To J. B. Priestley
Dear Mr. Priestley, 9 August 1946
Thank you very much for the copy of your talk and for the book.
I have read both in the meantime.
I cannot say how much I enjoyed your most luminous and comprehensive talk.
It is really remarkable how you succeeded in getting your vast subject together and making a whole of it.
I must say I have never seen a better summary of my main ideas in such a concise form.
It is a masterpiece.
I have also read your novel with greatest interest.
I was particularly impressed by the way in which you make your figures real.
They are complete characters.
The next impression was the atmosphere you give to places and situations.
As a psychologist I could not help noticing your extraverted hero, who lives the better part of a human life forgetting nothing but himself and his fatal relatedness to certain human beings.
An introvert would have forgotten the greater part of the world in order to work out the secret of his relationship to the little girl and her mystery.
And she would have married him as soon as possible in order to show him that she is no mystery at all.
But Gregory needed 30 years and a bad slump into a prolonged brown study in order to remember himself.
The most impressive dissolution of the magic family represents one of the most characteristic experiences of an extravert.
An introvert-if the gods are favourable to him -might discover how positively, even magically attractive people can be.
He would also need 30 years or more.
Your novel has given me the chance of meeting some more individuals and of sharing some more human lives.
We live in so many lives and so many lives live in us, that’s where you take it.
My best thanks!
Yours truly,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 440.
Note: P. gave a BBC talk “Description of a Visit to Carl Gustav Jung” on 18 June 1946 and sent Jung a copy together with his Bright Day (1946).
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