Carl Gustav Jung– defender of Freud and the Jews: A chapter of European psychiatric history under the Nazi yoke
Carl Gustav Jung: Defender of Freud and the Jews.
A Chapter of European Psychiatric History Under the Nazi Yoke by Ernest Harms
During recent months a wave of misinformation concerning certain periods in the early development of modern analytical psychiatry and psychology has swept through professional periodicals and popular informative literature.
Since these publications have received a great deal of attention in professional circles, it seems important to correct the information which they conveyed.
This present article is intended to be a historical report based upon published material available in the libraries of the United States, with the exception of some quotations from personal letters by Carl Gustav Jung.
The authors of the misstatements this paper aims to refute will not be mentioned here, although their assertions will be included in this presentation.
This report concerns mainly the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav.
Jung, whose role in the development of modern psychiatry is generally recognized as highly important-even if one notes that dogmatic and fanatical representatives of other schools have repeatedly attempted to minimize his importance.
Academic recognition does not always constitute the perfect criterion for scientific achievement, but it may be emphasized that Jung has received more honor in this country than any other non-American psychiatrist, including Sigmund Freud.
Although most of the attacks upon Jung’s name have come from fanatic followers of Freud, a correct evaluation of Jung’s role in the development of psychoanalysis is of greater importance for an objective understanding of the history of the “psychoanalytic movement” than that of any other person.
This is particularly true if the historic perspective is continued beyond the point where Freud closed his own chronicle, that is up to the years when psychotherapy was threatened in Europe by the outbreak of the Nazi movement, or until about 1935.
It seems important to emphasize, (as part of the introduction to this report), that its author is not a member of the association of the pupils of C. G. Jung, nor has Dr. Jung himself been consulted in regard to the presentation of the historic fact attempted here.
The author has undertaken this writing on his personal initiative,
because he believes that it is important for American psychotherapists to have objective information concerning certain momentous developments in their science.
CARL GUSTAV JUNG AND SIGMUND FREUD
It has been repeatedly asserted that Jung started out as a disciple
of Sigmund Freud and subsequently became a traitor to his master.
Freud himself-in his brief “History of the Psychoanalytic
Movement” which he wrote shortly after the separation between himself and the Zurich psychiatrists,
Bleuler and ,Jung, and which he doubtless undertook as a justification to his more faithful pupils and himself of the break with the Swiss-wrote a significant objective report of the beginning of their relationship. i.e. learn that Jung belonged to the Zurich school of psychiatry and that the first contact with Freud had been made by the head of the school, Eugen Bleuler, during 1907; that it was Jung’s invitation which brought together Zurich and Vienna to the first Psychoanalytic Congress in Salzsburg (1908); and that Freud and Bleuler joined as editors; (Heraiisgeber) of the “Jahrbucher fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, for which Jung took over the task of managing editor (Schriftleiter) in 1909.
Freud also emphasizes the importance of the work Jung had already done before he came in touch with him.
Very correctly, he points out that it was the problem of the ” complex theory” which offered Jung the point of contact with him.
Their break and the controversy in which Freud presents a highly subjective personal opinion in reference to the early history of his movement will be discussed later.
Jung’s own writings mirror authentically and unambiguously
how he stood and how he developed in regard to Freud.
His first larger publication is a monograph of 122 pages, “Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter occulter Phaenornene,” which he used as required publication for his qualification as “Privatdozent” (free lecturer) at the University of Zurich.
Here we see him struggle with the same problem which every sincere research worker at that time tried to solve; the problem of hysteria.
We see him, together with Freud and his contemporaries of that period, as a student of the French school of psychiatry of Binet, Janet, and Charcot.
He tried to reach understanding of such abnormal psychological factors as the so-called occult experiences through their parallel to similar experiences expressed by the mentally ill.
We find him twice in one sentence mentioning Freud, whose “Studien Uber Hysterie” (published together with Breuer) and” Die Trairrndeutung” seemed to have attracted him considerably. This was in 1902.
We have already learned from Freud himself that Jung belonged
to a certain school of abnormal psychology known widely as the
Zurich School. Eugen Bleuler, known for his famous textbook of psychiatry and his research in the field of schizophrenia, was the head of this school.
Jung was a senior member of the group. Together
with another member, Riklin, he was occupied in an intensive research into associations, which under the title of “Diagnostische Associations Studien” appeared in the “Journal fur Psychologie und Neurologie” in successive volumes from No. 3 to No. 9.
Later, this became the basis for the entire school of associative criminological testing, and Jung must be considered the founder of this method.
Before the first of these diagnostic studies appeared, Bleuler wrote an introduction in which he emphasized that this work continued the tradition of the research of Wundt, Kraepelin, and Aschaffenburg.
A search was in progress for the unveiling of “non-conscious” elements, pointing in the same direction in which Freud was advancing, but using other means, that of the association experiment.
The meeting of the Zurich and Freudian groups was the meeting of searchers for the same goal who hoped
to use techniques in common, since they had a common aim. However, as they became acquainted with each other, they not only discovered that their views on techniques did not coincide, but that their aims did not either.
Therefore, after a short union, they resumed divergent paths. This was the nature of the relationship between Freud and Jung as the present writer believes it appears to the objective observer.
In the many years during which Jung worked on the diagnostic association studies, he was deeply interested in Freud; and this is impressively stated in practically every study.
It was always one subject which interested Jung in connection with Freud.
He hoped that Freud’s method would solve this problem into which he felt the associative diagnosis did not lead deeply enough: the problem of hysteria and of the complexes.
We find this stated in the section of the diagnostic association studies devoted to dream and hysteric symptoms (J. f. Psychologie un Neurologie, Vol. 8, 1906) in the following passage: “If one desires information about the more intimate experience, e. g., the complex, in a case of hysteria one is forced to reach it by a detour.
Freud has converted this detour into a method: This is psychoanalysis.”
Surely one of the simplest and at the same time most impressive descriptions of the essential contents of psychoanalysis. However, when Jung in the same year presented a review of Freud’s theory of hysteria before a professional congress (reprinted in Monatsschr. f. Psychiatrie u. Neur., Vol. 23, 1908) he expressed the fact very clearly that he was not a completely uncritical adherent of Freud’s views.
“Freud has never developed a complete theory of hysteria,” he says, “but has merely attempted from time to time to formulate the theoretical results of his experience.
However, what Freud has formulated theoretically must be acknowledged as a working hypothesis which adapts itself everywhere to experience.
Therefore we cannot speak of a comprehensive theory of hysteria by Freud at the present moment, but of a variety of experiences which show certain common traits.”
The year before, Jung had published his; important book, ”The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,” which was, again, chiefly a contribution in the field of research of his own Zurich School, and which, he emphasized, was based upon his diagnostic association studies.
In its introduction, we find a very clear statement of his attitude toward Freud.
We read, “My readings brought Freud to my attention. It so happened that I first read the ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ but I have also studied the rest of his writings. I can assure everyone that at first I naturally made to myself all the objections which have been made against Freud in the literature. However, I said to myself, that only those could refute Freud who have applied the psychoanalytical method extensively and who have searched as Freud searches.
“Justice toward Freud does not imply, as many fear, an unconditioned surrender to a dogmatic concept; one can very well preserve an independent judgment.
If, for instance, I agree to Freud’s theory of the complex mechanism, of the dream, and of hysteria, this by no means implies that I acknowledge the exclusive role which Freud evidently attributes to the juvenile sexual trauma; just as I do not place sexuality in general so predominantly in the foreground, or even ascribe to it the psychological universality which Freud seems to postulate for it, impressed by the powerful role which sexuality evidently plays in the psyche.
As regards Freud’s therapy, it is at best one amongst other possible procedures and probably does not always fulfill the theoretical expectations.”
Here then, we see, a definite line was drawn, before the actual cooperation began, between acknowledgment and rejection of Freud’s major concepts.
Wherever we investigate Jung’s later writings, we shall find no change in his standpoint toward Freud as just outlined.
Since many attempts have been made to use an alleged negative attitude of Jung toward Freud as an argument, let us quote a few sentences from Jung’s address before the meeting of the International Association of Psychotherapists at Bad Nauheim in 1934, a meeting which will interest us still more later on, for, at this time, German Nazism raged against the Jews and, among them particularly against Freud.
Before a German assembly in a German town, Jung said, “‘Without the existence of the complexes the unconscious would be-as it was for Wundt-nothing but the residue of obscure representations. Through his investigations of these dark areas Freud became the discoverer of the psychological unconscious. . . . As a logical outcome, the first medical theory of the unconscious was the theory of repression postulated by Freud, which was based upon purely empirical presuppositions, without taking into account the philosophical works concerning the unconscious by Leibniz, Kant, Schelling and Carus, up to Eduard von Hartmann.”
After this period of over 25 years, Jung therefore gave to Freud the same acknowledgment as he had done on the eve of his cooperation with ” the psychoanalytic master from Vienna.”
In 1929, Jung wrote a short article which is reprinted in his American book, ” Modern Man in Search of a Soul,” on ” The Freud-Jung Contrast.”
At the end he says: “The contrast between Freud and myself goes back to essential differences in our basic assumptions.”
And these basic assumptions as they are enumerated in this article are exactly the same as those expressed in the excerpt already quoted from the introduction to his ” Psychology of Dementia Praecox,” written in 1906.
Let us now follow the history of scientific and personal relationships.
In his ” Psychology of Dementia Praecox,” Jung, in 1907, had offered a very positive contribution to the concept of schizophrenia which was one of the scientific concerns of the Zurich group, especially of its leader, Bleuler.
It was Jung himself who, at the Salzburg meeting in 1908, had suggested the cooperation of his group with the group of Freud. In 1909, Jung took up the task of acting as managing editor of the Jahrbilcher fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen) for which Bleuler and Freud signed as editors, thus confirming the definite union of their two groups.
In the first volume, one finds Freud publishing his famous treatise on infantile sexuality.
To this, Jung adds” Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal des Einzelnen” which was followed in the next volume by his paper “Uber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele.”
If we compare the relationship between Jung’s schizophrenia study and Bleuler’s work on this problem on the one hand, with the relationship, on the other hand, between Freud’s writings on juvenile problems and these two contributions by Jung on the same subject, we discover the two attitudes are diametrically opposed.
The relationship with Bleuler is characterized by an affirmative elaboration and an addition; whereas, in regard to Freud, Jung introduces a differing and critical viewpoint.
Nobody could consider these first real contributions to the joint work 0f the two groups as the work of a follower and pupil of Freud.
We also know that in other ways the cooperation between the groups was not too smooth.
Bleuler had been severely attacked academic circles for his association with a man like Freud who was considered a scientific outlaw.
Bleuler responded with several articles, reaffirming his acknowledgment of Freud and of psychoanalysis.
The most impressive of these appeared in the second volume of the “Jahrbucher fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen.” -whoever reads this paper today will feel that Bleuler never had arrived at a deeper or comprehensive inner relationship to Freud’s conceptions; conversely, his own ideas on autism which occupied him at that time and of which the most important appeared in the same periodical, never had any acknowledgment in the more intimate circle around Freud.
The discrepancy between Jung and the entire Zurich conceptions on the one side and Freud on the other appears even more markedly in the largest literary contribution which Jung made during the cooperation of the two groups-in the subsequent two volumes of the “Jahrbucher.
This contribution contained his ideas on the libido concept of Freud, and was later published (1912) in one volume under the title “Wandlungen itnd Symbole der Libido.”
We are told that Freud seriously opposed the publication of these studies as a separate monograph of the ” Jahrbucher.
As is well known, the concept of the libido, to which he had given a very clear and precisely formulated description in his” Drei Abhandlungen,” was for Freud a most fundamental one. Jung has reprinted in his American book “Psychology of the Unconscious (1937), the most essential part of his “Psychologie der Dementia Praecox.”
From this, we learn how he attempted to transform the Freudian concept according to his own thinking and that of the Zurich School.
We read on page 144 of “Psychology of the Unconscious:” “For a long time the theory of libido seemed to me inapplicable for dementia praecox.
With increasing experience in analyti0al work, however, I became aware of a gradual change in my conception of libido.
In place of the descriptive definition of the ‘Three Contributions’
(Freud’s Drei .Abhandlimgen) there gradually grew up a genetic definition of the libido, which rendered it possible for me to replace the expression ‘psychic energy’ by the term ‘libido.’ ”
And in continuation of this different concept Jung developed a theory of the libido which is completely at variance with that of Freud.
In view of this fact, it is not surprising that on the first excuse, a break occurred in their personal relations.
In 1909, Freud and Jung, together with a number of international authorities in psychology, psychiatry and education, had been invited by Stanley Hall to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Clark University by a series of lectures and by receiving honorary degrees.
We are told that during the long sea voyage, when Freud and Jung had ample time to discuss and to work out problems of psychoanalysis in personal discussion, the differences of scientific opinion and of basic philosophical concepts became glaringly evident; and a break almost occurred at the time.
In the “History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” Freud relates, however, that it took three more years before the final break at a meeting in Munich in the fall of 1913.
According to Freud’s account, Jung presided in an “unamiable and incorrect fashion” and ”accepted the presidency of the International Psychoanalytic Association again, although two-fifths of the members present refused him support.”
And Freud adds, ”We took leave of one another without feeling the need to meet again.”
To the present writer, it would seem that Jung’s consent to continue as the president of the international association expressed his desire to uphold and save the relationship and the collaboration; while Freud, angry and disappointed that events did not develop according to his wishes, pushed toward the break.
Consequently, we witness in the same year-after the publication of five volumes-the resignation of Bleuler and Jung from the editorship and managing editorship of the” Jahrbucher.”
From the fact that his note of resignation motivates it with ”personal reasons,” one can infer that it was Freud’s personal attitude which forced the resignation, and that both sides would have been willing to continue if objective reason had been the main consideration.
With the next volume, the “Jahrbucher” ceased to appear, thus ending the literary expression of this short collaboration of the Vienna and the Zurich groups.
Freud spoke harsh words about Jung in his “History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” from which we quote here: ”Jung, by his modification of psychoanalysis, has furnished us a counterpart of Lichtenberg’s famous knife.
He has changed the hilt and has inserted a new blade into it, and because the same trademark is engraved upon it, we are required to regard the instrument as the former one.”
We find similar expressions wherever Freud comes to speak about Jung, often indeed in an unjust manner.
He had expected a pupil who completely accepted his theories. Jung, on his side, never desired, or committed himself to, such a complex allegiance, and he maintained a more objective and unbroken acknowledgment to Freud.
He has never spoken of Freud in such impassioned negative terms as the latter did about Jung.
In the controversy over the psychoanalysis of Freud and his own-which he termed “analytical psychology”-he always tried to keep the debate on the level of a scientific discussion or of an explanatory description.
He always acknowledged Freud’s basic importance and historic role.
No one could express this more valiantly than did Jung in his speech on Freud on the occasion of the aforementioned Nauheim meeting after the Nazi purge.
This speech is indeed, the present writer thinks, the expression of one of the most knightly and courageous attitudes in the records of present-day science.
Major Trends Major Trends in Development and Organizations of Continental Psychotherapy During the First 30 Years of This Century.
During the twentieth century psychiatry and psychotherapy have just begun to outgrow their children’s shoes. Previously, no definite line or pattern had been discernible in the development of ”scientific help to the sick soul.”
During the last two decades of the past century, the most advanced and intensive work of this kind had been done in France, and no one who was interested in the advances in the field could fail to study the results obtained by the “doctors of the mind” of Nancy and Paris.
This work earned for itself a certain international reputation, but no national or international organization was connected with it. There were intelligent and successful workers elsewhere, too, who even created scientific schools for themselves such as Lombroso in Italy, Bleuler in Zurich, or Kraepelin in Munich. With the start of the new century a fundamental change occurred.
A strong demand arose for organization in psychotherapy.
We must emphasize that it was around Freud and his psychoanalytical teaching that the first real international organization grew.
Soon after the International Psychoanalytical Association had been started, the students around Alfred Adler-who like Jung, had, for a short while, attempted an association with Freud-organized themselves into a similar group which after some changes became the international “individual psychological” association.
Not long after Jung had left the post of an alienist in the Zurich Psychiatric State Hospital, the “Burgholzli,” students from all over the globe congregated around him and founded a similar international organization.
This was rather a new pattern in psychotherapeutic work.
Of course the old academic neurological and psychiatric medical associations existed; but they had no specific aims to differentiate them from any other academic association, whether made up of philosophers or entomologists.
Naturally, these psychotherapeutic international groupings, each around its own teacher, comprised only a small proportion of the entire professional group of psychiatrists, which has been rapidly growing since the end of the past century.
Among the latter, a good many were interested in one or the other of these three organized schools without feeling inclined to commit themselves to any one of them.
There were also several rather distinguished teachers in psychotherapy who had their own theories and concepts and were unwilling to associate themselves with any group with a one-man leadership.
There were Dubois and Forel, for instance, in Switzerland; Steckel in Vienna; Van der Horst and Bowman in Holland; Joergensen, Bjerre, Gadelius and Voght in Scandinavia; and there were a number of Germans like IL Schulz, Ernst Kretschmer, Arthur Kronfeld, and, especially, Robert Sommer. In the wider circle of academic workers in abnormal psychology, Sommer had a role similar to that of Adolf
Meyer here in America.
Although he had never written a large textbook defining his own basic psychiatric or psychotherapeutic concepts, he wrote a great number of shorter papers and booklets which contained communications which aroused the greatest attention and discussion.
He had a great many independent pupils and a still greater number of friends.
No professional worker, including Freud himself, exercised a greater influence in middle European psychiatric circles than did Robert Sommer.
Perhaps as a result of the organization of the pupils of the three individualistic leaders, perhaps because it was the trend of the time, an impulse arose in the middle of the 1920 ‘s to organize the independent workers in an association on an international level.
During 1926 and 1927, discussions were held which centered around Robert Sommer, and, in 1928, an “Allgenieine Arztliche Gesellschaft fur Psychotherapie” was founded with Robert Sommer as president.
This society created as its organ an “Allgerneine Artliche Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie imd Psychische Hygienen of which Sommer was the editor (Heraiisgeber), while Wladimir Eliasberg and Rudolf Allers were nominated managing editors.
After a further year and a half, that is, at the beginning of the third year of the new organization, the title of the publication was changed and Dr. Eliasberg’s connection as managing editor ended.
Sommer was then joined by Ernst Kretschmer as editor.
Arthur Kronfeld and J. H. Schulz were appointed managing editors, together with Allers, who was taken over as review editor.
The new journal, under the title of” Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie,” grew rapidly until it became the most widely read and most progressive psychotherapeutic periodical in Europe.
Hand in hand with the growth of the journal, the society rapidly became an acknowledged group which drew membership from all the countries of middle and northern Europe.
A number of the more independent members of Freud’s and Adler’s societies also joined the Allgerneine Arztliche Gesellschaft.
Freud and Adler themselves appear never to have belonged to it. Jung must have been a member, since he is reported to have been vice president (Vorsitzender) in 1933. Considerable interest in Jung evidently existed among the members of the society, since, in 1932, one of Jung’s pupils reported on one of the series of seminar lectures which Jung gave for the members of his own organization.
Jung had come to hold a central position in mid-European psychotherapy when in 1933, the Nazi purge destroyed much of the collaboration which in manifold ways had been built up during the previous 20 years.
The first effect was the elimination, as a result of Nazi anti-Semitism, of the work done by Jewish scientists.
The organizations of Freud’s, as well as Adlers, pupils were dissolved, and their members were expelled from the German national sphere.
At the same time all Jewish members of the staff of the “Zentralblatt” had to resign.
One should note here that it had been due mainly to Arthur Kronfeld’s effort that the “Zentralblatt” had grown to a periodical of such extensive influence.
At the same time, Rudolf Allers, who belonged to an extremely religious Roman Catholic group, also resigned from the editorial board.
All Jewish members of the .Allgerneine Arztliche Gessellschaft fur Psychotherapie were dismissed from the organization.
Many inaccurate and untruthful statements have been made about the events of these fateful months.
They convey a distorted and misleading picture.
I am basing this report strictly upon the information provided by the “Zentralblatt,” of which the complete set of issues is available in the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine.
As mentioned before, the Allgerneine Arztliche Gesselschaft existed as an international organization in which psychotherapists from all countries, from Czechoslovakia to Holland and Belgium, and from Norway to Hungary, were united.
Nazism never would permit such an organization to continue, since all international relations were ordered to be severed.
The only possibility of organization under the Nazi rule was to found in every country a national “Arztliche Gesellschaft;” and permission was obtained for these individual national societies to cooperate-not in an ” international “-but, according to a newly created German term, in an “‘uber-nationale Gesellschaft” which can best be translated as “super-national” society.
This actually meant an association of the various societies.
If this was to survive, then any trouble with the Nazi authorities had to be avoided.
Ernst Kretschmer, who had been the last president of the former international society for the year 1932-1933, resigned.
Those who were blinded and embittered by their hatred of the National Socialist excesses, in reviewing the events have deeply resented the fact that at this point the aged director of a mental hospital of the Ruhr district, Dr. U. H. Goering, should have been elected president of the German psychotherapeutic society.
He had never played any significant role in this field but had derived his prestige only from being a relative of Hermann Goering.
It is evident from the report on the events as given in No. 3 (December, 1933) of Vol. 6 of the” Zentralblatt tralblatt,” page 142, that it was a matter of expediency to make Dr. Goering the “Fuhrer” of German psychotherapy as a person capable of maintaining contact with the Nazi government.
Carl Gustav Jung never has been a member of the German “Nazified” Allgerneine )frztliche Gesellschaft fur Psychotherapie .
Under the new set-up, he had become a member of the Swiss Allgerneine )frztliche Gesellschaft, which was organized as a national group like the Dutch and the Scandinavian psychotherapists.
However as we read on the same page of the ” Zentralblatt” from which we quoted before, Dr. Jung who had been the vice-president of the former international society from 1932-33, was asked to become the president of the association of national societies-the trberstaatliche )frztliche Gesellschaft fur Psychotherapie, which had taken the place of the international society.
The report, which was written by the secretary of the German Society, says: ” On account of his acceptance of the presidency on June 21st, 1933, we owe to Dr. C. G. Jung the survival of our scientific society and of the ‘Zentralblatt.”’
Because of the great decrease in membership it would have been impossible for the relatively small German group to support the “Zentralblatt,” of which Jung at the same time assumed the editorship.
Again, it must be emphasized that the choice of a non-German, a member of the Swiss people, who at that time were already extremely anti-Nazi, was motivated by the desire to prevent the whole psychotherapeutic society from falling under the influence of National Socialism.
Here again, all subsequent reports regarding the attempts to Nazify psychotherapeutic work in Europe are completely false and misleading.
At the first meeting of the new association of national therapeutic societies which occurred in May, 1934, the report of which can be found in No. 3 (1934) Vol. 7 of the” Zentralblatt,” page 130, Jung himself told of the difficulties which arose in Switzerland when, upon request of the “German society” he agreed to take over the presidency of the “trberstaatlichen” society.
He had accepted it at a personal sacrifice which he had been willing to make.
But before we continue the report of the history of this period, we consider it necessary to insert some more general statements concerning Jung’s fundamental opinions and concepts, which should contribute toward a better understanding of his actions and of the origins of certain misstatements which have been circulated in regard to those actions.
JUNG, NAZIISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
The most severe and at the same time the most unjust accusation ever levelled at Jung is that he had a share in the horrors of anti-Semitism which have swept across the civilized world.
This accusation originates in a sentence which Freud wrote in the already mentioned “History of the Psychoanalytic Movement” from which we have already quoted.
“He [Jung] also seemed prepared to enter into friendly relations with me, and to give up, for my sake, certain race prejudices which he had so far permitted himself to indulge.”
I have read through all of Jung’s writings prior to the date of Freud’s statement and instead of discovering any statement which might be interpreted as anti-Semitic, I have found no allusions to any Jewish factors and no derogatory remarks regarding other” racial” groups.
In this statement, Freud has revealed the Achilles heel of his character-structure, a vulnerable spot of a dangerous nature.
Jung always had and still has today a considerable number of Jewish pupils.
Not long before the anti-Semitic wave in Europe rose to its National Socialist height, he said in a lecture to the Swiss Protestant clergymen (reprinted in the American volume ” Modern Man in Search of a Soul,” page 264 ff.):
”I have treated many hundreds of patients, the larger number being Protestants, a smaller number Jews, and not more than five or six believing Catholics.”
No convinced anti-Semite would write such a sentence.
In his attitude regarding racial and collective problems, Jung has been tragically misinterpreted, because bis basic concepts, governing his motivations, have been misunderstood.
No one who has accused Jung of Fascist tendencies and of anti-Semitism has grasped what he said and meant.
These persons have not confronted themselves with the same demand Jung made of himself when he encountered Freud, ” to search as Freud searched.”
Only he who fully understands Jung would have the right to contradict him.
,Jung’s psychology is a differential, comparative psychology, a “verstehende Psychologie” in German, an expression which is difficult to translate.
Jung is interested in the differentiation of structural and functional manifestations of the psyche and their causation.
This has made him the exponent of psychotypology, which has won him his fame.
However, his differential viewpoint does not stop at character and personality differentiation but does go on to typological expressions as they appear in a social, cultural and, finally, anthropological, psychological aspect.
Jung is striving to find clear and understandable descriptions of the differences of national groups, of religious groups and of cultural groups.
He considers these differences to be the expressions of the various human families on this earth.
He is not a believer in the exclusively physical differentiation of man, or the purely biological reality of man; humanity’s religions and all cultural expressions are as real for him as are our eyes or any part of our physical anatomies.
He, therefore, asks himself about the how and why of each specific form and content of these cultural realities.
Jung believes that the collective powers which make up our social and cultural life are much stronger than many of the attitudes which express the individual configuration.
He sees these collective patterns survive, even though the individual may perish, and he sees these super-individual patterns inherited as psychological traits, just as we observe in ourselves inherited similarities from the physiognomies of our parents or grandparents.
Jung has acquired a deep knowledge of the various types of this collective language, which assumes its own shape in symbolic and formal expressions.
He has set for himself as the major therapeutic task that of assisting the individual to achieve a positive relationship with these collective forces, which, he holds, have a basic tendency to overpower the individual existence.
Many of these conflicts exist on a subconscious level or in the realm of our irrational and emotional lives.
The one effective means for their control is to lift them to the level of conscious experience.
This does not mean rationalization, but rather awareness of their existence and of their symbolic manifestations.
To raise to a conscious level all discussions which are kindled by collective and individual emotional tensions such as, for instance, hate between racial or other human groups, would form the only basis for overcoming them or for paving the way toward a positive mutual understanding.
Finally, there is still another postulate: The competent worker in the field of psychotherapy does not regard any life situation with either dogma or hypothesis but accepts it as it presents itself when help is desired or administered, making the best use of the prevailing circumstances and preventing their deterioration.
The foregoing brief summary of some concepts of Jung is intended to assist in understanding the events which are to be described in the chronicle of 1933 and 1934, especially 1934.
Let us first consider these events by using the material which has formed the basis of the accusations concerning Jung’s alleged Fascistic and antisemitic attitude.
These quotations deserve a thorough discussion and need to be put in the right light.
Finally, excerpts from a letter written by Jung to a Jewish friend in the spring of 1934 will be presented to demonstrate, clearly his personal interpretation of the occurrences of those tragic months.
One recalls that the Allgemeine Arztliche Gesellschaft and the
“Zentralblatt” were founded because a large number of psychotherapists did not wish to be members of any of the psychiatric groups headed by one leader, but preferred a general organization.
When, in 1933, Jung was asked to help save this international group and its journal by becoming president of the international association of national psychotherapeutic societies, the request came at a moment when it would have been senseless to launch an intensive attack upon anti-Semitism.
During the preceding period, psychotherapy had become largely identified by the lay public with Freudianism which was now being denounced by the Nazi propagandists as a prototype of Jewish psychology.
In the true interest of the Jews, it would have been unwise to make a frontal attack against the German psyche, which was seething with hatred.
To achieve any positive result, it was imperative to approach the question rationally and carefully.
How did Jung attempt to solve this obviously explosive problem?
When taking over the editorship of the “Zentralblatt” he wrote a one-page announcement in which he said:
“Although psychotherapy as a science has nothing to do with politics, fate has ordained that I take over the editorship of the· Zentralblatt’ at a moment which is characterized by a confusion of theories and standpoints in psychotherapy not unlike that which has hitherto prevailed in politics. One-sided viewpoints, which cannot be brought to agreement, have gained too great an influence not only on specific medical concepts but also on the psychological opinions of many educated laymen.
The ensuing contradictions were still further increased when my completely different conceptions became known; and this, to such a degree, that the phrase ‘confusion of the minds,’ seems to be the only applicable one.
It will therefore be the most distinguished task of the’ Zentralblatt’ to create a general attitude which will do justice to the basic facts of the human psyche to a higher degree than has hitherto prevailed, by means of an impartial appreciation of all objective contributions.
The factually existing differences between the Germanic and Jewish psychologies should no longer remain blurred-to present them clearly is an aim from which science can but derive benefit.
There exists in psychology, more than in any other science, a kind of ‘personal denominator,’ the disregard of which falsifies the results of practice and theory.
I wish to state emphatically that this does not imply a depreciation of the Semitic psychology, just as a discussion of the distinctive psychology of the Far Eastern peoples does not imply a depreciation of the Chinese.”
By attempting to raise the emotions underlying anti-Semitism to a higher level, Jung tried to give to the psychotherapeutic groups the basis of an existence despite the fanaticism of the Nazis.
We know that he succeeded at least in the first rounds of the fight.
His demand for an acknowledgment of all factual contributions to psychotherapy, in which he himself, as has already been mentioned, undertook the defense of Freud, subsequently aroused considerable antagonism on the part of National Socialism; and this finally forced Jung to give up his efforts.
Unfortunately Jung’s first attempts were as violently misunderstood by the Jewish side as they were by his personal enemies who used his statements against him.
A Jewish periodical in Switzerland accused him of identifying the Jews with Mongolian hordes.
The intolerance expressed in such a distortion is the equivalent of the intolerance of the anti-Semitic standpoint.
Neither of these hostile viewpoints recognizes the higher objectivity which characterizes Jung’s own viewpoints and action.
Jung has been a great admirer of Chinese religion and culture as proved by his editorship of, and commentaries on, the” Tibetan Book of the Dead” and the “Secret of the Golden Flower.”
But a second step remained to be taken.
This step was to make the psychotherapist aware of the subconscious and collective-psychological background of National Socialism and to try to understand the role of anti-Semitism as a powerful weapon in its hands.
Jung has not explicitly stated the following maxim; but it speaks through each of his lines:
If you want to render help under such threatening conditions, you must first understand their cause.
In the next issue of the u Zentralblatt” (Vol. 7, Nos. 1 and 2), he wrote a long paper entitled: ( Zur gegenwaertigen Lage der Psychotherapie” (on the present situation of psychotherapy) from which we quote here in careful translation the pages which have been widely circulated in misleading abbreviations and translations, and from which extracts have been pieced together in a fashion which distorts their meaning.
In the first seven pages Jung discusses mainly Freud’s and Adler’s concepts of psychotherapy, maintaining that they have developed therapeutic techniques which could be used in a routine manner, but not a therapeutic concept which would take care of the sick person as a total personality, and, at the same time emphasize the responsibility of the therapist, whose own attitude and background—in short, whose own personality-represent integral elements in his task of helping.
Jung says:
”All these reflections lead us back to the attitude of the physician and to the need of a critique of the subjective promises. A ‘Weltanschauimg’ must not be uncritically applied to the concept of the neuroses, as happens for instance in the case of the Freudian concept of the unconscious or its materialistic prejudice in regard to the religious function of the soul. The psychotherapist should no longer indulge in the delusion that the treatment of the neuroses demands nothing more than the knowledge of a technique; he needs to understand very clearly that the psychological treatment of a patient constitutes a relationship which involves the physician as much as the patient. True psychological treatment can only be individual, therefore, even the best technique possesses only relative value. Greater significance accrues to the physician’s own general attitude, of which he himself must be sufficiently aware not to destroy the particular values-whatever they may consist of-in the patient entrusted to his care. If Alfred Adler should request an analytic treatment from his old teacher Freud, Freud would have to accommodate himself to seeing Adler’s special psychology and even acknowledge its collective right of existence. For there are countless persons who have the psychology of the frustrated son. If, on the other hand, I were to analyze Freud, I would be doing him a great and irreparable wrong if I did not take fully into account the historic reality of the nursery, the importance of the emotional entanglements within the family chronicle, the bitterness and seriousness of early acquired resentments and their compensatory concomitants of (unfortunately) unfulfillable wish fantasies, and if I did not accept their existence as an accomplished fact.
Freud would certainly not be satisfied if I were to tell him that resentments are nothing but a ‘substitute’ (Ersatz) for neglecting to love one’s neighbor, or something of the sort.
True as this statement may be in other cases, it would be inaccurate here, even if I should succeed in convincing Freud of the truth of my idea. Doubtless, Freud means what he says, therefore he must be accepted as the person who says such things.
Only then is his individual case accepted, and, with him, are recognized those others whose psychology is similarly constituted.
Now, insofar as one can hardly assume that Freud and Adler are universally valid representatives of European humanity, there exists for myself the immediate hope that I, too, possess a specific psychology and with me all those who similarly cannot subscribe to the primacy of infantile-perverse wish-fantasies or to that of the urge to power.
It is self-evident that this must not be a matter of naive self-deception, but rather an opportunity for critical self-observation in the light of these negative psychologies which no psychotherapist should forego.
Freud and Adler have seen very clearly the shadow which accompanies everyone.
The Jews have this peculiarity in common with women: Being physically the weaker they have to aim at the chinks in their opponent’s armor, and since this technique has been enforced upon them during a history of many centuries, the Jews themselves are best covered at the spots where others are most vulnerable.
In consequence of their more than twice as ancient culture they are vastly more conscious of human weaknesses and inferiorities and therefore much less vulnerable in this respect than we are ourselves.
They also owe to the experience of ancient culture the ability to live consciously in benevolent, friendly and tolerant neighborhood with their own defects (Untugenden), while we are still too young to have no illusions about ourselves. Moreover we have been called upon by fate still to create culture (for we are in need of it) to which end so-called illusions in the shape of one-sided ideals, convictions, plans, etc., are essential. The Jew as a member of a race whose culture is about 3,000 years old, like the educated Chinese, is psychologically conscious in wider areas than we are.
Consequently it is less dangerous, generally speaking, for the Jew to devaluate his unconscious.
The Aryan unconscious, on the other hand, contains tensions and creative germs of an as yet unfulfilled future which one may not devaluate as nursery romanticism without endangering the soul.
The still young Germanic peoples are entirely able to produce new forms of culture, and this future still lies in the darkness of the unconscious of each individual, as a germ laden with energy, capable of a mighty blaze.
The Jew, as relatively a nomad, never has produced and presumably never will produce a culture of his own, since all his instincts and gifts require a more or less civilized host-people for their development.
Therefore the Jewish race as a whole has, according to my experience, an unconscious which can only conditionally be compared to the Aryan.
Aside from certain creative individuals, the average Jew is already much too conscious and differentiated to be pregnant with the tensions of the unborn future.
The Aryan unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish; that is the advantage and the disadvantage of a youthfulness not yet fully estranged from barbarism.
In my opinion, it has been a great mistake of all previous medical psychology to apply Jewish categories, which are not even binding for all Jews, indiscriminately to Christian Germans or Slavs.
In so doing, medical psychology has declared the most precious secret of the Germanic peoples-the creatively prophetic, depths of soul-to be childishly banal morass, while for decades my warning voice has been suspected of anti-Semitism.
The source of this suspicion is Freud.
He did not know the Germanic soul any more than did all his Germanic imitators.
Has the mighty apparition of National Socialism, which the whole world watches with astonished eyes, taught them something better.
Where was the unheard of tension and energy when there was as yet no National Socialism?
It lay hidden in the Germanic soul, in that profound depth which is everything else except the garbage bin of unreliable childish wishes and unresolved family resentments.
A movement which seizes a whole people has ripened in every individual, too.
It is for this reason that I say that the Germanic unconscious contains tensions and possibilities which medical psychology must consider in its evaluation of the unconscious.
It does not deal with neuroses but with human beings, and it is truly the fortunate privilege of a medical psychology that not only is it permitted to treat the whole person; it even needs to do so.
Therefore its framework must be widened to reveal to the eye of the physician not only the diseased aberrations of a disturbed psychological development, but also the constructive and creatively active forces of the soul, not only an obscure section but the significant whole.
”Neurosis, namely, is by no means something merely negative, it is also positive.
Only a soulless rationalism could overlook, and has overlooked, this fact, supported by the narrowness of a merely material ‘Weltanschauung.’
In reality, the neurosis contains the patient’s soul, or at least an essential part of it and if, according to rationalistic intention, the neurosis could be extracted like a diseased tooth, the patient would have gained nothing but would have lost something very essential, namely, as much as a thinker who has lost doubt about his conclusions, or a moral man who has lost his temptations, or a brave man who has lost his fear.
To lose a neurosis means to become unsubstantial, indeed life loses its point and so its meaning.
It would be no cure but an amputation; and it is a deceptive consolation if thereupon ‘psychoanalysis’ assures us that nothing has been lost except the infantile paradise with its (perverse) wish-chimeras.
One has lost much more, for in reality there is· embedded in the neurosis a piece of still undeveloped personality, without which the human being is condemned to resignation, bitterness and other antagonisms to life.
The psychology of neuroses which sees only the negative, empties out the baby with the bath, in that it neglects the meaning and value of the ‘infantile,’ i. e., the creative fantasy. Often the efforts of this psychology consist essentially in an attempt to find out how one could explain anything at all-downward, and actually there is nothing incapable of an obscene caricature.
This possibility never proves, however, that the symptom or symbol explained in this way actually has this meaning, it only proves the dirty adolescent fantasy of the interpreter.
“I cannot avoid mentioning how often it ‘happens that otherwise serious physicians, in complete disregard of all the fundamental tenets of scientific conscience explain psychological material by means of subjective conjectures-conjectures of which one can really make nothing, except that they are attempts to find that particular obscene witticism through which the material under investigation could be in some way related to an anal, urethral or other sexual abnormality.
The poison of a devaluating interpretation has infiltrated the very marrow of these people, so that they can no longer think at all except in the infantile perverse jargon of certain cases of neuroses which are characterized by the special features of Freudian psychology.
It is really too grotesque that the physician himself falls into that way of thinking which he rightly objects to as infantile in others, and therefore would like to cure.
It is certainly much easier to make conjectures over the heads of other people, than to discover what the patient’s empirical material means in itself.
After all, one must assume that the patient comes to the doctor to free himself of his pathological modes of thought and of approach and, therefore, one might well assume-as is. moreover the case in all modern medicine-that in the syndrome itself are also contained the healing tendencies of the diseased system. But if the physician’s thoughts overtly or silently are as negative and devaluating as the patient’s, and are equally desirous of pulling everything and anything into the infantile-perverse morass of an obscene wit-psychology, one must not be surprised if the latter’s soul becomes a barren waste and he compensates for this barrenness by an incurable intellectualism.”
No one with any objectivity can maintain that we are here confronted with a document of anti-Semitic character or one which registers consent to, or admiration of National Socialism. In the accusations made against Jung the following expression in particular lar has been used as a weapon of attack: ” . . . the mighty apparition of national socialism which the whole world watches with astonished eyes. . . , ” or, in the original German: ” . . . die gewaltige Erscheinung des Nationalsozialismus, auf den die ganze Welt niit erstaimten Aiigen blickt …. ,, There are two points in this sentence which need to be interpreted in their original meaning.
The first is that the word “gewaltig” has a somewhat different connotation in Swiss usage than it has in German.
Jung has frequently used the word-we would like to refer the reader to a context already presented in these pages, where he speaks of the ‘gewaltige’ (powerful) role which sexuality plays in the human psyche.
In the German language, as it is understood by those who have exploited this sentence, one would hardly place sexuality and a political uprising on the same level.
The Swiss dialectic version of German uses, the word in a more dynamic sense and with greater frequency to describe an impressive event.
The second point concerns the expression ”with astonished eyes.”
Those who interpret these words as admiration of Nazism are motivated by the undercurrent of their own negative emotions, the projection of which makes them incapable of evaluating fairly any objective statement, which they can only perceive as an emotionally-loaded one in a positive or a negative sense. Anyone among us today, opening an illustrated magazine of 1934 showing the massing of regiments and their flags on an occasion such as a Nuremberg meeting, must agree that this was an astonishing display, unexpected in its forcefulness, especially to those who spent their lives at a distance of several hundred miles.
One can be astonished by certain phenomena without sympathizing with them; and one can be deeply disturbed by them and yet prefer not to express one’s own negative feelings-in order to preserve one’s own plans for helping others against new outbreaks of violence.
One must remember what position Jung occupied at that time, when he had to write for and to keep alive a publication printed for German doctors in Germany itself.
Fanatics may often look upon cleverness with suspicion, but the question is whether this cleverness achieves the positive help for which it aims.
Not one action can be found which could be interpreted in any way as showing that Jung had any part in National Socialist acts and plans, either in Switzerland or in Germany.
On the other hand, we have positive proof of the opposite, particularly where he opposed the anti-Semitism and the plans
