Jung’s Friendships with Mary Mellon and J.B. Priestley
There were days when the sun bathed the variously storied white and pastel houses steeply perched on the hillsides overlooking the lake, and sparkled on the waters
below as her auto sped from Zurich to Kusnacht.
Here she drove past old stuccoed houses with weathered red-tiled roofs and small fenced gardens to the more spacious white house of C. G. Jung, on the lake where he lived and had his practice.
She was beginning sessions with him.
It was autumn, 1939. War had already broken out.
Nazi German airplanes and tanks had been loosed on Poland by their psychologically misshape~master.
I shall try to tell the story of the friendship of Jung and Mary Mellon, of her generous support of his psychology, and of other matters of historical interest
that appear in their correspondence.
In December, 1933, Paul Mellon met Mary Conover Brown, daughter of a Kansas City specialist in internal medicine.
She was striking in appearance, outgoing, impulsively enthusiastic, easy to talk to, and interested in all sorts of things.
When Paul later met her parents he found Charles Conover to be a highly intelligent and nice man; he found Perla Petty Conover pretty negative.
Mary had suffered attacks of asthma since childhood.
Realizing that they might have a psychosomatic element, Dr. Conover had studied it and from time to time attempted to treat her.1
Paul, the son of Andrew W. Mellon-one of the wealthiest persons in the United States and former Secretary of the Treasury-knew he wanted to marry her from the moment they met.
She was recently divorced from her husband of four years, Karl Stanley Brown.
She was a graduate of Vassar, class of 1926; Paul was a graduate of Yale, 1929. Within four or five months after they met they became engaged.
They married in February, 1935.2
In 1934, Mary and Paul both read Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul, with which they were impressed.
While Mary had suffered from asthma since childhood, Paul had suffered from his parents’ mismatched marriage, and their separation and divorce.
In New York, Mary and Paul began consulting Ann Moyer, who they were told was a Jungian analyst.3 In February, 1936, while they were staying in England at Bibury Court, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, Mary wrote to Jung for the first time.
She had asked the advice of Ann Moyernow Moyer van Waveren-about consulting Jung, and Moyer van Waveren had advised it most strongly.
Mary informed Jung that she had worked with her analyst for over a year.
She asked whether it would be possible to see him, how much time Jung could give her over aperiod of a month, and what his fees were.
Thus began the Mellon-Jung correspondence. 4
It was not possible for Mary to see Jung at this time.
The Mellons did see Jung, however, in October, 193 7, at a seminar on “Dream Symbols and the Individuation Process” that Jung gave under the auspices of the Analytical Psychology Club in New York-after he had delivered his Terry Lectures on “Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy” at Yale.
Though the Mellons were not yet well enough acquainted with Jung’s ideas
really to understand his seminar, they were deeply impressed with him.
In December, 193 7, Paul Mellon wrote to Jung.
He told Jung that Mary and he had been working with Moyer van Waveren for three years and that, through her, they had attended his seminar in New York.
Both were eager to attend his seminar in Zurich during May and June 1938. Paul asked whether that were possible and also asked Jung for as little, or as much, time as he could give them individually.
Paul requested an answer at the earliest opportunity, since the couple wanted to make plans for living in Zurich.5
On December 16, Jung’s secretary replied that they could attend the seminar in May and June, though it would probably be impossible for them to see Jung individually.
Paul informed the secretary that they definitely intended to come to the seminar.6
In March, 1938, the Mellons set off for Europe from their farm, Rokeby, in Upperville, Virginia, .with their one-year-old daughter, Cathy.
They stayed in London en route to Zurich.
From Claridge’s in Brook Street, Paul asked Jung’s secretary whether he could work with Toni Wolff, Jung’s closest associate, during their stay. 7
The Mellons set out for Zurich on May 6, and remained in Switzerland for eight weeks.
They attended Jung’s seminar in English on the subject of Friedrich Nietzsche’s
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
After the seminar and toward the end of their stay, they drove down to Ascona on beautiful Lake Maggiore in Italian-speaking southern Switzerland.
Jung happened to be on holiday in Ascona and they saw him individually on their last day.
They then returned to the United States from Bremerhaven, Germany, on the Europa.
They planned to return to Switzerland later in summer of the following year-1939-to attend the Eranos conference at Ascona.8
In July, 1939, the Mellons returned to Europe by sailing from New York to Genoa, Italy. From there, they drove up into the mountains to Ascona and arrived on July 31.
The conference started on August 7.
On most days of the conference, Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, its hostess, invited them for luncheon at a large round table on the terrace of Casa Gabriella, her house on Lake Maggiore.
On August 9 and 11 they each had an appointment with Jung at which it was arranged that each would work with him individually over the coming months.
After the conference ended on August 28, the couple motored up to Zurich, initially staying at the Dolder Grand Hotel in the hills above the city.
Soon they took an apartment at 68 Plattenstrasse, near the Psychological Club where Jung held his seminars.
Both started working individually with him at the end of September.
Mary even went to his lectures in German at the Federal Institute of Technology, where Jung taught.9
From the Mellons’ apartment it was only about a tenminute walk to the Federal Institute of Technology.
From its terrace Mary could see Zurich displaying its charms before her: to the left, toward the lake, the Grossmiinster with its large twin towers; across the River Limmat, the Fraumiinster with its tall green steeple; to its right, St. Peter’s Church with-it was said-the biggest clock in Europe; arid in the foreground, the Predigerkirche (Preachers’ Church).
When Hitler attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, Jung at first thought Mary had left Europe.
When he realized she had remained, he wrote her that it was courageous to stay and share whatever fate had in store for them.
He recommended Dr. Eleanor Bertine as a possible analyst if she did return to the States-he had heard that she had disagreed with the van Waverens.
As it turned out, Mary remained in Europe for the next eight months, and Jung was her analyst.
This letter in early September of 1939 is signed: Sincerely yours.10
As the analysis proceeded, a strong transference and countertransference developed between Mary and Jung.
The growing strength of the transference and countertransference can be seen in the quality of the subsequent correspondence and in the signatures.
In December, Mary sent Jung a picture of himself and one of Ascona that Paul had taken.
She teased that she could just hear him laugh:
Did she look like a wet mouse the day of the party? Did he feel like a caged lion?
She mentioned that the Mellons were going to Arosa on the next day, and would be at the Kulm Hotel should he have time to write. 11
In April, Jung wrote to Mary from Ascona while he was on holiday. Mary had undergone an emergency operation for appendicitis in Zurich.
While she was convalescing, Paul had joined Jung on a walking holiday in
the mountains near Locarno.12
Jung observed that Paul had seemed to enjoy the walks and the beautiful weather in the Italian-speaking south of Switzerland.
Jung said Mary was “an angel” to think of him in his present mentally tired conditions-where idly looking at pictures was a welcome relaxation.
He thanked her for the books she had also sent, and said that she was really too nice and too generous.
He mentioned “a hell” of a trick her Christian name Mary played with him, as he was thinking of Gnostic texts and the name Maria.
He hoped that she would soon be getting stronger.
The letter is signed more warmly: Cordially.13 ~William Schoenl, Jung’s Friendships with Mary Mellon and J.B. Priestley, Page 3-8
