I would like to take to rectify the error that I come from the Freudian school.
To Christian Jenssen
Dear Herr Jenssen, 29 May 1933
I have rapidly skimmed through the article you so kindly sent me.
I can only thank you for its general tenor, for there are indeed only a few people who have noticed that I am saying something different from Freud.
Unfortunately, it is only in Germany that I am not known.
In the Anglo-Saxon world I have been known for a long time (whether I have been understood is another matter).
You will find my debate with Freud in Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart, in the essay “Der Gegensatz Freud-Jung.”
I would like to take this opportunity to rectify the error that I come from the Freudian school.
I am a pupil of Bleuler’s and my experimental researches had already won me a name in science when I took up the cudgels for Freud and opened the discussion in real earnest in 1905.
My scientific conscience did not allow me, on the one hand, to let what is good in Freud go by the board and, on the other, to countenance the absurd position which the human psyche occupies in his theory.
I suspected at once that this partly diabolical sexual theory would turn people’s heads and I have sacrificed my scientific career in doing all I can to combat this absolute devaluation of the psyche.
Incidentally, I should be much obliged if you would let me know on a postcard whereabouts in my work you have found “intellectual shadow boxing” and other such yarns.
I am essentially an empiricist and have discovered to my cost that when people do not understand me they think I have seen visions.
Yours very truly,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 121-122
Sigmund Freud/Oskar Pfister Letters – Quotations
Psychoanalysis and Fiath, the Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister
Sigmund Freud/Oskar Pfister Letters
Your name has often been mentioned to me by our common friend C. G. Jung, and I am glad now to be able to associate a more definite idea with it; and I hope you will not keep your future work from me. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 15
It is certainly not the least of our friend Jung’s services that he has become the source of stimuli such as impelled you to your work. ~Sigmund Freod, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 17
Jung left yesterday evening, but I obviously had no complaints about you to make to him, because all you have done is what he and I myself have done, that is to say, published material according to the state of your knowledge at the time and modified it later in accordance with the progress of your knowledge. ~Sigmund Freud, Fre0d/Pfister Letters, Page 22
But for your visit and your influence I should never have managed it; my own father complex, as Jung would call it, that is to say, the need to correct my father, would never have permitted it. ~Sigmund Freod, Freod/Pfister Letters, Page 24
You too must have been impressed by the great news that Jung is coming with me to Worcester.’ It changes my whole feeling about the trip and makes it important. I am very curious to see what will come of it all. ~Sigmund Freod, Freod/Pfister Letters, Page 25
In Jung’s opinion sister complexes play a part in the hostility of his pupil Erismann. ~Sigmund Froud, Froud/Pfister Letters, Page 26-27
The reason I write to you about family matters is that no visitor since Jung has so much impressed the children and done me so much good. ~Sigmund Freod, Freod/Pfister Letters, Page 27
