As a matter of fact my first and most gifted pupils were Jews.
To Abraham Aaron Roback
Dear Mr. Roback, 19 December 1936
I have received your big book1 for which I thank you warmly.
As a matter of fact I found it at home when I came back from my rather long trip.
Your remark has interested me very much, namely that you have made experiments about the mental differences between Jews and non-Jews and I should be much obliged to you if you could drop me a hint about your results.
When I wrote about this difference I had in mind my own experiences which are not experimental but medical.
There is indeed a marked difference which has much to do with the age of the race.
I found something very similar in Hindus, namely an extension or extensibility of consciousness into the subconscious mind which is not to be found or is at least very rare with non-Jews.
Also the tendency of consciousness to autonomy with the risk of severing it almost entirely from its instinctive sources.
Freud is very typical in that respect.
To him as to many other Jews, as I have seen with my own eyes, the re-establishment of the communication with the instincts means a true and vital find and source of satisfaction and joy.
Non-Jewish people don’t feel like that, they rather experience it as a restriction of moral freedom.
That explains the peculiar leaning of Protestant parsons to Freudian analysis.
In their hands it is a beautiful means to show a brand-new category of sins to people of which they never dreamt before.
I see that you assume that I have almost no Jewish pupils in the United States.
That is not quite true.
There is a number of Jewish doctors who have studied with me, but the reason why you haven’t discovered them is that they are undiscoverable on account of their fear of being recognized as Jungians.
The monopoly of psychoanalysis doesn’t stand outsiders.
So they are just afraid of deviating from the creed.
As a matter of fact my first and most gifted pupils were Jews.
In Europe there are however two or three who dared to show their hand and to acknowledge the origin whence they came.
I’m quite aware of the fact that Freud’s statement is necessary for the Jew, yet in so far as there are non-Jews and in so far as there are even among Jews not a few who ought to see beyond, I have been forced by my patients to develop a point of view that considers the one and the other need.
Unfortunately the political events in Germany have made it quite impossible to say anything reasonable about the most interesting difference between Jewish and non-Jewish psychology.
The disinterested discussion of this most interesting difference is well-nigh impossible in our time of a new barbary.
One risks being labelled as anti-Semite or pro-Semite without being heard at all.
I have not yet read your book carefully, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to thank you for your very generous gift.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 223-224
These are the demands I put to a pupil.
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To Otto Korner
Dear Colleague, 22 March 1935
Thank you for your letter.
I am in some doubt as to whether the faithful account you have given of the meaning of my psychology will be properly understood by anyone who, coming to it from outside, has not the necessary knowledge to understand what it is really all about.
To such people I usually say nothing about its deeper intentions and its background, but apprise them of the fact that for many years there has been an English Seminar in Zurich.
Moreover I hold public lectures and from the next semester on I have a seminar for students.
In addition, I have undertaken numerous training analyses myself or have had them undertaken by my pupils.
If nothing of this sort has been organized in Germany, it is chiefly because the Germans have noticed much later than the Anglo-Saxons that there are other psychic things besides the intellect.
Also, as you know, there are still very few people in Germany nowadays who are capable of looking beyond this.
To me, it is just this academic restriction to the intellect that makes anti-Semitism explicable.
To my mind it would be an advantage if you told Prof. X. what my views are about the training course.
In this connection I have sent a memorandum to Prof. Goring.
Above all, I demand knowledge of clinical psychiatry and of organic nervous diseases.
Secondly a training analysis, a certain amount of philosophical education, + study of primitive psychology, 5. of comparative religion, 6. of mythology, 6. of analytical psychology, beginning with knowledge of the diagnostic association technique, the technique of interpreting dreams and fantasies, 8. training of one’s own personality, i.e., development and differentiation of functions which are in need of education.
These are the demands I put to a pupil.
Naturally there are only a few people who can fulfil them, but I have long ago given up producing manufactured articles.
Above all, I don’t want to evoke the impression that I think psychotherapy is intellectual child’s play, and I always take pains to make it clear to people that real knowledge of the human
psyche requires not only a vast amount of learning but a differentiated personality.
In the last resort the psyche cannot be handled with any one technique, and in psychotherapy it is just the psyche we are dealing with and not with any old mechanism that can be got at with
equally mechanistic methods.
One should therefore avoid giving the impression that psychotherapy is an easy technique.
Such a view undermines the dignity and prestige of our science, which I regard as the highest of them all.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 187-189
pupil pupil pupil pupil pupil pupil
