Eleanor Bertine was among the first to perform this mediating function.
Foreword
Anyone who makes a serious effort to understand Jung’s work cannot fail to be amazed at the magnitude of the man.
Although he died more than thirty years ago, the impact of his discoveries concerning the nature of the psyche has scarcely begun to be felt beyond the consulting room.
The breadth and depth of his view are staggering and for this reason many shy away from further investigation.
Such a man needs intermediaries to communicate his revolutionary insights in more personal forms.
Eleanor Bertine was among the first to perform this mediating function.
She did so not only in her writing, but also by exemplifying in her life and personality the impact Jung had on one intelligent professional living in our age of
transition.
Eleanor Bertine was a pioneer, one of that scant handful of people who first brought analytical psychology to America.
Born in 1887 in New York, she graduated from Vassar College and completed her medical training in 1908 at the Cornell College of Medicine.
In 1920 she went to London where she attended a seminar by Jung and thereafter worked with him in Zürich for protracted periods of time.
Together with M. Esther Harding and Kristine Mann she was a founding member of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York in 1936.
She became a patron of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich when it was founded in 1948 and in 1962 of the C.G. Jung Foundation established in New York.
I knew Eleanor Bertine first as the friend and partner of my analyst, Esther Harding. Later I knew her as my control analyst and still later as a professional colleague.
What first impressed me was the clarity and agility of her mind.
She had an unusual capacity to recognize the essential issues in a situation and to give them concise expression.
As I got to know her better, other qualities stood out more prominently: her integrity and her empathy.
Although she was capable of taking quite firm positions, she was always willing to examine matters openly in a mutual quest for the objective truth.
In no other field except religion does it make so much difference to one’s personal life what theory one affirms.
The soul may be nourished or killed, cramped or inundated, depending on what theory of the psyche one holds.
Furthermore, different theories may be needed by different individuals and at different stages of conscious development.
Hence every presentation is to some extent a subjective confession.
It is one of the virtues of this author that she recognized the subjective factor and allowed it overt expression.
“Ars totum requirit hominem” the art requires the whole person.
This old alchemical saying epitomized Jung’s approach to the art of psychotherapy.
Eleanor Bertine followed this principle.
In this book the reader is granted a rare opportunity for contact with a wise and ample personality.
Here the reader will find sound feeling side by side with clear thinking; a
respect for facts combined with an awareness of hidden meanings; a warm, personal candor that yet remains quite objective.
Although Eleanor Bertine was a medical doctor, she did not succumb to the clinician’s tendency to see the patient only in the categories of pathology.
She was aware that all the vicissitudes of personal life, no matter how trivial or sordid they may seem, contain a latent value if one can approach them correctly.
In her own words, “Any human experience may be a maze in which to wander to destruction or a laboratory for the creation of consciousness, depending on the way it is met.”
Eleanor Bertine committed herself to the life task of creating consciousness, both in herself and in others.
The integrity and devotion she brought to this task shine through in this book. ~Eleanor Bertine, Close Relationships : Family, Friendship, Marriage, Page 7-9
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