Carl Jung: Could an embryo be affected by a father’s demand that the mother get an abortion.
To G . Kronert
Dear Dr. Kronert, 28 April 1959
If the father’s intention were a unique and isolated factor-as one usually imagines it is-it would indeed be miraculous if the embryo noticed it and consequently had a feeling of resentment.
But the father’s intention is never a unique and isolated thing; it is an act with an antecedent history and a consciousness which extends over many years right up to the present.
The father has not done it but himself was it for the greater part of his life.
No act drops out of the blue or can be wiped out.
It is part of his substance.
That is what the child reacts to-to the quiddity of the father, without knowing that this quiddity once exemplified itself in an act.
Nothing is in us that was not there before, and nothing that has once been can vanish.
If you should come to Switzerland sometime I would be happy to make your acquaintance.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung
Note: K. asked if an embryo could be affected by the father’s demand that the mother get an abortion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 502
