Carl Jung: It is my fate however, not my choice, and I had to fulfill this unbecoming role.
To Father Victor White
My dear Victor, 30 April 1960
I have heard of your illness and I should have liked to come to England to see you, but I have to be careful with my own health and I must avoid all exertions.
As I am completing my 85th year, I am really old and my forces are definitely limited.
In February I had a bit of a heart embolism and my doctor is strict.
I have to thank you for the kind gift of your book Soul and Psyche.
It is certainly a theme worthy of a lengthy discussion in the “Auseinandersetzung” between theology and psychology.
I just began to read it. I had to finish first the book Psychotherapie und Religion by Dr. Josef Rudin, S.J.
The bit I have read in your book is most interesting and promising and I certainly shall go on studying it carefully.
In the meantime I hope you don’t worry about my letter.
I want to assure you of my loyal friendship.
I shall not forget all the useful things I have learned through our many talks and through your forbearance with me.
I was often sorry to be a petra scandali.
It is my fate however, not my choice, and I had to fulfill this unbecoming role.
Things had to be moved in the great crisis of our time.
New wine needs new skins.
We need no further outbursts on a grand scale or so it seems to me.
The “iron curtain” is quite sufficient to me to demonstrate the enormous split in the “soul” of modern man,
but we are mostly asleep . It needs some noise to wake the sleepers.
Many greetings and cordial wishes!
Yours ever,
C.G . Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 554-555