McCarthy is an exponent of American one-sidedness
Dear Kirsch,
Prof. Dr. C. G. Jung
Kusnacht-Zurich
Seestrasse 228 11 September 1954
My silence is mainly due to the fact that, as much as possible, I’ve been refraining from dealing with my mail: for once I really needed to take a vacation.
Unfortunately, our summer was horribly rainy; only now is the weather decent, and I can truly recover.
My correspondence long ago got completely out of hand.
My essay about the Trickster really was a preface to Radin’s new version of the “Winnebago Trickster Myth.”
Since then, Brody who is publishing the book-has also included Kerenyi, who writes about Hermes and related subjects.
Unfortunately the book’s now been retitled: Der gottliche Schelm.
I resisted this designation; it really is about the divine fool, and originally I wrote my essay only about this figure which – as I said – has absolutely nothing to do with a “scoundrel.”
The purpose of this publication is not quite clear to me; the book is presented in an incredibly expensive and luxurious edition, with no relation whatever to its content.
I am glad you’ve had the experience of the primitive ceremonies; I never saw the katchina, only the buffalo dances of the Pueblo Indians of Taos, where I made friends with the old Locotenente Gobemador, Ochwiii Biano.
The clowns whom you saw are the famous “Delight Makers,”lll about whom some hundred years ago Bandelier wrote a charming book of the same name.
They are relatives of the trickster figure.
Of my two writings, Synchronicity and Job, I can say: “Habent sua fata libelli.”
In America no one except Knoll of Princeton has properly understood what I mean by it; especially the statistics have just driven people crazy.
Therefore I decided to take all tables out of the book and have replaced them with a description in words, probably with the same result, that people cannot get away from their causalistic thinking habits. It won’t come out until next spring.
In contrast, Job will be printed in England in short order, though significantly not in America; the Bollingen Press prefers to keep its distance, because Job could be misunderstood as “unamerican activity”!
The other day I received a manuscript by Progoff, in which he discusses the question of synchronicity very skillfully, especially under the aspect of archetypes.
In Europe there are a few people who understand synchronicity: among them, it seems, some young physicists who are interested in it.
It’s especially not understood what an excellent joke was made with the astrological statistic; people have even thought I wanted to prove
something in favor of astrology.
It’s hardly worthwhile to go on any more about all these stupidities.
Mysterium Coniunctionis is currently in press, but I haven’t received any proof-sheets yet.
It will perhaps interest you to learn that hardly were my letters published in the Weltwoche119 when the “saucers”120 also appeared above Zurich.
One of the first was observed by my own physician, the second by a military flying officer.
A whole squadron was seen near Lake Constance, as well as in Southern Germany.
I have received a whole series of letters with further observations; consequently we are obviously not dealing only with American phenomena.
I then received further information which could be very interesting, but I must wait until I have seen the eyewitness myself, for which there’s some possibility.
You are quite right:
McCarthy is an exponent of American one-sidedness, which is what gives him the fanatical, paranoid character.
It’s probably not a genuine paranoia; he gives me more the impression of being an instrument of the American collective.
The difficulty you’re encountering with the authorities in connection with your seminar seems completely incomprehensible to me.
After all, you can receive anyone you want in your house, it seems to me.
With regard to your essay “The Red One” I’ll report at a later date; I haven’t yet had a chance to read it.
Meanwhile I remain, with best greetings,
Yours truly,
C. G. JUNG ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 207-210
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957): a United States Senator from Wisconsin, 1947-57.
From February 1950 until December 1954, when he was formally censured by the Senate, McCarthy carried on a demagogic campaign against Americans with alleged Communist affiliations.
He attacked government officials, politicians, members of the armed forces, and a wide array of intellectuals, clergy, and artists.
McCarthy’s popularity fell in 1954 and his campaign ended, after his methods were publicly exposed by the Army-McCarthy Hearings and two TV newscasts by Edward R. Murrow. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 209, fn 122
Dear Professor!
139 So. Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, Calif.
27 November 1954125
I’m very sorry that I haven’t written to you in such a long time.
During the time Meier was here – we now jokingly refer to it as the “Meier month” – there was simply no time for writing.
He had to keep an enormously full schedule. Of course,
I also accompanied him on all his excursions into the countryside and to the ocean.
My kind neighbor never even called the police on me. So it all came out well. Meier also weathered it very well. His visit was a great success.
The essential factor was his personality, with which he doubtless made a deeper impression on all who came into contact with him than any of our earlier visitors.
Whether or not he was also accepted is a completely different question.
What so much distinguishes him, besides his enormous scholarship, is his ability to let the ucs. speak and his respect for the numinosity of the ucs.
Especially in this respect he was well accepted by some in the Club, and rejected by others.
The latter found particular fault with the fact that he never really “analyzed” the dreams and never really rounded them off by stating: “The dream means such and such.”
Also his public appearance may have had a different effect than he perhaps expected.
As a condition of his visit he had stipulated that he wanted to lecture at universities and medical schools. His greatest success – also his best lecture – was at the Mental Hygiene Society, where 600 people, mostly “laymen”, were present.
He found the most limited response with the psychiatrists, and that’s where he was also most reticent.
We also had him as a guest in our house and enjoyed his company. In private we never spoke a word about psychology.
I was deeply impressed by his ability to experience music, and that he lived his shadow so consciously.
This intensive, extraverted way of life brought my inner process almost to a standstill.
But then we continued just as intensively, and in the end something like a temporary inner unification occurred.
While I have not been sleeping well for years and have often been plagued by my gout attacks, my sleep is now much better, and the gout has left me in peace. (Toi! toil toil)
What keeps disturbing me, though, is the fact that this process is interrupted again and again by intensive affects.
None of them manifest outwardly, but the process is interrupted again and again, sometimes for days.
Then it costs me a great effort to re-direct the intensity of these affects to the process.
Recently I had a mental picture before falling asleep: Someone who is coming to see me brings along a horse.
I know he knows how he can water the horse at the large, round trough that I own. Then I see the trough before me, filled with water.
A week later I had a dream in which a woman enters a room and ignites the spirits(!) with which the same round trough is filled.
I clearly see the colorless, little flame flickering in the middle of the trough.
Then she laughs mockingly, sarcastically, as if to say: “Now a great explosion will occur.”
However, nothing happens, and the flame continues to bum peacefully.
This sarcastic attitude of the anima points to a similar attitude in my consciousness, of which however I’m not really conscious.
To that extent this dream is compensatory.
I am also glad that the vessel is now whole, and I notice from other, external things that there is a relative wholeness.
I have a lot of dreams and images but cannot get close to active imagination.
In the meantime, I was unfortunately unable to continue writing this letter.
In a subsequent dream I was conversing with you, and your figure transformed into that of a boy who was your nephew.
Since that time an intensive soliloquy has been flowing. Despite some suffering I am doing quite well.
Also in the outer world a number of changes for the better have taken place.
The only trouble I’m having is that I no longer have any need to work with Meier and ( or) Liliane Frey.
I don’t have a negative attitude toward them, but simply feel a need to keep working by myself.
Only with you I’d like to discuss a great many things – and here I’m very conscious of your work overload.
I would like to come to Zurich again in the summer of 1955 -Deo concedente- and hope to be able to see you then.
Before closing, I’d like to say something briefly about McCarthy.
In the Gestaltungen des Ubw (p. 54), you write: “I do not want to promise to define an absolute boundary between possession and paranoia.”
McCarthy is certainly an exponent of American one-sidedness.
I just wanted to say that while observing his conduct on the television screen I received the impression that he personally has already crossed this boundary.
To make sure I have no illusions that we Jews are free of this collective phenomenon, I’ve learned that his “evil spirit” is a Mr. Cohn, and his closest collaborator is Rabbi Benjamin Schulz.
But I believe that remarkable changes are taking place in the American unconscious.
Whether they will be strong enough to prevent the threatening war, with its apocalyptic consequences, is difficult to predict.
I have a whole series of dreams, esp. of young people, in which the hydrogen bomb plays a part.
Dear Professor, to conclude I would like to send you and your wife my most heartfelt wishes for Christmas.
With most cordial greetings,
Faithfully yours,
JAMES KIRSCH
Enclosed is a photograph137 which I took during Meier’s seminar on 25 October
1954.
James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 211-213
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