A Personal Recollection by Ruth Strauss

There is a special memory of a meeting with Jung which I want to recall on this occasion.

While on a holiday in the Swiss mountains I tried to get an interview with Jung; but, to my disappointment, his secretary informed me that Jung could not see me this time, since he was away from Kusnacht.

However, a couple of days later, I received a telegram asking me to come out to Bollingen.

This was the first time that I met Jung in his Turmhaus, of which I had heard so much and which had been his refuge from the formal world.

Those who have been there know what a solitary place it is-it takes a long walk over the fields, coming from the railway station, to get there.

Jung met me outside the cottage to take me up the tower into his study.

He was as alive and somehow mischievous as he could be when in an easy mood.

I hardly noticed that the whole of the morning had gone when I thanked him for having been so good to me as to make this meeting possible.

By this I had unwittingly touched upon a problem that had been Jung’s concern throughout his life.

He was looking at me seriously with a twinkle in his eye-‘Being good,’ he said, ‘must happen to you in the same way as it happens to you being bad. If you set out to be good it almost gives me the creeps.
It makes me see the devil rising up behind your chair.’ ~Ruth Strauss, Contact with Jung, Page 74

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