeminent importance of Sophia in Jung’s thinking leads Neumann, in his letter of 5 December 1951, to the following assessment: In reality, you believe in the feminine Sophia as the highest authority without admitting it. Perhaps it only seems to me to be so because this is how it is for me personally. Only the matriarchal psychology of the psyche and the Holy Ghost is comprehensible. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 235

In the Psyche, which Rascher will send you as soon as it comes out (which should happen any day), a similar process of an archetypal nature seems to me to exist. But taking place in the feminine and at the edge of antiquity. But I have only been able to hint at it and for sure it is a problem of apparently smaller numinosity. But who knows, even the divine daughter is not without deep significance. The rebirth of Sophia in ecstasy is still quite puzzling to

me, but there is something about it. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 235 Jung

…in the generating and nourishing, protective and transformative, feminine power of the unconscious, a wisdom at work that is infinitely superior to the wisdom of man’s waking consciousness, and that, as source of vision and symbol, of ritual and law, poetry and vision, intervenes, summoned or unsummoned, to save man and give direction to his life. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 236

This feminine-maternal wisdom is no abstract, disinterested knowledge, but a wisdom of loving participation … Sophia is living and present and near, a godhead that can always be summoned and is always ready to intervene … Thus the spiritual power of Sophia is living and saving; her overflowing heart is wisdom and food at once. The nourishing life that she communicates is a life of the spirit and of transformation, not one of earthbound materiality. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 236

for while the specific achievement of the male world lies in the development of masculine consciousness and the rational mind, the female psyche is in far greater degree dependent on the productivity of the unconscious, which is closely bound up with what we accordingly designate as the matriarchal consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 237

In the patriarchal development of the Judeo-Christian West, with its masculine, monotheistic trend toward abstraction, the goddess, as a feminine figure of wisdom, was is enthroned and repressed. She survived only secretly, for the most part on heretical and revolutionary bypaths. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 237

In all these processes where “Psyche leads” and the masculine follows here, the ego relinquishes its leading role and is guided by the totality. In psychic developments which prove to be centered around the nonego, the self, we have creative processes. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 238

The fundamental contrast between YHWH and the principle of the Earth Mother becomes obvious once again. This contrast alone explains why the Hebrews, surrounded by mother cults, remained the only tribe, among the Semitic tribes, that possessed no female deity. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 238

This deficiency—Neumann maintains—explains the dominant negative mother archetype eventually adopted by Christianity in the Jewish tradition: For Jews, Christians and Gnostics, the archetype of the negative Mother and the anima, representing the natural and earthly aspect of the unconscious, became the basis for a negative image of woman … The left side of the Kabbalistic tree is feminine. Detached from the positive, masculine side, it is the origin of the “other side,” meaning evil. Here, too, the masculine conception of the story of creation remains in effect, according to which the female is secondary, originating from the side of the male, Adam. . ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 238

Of particular importance … is the loss of the feminine side of consciousness in favor of radical masculinization, an extreme emphasis on active and rational components. This is particularly evident with regard to introversion. Originally, Judaism had consciously emphasized an inner, feminine stance toward the irradiating impulse and the word of God. This stance had been symbolized most strongly in the image of the people as the bride of God.

This attitude of stillness, maintaining silence and preparing oneself for inner experience, poses no contradiction to the active assimilation and realization that are then demanded, but this attitude now began to disappear. Even introversion became active, speculative, and rational, geared toward working through what was found, rather than being expanded by a new thing breaking in. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 239

With Psyche’s heroic act suffering, guilt, and loneliness have come into the world. For Psyche’s act is analogous to the deed of the hero who separated the original parents in order to produce the light of consciousness. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 240

And whereas the masculine goes on from this act of heroic slaying to conquer the world, whereas his hieros gamos with the anima figure he has won constitutes only a part of his victory, Psyche’s subsequent development is nothing other than an attempt to transcend, through suffering and struggle, the separation accomplished by her act. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 241

The human has conquered its place on Olympus [Himmel, “heaven,” in the German—Trans.], but this has been done not by a masculine deified hero, but by a loving soul. Human womanhood as an individual has mounted to Olympus … And paradoxically enough, she has gained this divine place precisely by her mortality. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 242

It is no accident that we speak of the “soul” of man as well as woman … This psyche as the whole of the personality must be characterized in man as well as in woman as feminine, because it experiences that which transcends the psychic as numinous, as “outside” and “totally different” …

Where this psyche undergoes experience, the symbolically masculine structure of the ego and of consciousness seems, both in man and woman, to be so relativized and reduced that the feminine character of psychic is predominant. Thus the mystical birth of the godhead in the man does not take place as birth of the anima, i.e., of a partial structure of psychic life, but as the birth of totality, i.e., of the psyche. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 242

Such developments, in which “the spontaneity of the psyche” and its living guidance are the crucial determinants in the life of the masculine, are known to us from the psychology of the creative process and of individuation. In all these processes where “Psyche leads” and the masculine follows her, the ego relinquishes its leading role and is guided by the totality. In psychic developments which prove to be centered round the nonego, the self, we have creative processes and processes of initiation in one. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 243

The triumph of Psyche’s love and her ascension to Olympus were an event that has profoundly affected Western mankind for two thousand years. For two millenniums the mystery phenomenon of love has occupied the center of psychic development and of culture, art, and religion. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 243

This love of Psyche for her divine lover is a central motif in the love mysticism of all times, and Psyche’s failure, her final self-abandonment, and the god who approaches as a savior at this very moment correspond exactly to he highest phase of mystical ecstasy, in which the soul commends itself to the godhead. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 243

And whereas the masculine goes on from this act of heroic slaying to conquer the world, here as his hieros gamos with the anima figure has won constitutes only a part of his victory, Psyche’s subsequent development is nothing other than an attempt to transcend, through suffering and struggle, the separation accomplished by her act. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 244

For me in any case, it is a fact that the Jewish historical “development” in this mortal world is becoming ever more problematic for me, the “actualization of messianism” in individuation is becoming ever more crucial … What is relevant are the stages of development of consciousness in the development of the individual, otherwise everything “historical” belongs to the constellation of the ego as time, like family and constitution. The realization of the ego-Self unity is vertical. ~Erich Neumann to Dr. Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 248

All of us belong to the phenotype of the Jew living in the banishment of the Shekhinah. Jung’s work with Jewish people has made him see this fateful tendency. … Jungian psychology will be decisive in the effort of the Jews to reach their foundations. The Zionist” character of his findings, which, like Zionism, include the irrational of the primordial creative ground, will prove groundbreaking in this respect. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 257

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

The Life, Work and Legacy of Carl Jung

Life and Work of Erich Neumann Quotations

Life and Work of Erich Neumann Quotations

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