[Carl Jung on James and Lucia Joyce]
To Patricia Graecen
Dear Mrs. Graecen 29 June 1955
I n fulfilling your wishes I have corrected the pages of your MS here enclosed.
The question of the letter to Joyce is mysterious.
I am rather certain that I never wrote to him but the remark about Molly’s monologue is definitely authentic, though where and to whom I made it is beyond the reach of my memory.
I am sorry.
If you know anything of my anima theory, Joyce and his daughter are a classic example of it. She was definitely his femme inspiratrice,
which explains his obstinate reluctance to have her certified.
His own anima, i.e., unconscious psyche, was so solidly identified with her that to have her certified would have been as much as an admission
that he himself had a latent psychosis.
It is therefore understandable that he could not give in.
His “psychological” style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help talking and thinking in such a way, while Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces.
Which incidentally explains why he himself did not go over the border.
But his daughter did, because she was no genius like her father, but merely a victim of her disease.
In any other time of the past Joyce’s work would never have reached the printer, but in our blessed XXth century it is a message, though not yet understood.
Very truly yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266