As a boy I was the victim of a sexual assault by a man I once worshipped.
Dear Professor Freud, Burgholzli-Zurich, 28October 1907
I immediately put your good advice’ about the case of obsessional neurosis into practice with good results.
Heartiest thanks.
The Nacke” affair is most amusing.
In any case N. is hardly worth bothering about.
He is a queer bird who flutters like a will 0′ the wisp over all the backwaters of neurology, psychiatry, and psychology, and who must have popped up with uncanny frequency in your reading.
He has just written an exceedingly strange, altogether crack-brained “historical” monograph on cramp in the legs.
Ch. 1: Cramp in. Ancient Egypt. Ch. 2: Cramp in Assyria, and so on.
It doesn’t surprise me that he couldn’t refrain from sticking his nose into the great Freud debate.
I don’t know the critique as I haven’t got the Gross Archive.
Your last two letters contain references to my laziness in writing. I certainly owe you an explanation.
One reason is my work load, which hardly gives me a breather even in the evenings; the other is to ‘be found in the realm of affect, in what you have termed my “self-preservation complex”-marvellous expression!
And indeed you know that this complex has played many a trick on me, not least in my Dem. praec. book.
I honestly’ do try, but the evil spirit that (as you see) bedevils my pen often prevents me from writing.
Actually-and I confess this to you with a struggle-I have a boundless admiration for you both as a man and a researcher, and I bear you no conscious grudge.
So the self-preservation complex does not come from there; it is rather that my veneration for you has something of the character of a “religious” crush.
Though it does not really bother me, I still feel it is disgusting and ridiculous because of its undeniable erotic undertone.
This abominable feeling comes from the fact that as a boy I was the victim of a sexual assault by a man I once worshipped.
Even in Vienna the remarks of the ladies (“enfin seuls,” etc.) sickened me, although the reason for it was not clear to me at the time.
This feeling, which I still have not quite got rid of, hampers me considerably.
Another manifestation of it is that I find psychological insight makes relations with colleagues who have a strong transference to me downright disgusting.
I therefore fear your confidence.
I also fear the same reaction from you when I speak of my intimate affairs.
Consequently, I skirt round such- things as much as possible, for, to my feeling at any rate, every intimate relationship turns out after a while to be sentimental and banal or exhibitionistic, as with my chief, whose confidences are offensive.
I think l owe you this explanation. I would rather not have said it.
With kindest regards,
Most sincerely yours, Jung ~Carl Jung, Freud-Jung Letters, Page 94-95
