How dearly I wish that I could discuss and many other cognate things.
Blackfriars, Oxford
1st. April 1946
Dear Professor Jung:
I am most grateful to you for your very kind letter.
It fills me with envious admiration and astonishment to learn that you have written two books since your last letter, and with very much joy to know that you have so much vigour.
I am particularly thrilled to know that one of the books concerns transference, and I look forward enormously to reading it.
I was very much impressed by what you wrote on the subject in the early pages of “Psych. u. Alchemie”, and I had been very much hoping that you would develop that particular theme.
It presents, I venture to think, even more of a problem to the clergy than to the physician (“protected” as he usually is by a consulting room, consultation hours, a receptionist – and fees!), and we somehow seem largely to have lost the sense of being able either to
“resolve” or “carry” it – with results most deleterious both to ourselves and our “flocks”.
Thank you so very much for drawing my attention to the point concerning “instinct” in the Blackfriars article.
I understand perfectly what you say, and only marvel that I could have written in so slipshop [sic] a fashion.
It is rather ironic that I should have written so carelessly on that particular point, for I have not seldom criticised others who would seem to imply that all instinct can be readily “transformed” and even “spiritualized”.
My own experience – let alone St. Paul or St. Thomas should have saved me from making that mistake!
But it has been a “felix culpa” to have drawn from you so very lucid an exposition.
“Psychologie u. Alchemie” has been a tremendous experience and has given rise to more reflections than I can even begin to enumerate.
It is quite enormously illuminating; and of course the whole question it raises of the compatibility of the “process of individuation” (whether the method be alchemical or analytical) with the Catholic pattern is a vital one to myself and to my friends.
How dearly I wish that I could discuss this with you – and many other cognate things.
I have been very much wondering whether you would be able to spare me any time if I were able to come to Zurich ( or elsewhere) for a few days during the summer vacation (i.e. between the second week of July and mid-September.)
Now that the ban has been raised on taking English currency to Switzerland, this might be quite practical with the help of friends.
Of course I would not take up any more of your time than you could conveniently spare, and I would attire myself in a disguise which would forestall any unseemly comments from the Totalitarian Left!
But (much as I should like to revisit Switzerland for its own sake), I would rather not undertake the journey if there would be no opportunity of seeing you at all.
As it would take some time to arrange (there seems to be a great demand in England for passages to Switzerland and only limited accommodation), I should be most grateful if you would be so very good as to send me a postcard just to say “Yes” or “No”.
If the answer should be Yes, perhaps you would also be so good as to say what dates during that period would suit you best, and perhaps
also indicate where I might apply for fairly inexpensive accommodation in Zurich?
I do very much hope that this suggestion will not appear over presumptuous; but it is impossible for me to say how much I should appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
But of course I shall quite understand if you feel that you would not be able to spare the time.
The pressure of work forbids that I should write a longer letter now; but if I am not able to see you (which I should much prefer), I should like to send you when time permits one or two of my reflections on some passages in “Psych. u. Alchemie”.
Thanking you once again, dear Professor Jung, for all your kindness and most encouraging interest,
I remain,
Yours sincerely, VICTOR WHITE, O.P.
P.S. I wonder if you have seen an extremely interesting article on Square Stones (“Homo lapidi quadrato comparatur”)21 in the July 1945 number of the “Harvard Theological Review”?
It is extremely erudite, and seems to me to throw much light on the “Trinitas-Quaternitas”
In a fashion which I had already vaguely suspected. Unfortunately the Review is unobtainable here, but I am trying to get a copy from U.S.A.
The author, a German ex-Lutheran pastor, knows little of psychotherapy, and indeed is positively hostile to it.
He tells me that some analyst analysed his best friend for cancer … so you can understand how he feels about it!
P.P.S. Thank you, yet again, for the promise of the “Eranos” offprints.
I am ashamed to say I have written nothing for months, but must set to work on a paper on “God” & The Unconscious I have rashly promised! ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 30-32
