Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann
496
Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann
496Hardcover
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Overview
C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann first met in 1933, at a seminar Jung was conducting in Berlin. Jung was fifty-seven years old and internationally acclaimed for his own brand of psychotherapy. Neumann, twenty-eight, had just finished his studies in medicine. The two men struck up a correspondence that would continue until Neumann's death in 1960. A lifelong Zionist, Neumann fled Nazi Germany with his family and settled in Palestine in 1934, where he would become the founding father of analytical psychology in the future state of Israel.
Presented here in English for the first time are letters that provide a rare look at the development of Jung’s psychological theories from the 1930s onward as well as the emerging self-confidence of another towering twentieth-century intellectual who was often described as Jung’s most talented student. Neumann was one of the few correspondence partners of Jung’s who was able to challenge him intellectually and personally. These letters shed light on not only Jung’s political attitude toward Nazi Germany, his alleged anti-Semitism, and his psychological theory of fascism, but also his understanding of Jewish psychology and mysticism. They affirm Neumann’s importance as a leading psychologist of his time and paint a fascinating picture of the psychological impact of immigration on the German Jewish intellectuals who settled in Palestine and helped to create the state of Israel.
Featuring Martin Liebscher’s authoritative introduction and annotations, this volume documents one of the most important intellectual relationships in the history of analytical psychology.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691166179 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/22/2015 |
| Series: | Philemon Foundation Series , #10 |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Sales rank: | 1,172,129 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 5.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Analytical Psychology in Exile
The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann
By C. G. JUNG, Erich Neumann, Martin Liebscher, Heather McCartney
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-16617-9
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
I. The First Encounter
The first known document of the correspondence between Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung—a correspondence that lasted from 1933 to 1959—is a short note from Jung to Neumann dated 11 September 1933: "Dear Doctor, I have reserved an hour's appointment for you on Tuesday, 3rd October at 4 pm. Yours respectfully, C. G. Jung." Unfortunately we do not have the initial letter by Neumann, which instigated the correspondence with Jung in the first place. But the two men had met earlier that summer, when Jung was in Berlin to hold a much-acclaimed seminar from 26 June to 1 July 1933. The handwritten attendance register lists around 145 names, including those of Erich Neumann and his friend Gerhard Adler.
Jung's note to Neumann was sent to the following address: Weimari schestrasse [sic], 17, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Berlin was the place where Erich Neumann was born in 1905 and where he grew up. His father, Eduard, was a merchant, married to Zelma. Erich was their third child. Adler has given us an account of young Erich Neumann during the Berlin years:
Erich Neumann and I were connected by a close friendship of almost 40 years, a relationship that went back to our student days. Even as a student and young man his creative personality was clear and impressive. We belonged to the same circle of friends, a circle, which was interested in and engaged with all those life-problems of the immediate post-war period—problems that were a focal point for Germany at that time: philosophy, psychology, poetry, and art, and last but not least the Jewish question—were only a few topics that touched us deeply in our hearts. How many nights did we not spend conversing intensively and never endingly about all sorts of potential life-questions! And in all of those instances the depth and breadth of his view, the intensity of his passionate nature, contributed original and creative answers.
This creative side of Neumann's character found its early expression in literary ways: poetry exists from as early as 1921 and continues until 1929, when his creativity was focused on the novel Der Anfang (1932). Alongside his literary ambitions he studied at the University of Berlin, where he sat in courses of psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, history of arts, literature and Semitic studies (1923–26). In 1926 he went to Nuremburg to finish his studies of philosophy and psychology at the University of Erlangen with a dissertation on the mystical language philosophy of Johann Arnold Kanne (1773–1824). He also wrote a commentary on Kafka's novel Das Schloss and fifteen of his short stories, which he sent to Martin Buber. His ever-increasing interest in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy led him to embark on the study of medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin (Charité). He completed his studies there but could not undertake an internship because of the race laws the Nazis had implemented. The year 1933 was a turning point in his life in many ways. In contrast to his father, Erich was a dedicated Zionist and was readily prepared to leave Germany with his wife, Julie (née Blumenfeld) when Hitler seized power in January 1933. Together with their one-year-old son Micha the family left Germany for good. The first station on their way to Palestine was Zurich, to meet up with C. G. Jung. This is where Neumann's (missing) letter to Jung comes into play. Jung's reply from September 1933 was the invitation that followed. So Erich Neumann and his family left Germany for Zurich at the end of September 1933.
When Neumann met Jung he was already acquainted with the works of Jung and Freud, which he had read during his student years. According to Jung's letter, they met on 3 October 1933 for the first time in Zurich and we know that they continued their therapeutic sessions until spring 1934. On 14 December 1933, Jung writes an official letter stating that "Dr. Erich Neumann is engaged in psychological studies with me" (2 J) and that his work would resume on 15 January.
The next letter from Jung to Neumann is dated 29 January 1934 and was published in Aniela Jaffé's edition of Jung's Briefe. In this letter Jung already refers a patient to Neumann. One should not be surprised about the brief period of analysis that saw Neumann as being fit to take on his first patient—at least in Jung's eyes. This was common practice and was already an improvement on the couple of instructive weeks that were seen to suffice as training at the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement. We do not know if Neumann took on this patient. We also do not know if Neumann had already experienced therapy during his Berlin years—as, for instance, James Kirsch had done before he met Jung in Zurich for the first time.
II. C. G. Jung in the 1930s
When Neumann met Jung in Zurich in the autumn of 1933, the Swiss was fifty-eight years old and thirty years his superior. Jung had established himself as one of the leading psychologists of his time and as the founder of his own brand of psychotherapy under the name of "Analytical Psychology" or "Complex Psychology." His reputation was internationally acknowledged through invitations to lecture in England, the United States, and India, where honorary doctorates from Harvard (1936), Oxford (1938), and the Indian universities of Hyderabad, Calcutta, Benares, and Allahabad (1937/38) were bestowed upon him. His travels and lectures abroad are also reflected in the correspondence with Neumann, for instance in his letter of 4 April 1938 where he apologizes for his lack of writing due to his lecture series at Yale in October 1937 ("Terry Lectures"), which was followed by a dream seminar at the Analytical Psychology Club in New York, and his journey to Calcutta. Jung also visited Palestine once, albeit as a tourist when he traveled with Hans Eduard Fierz through the Aegean in 1933, a year before the Neumanns settled in Tel Aviv. Jung refers to this visit in a letter to Neumann on 19 December 1938: "I am right in the thick of it and am following the Palestinian question on a daily basis in the newspapers, and think often of my acquaintances there who have to live in this chaos. When I was in Palestine in 1933, I was unfortunately able to see what was coming all too clearly. I also foresaw great misfortune for Germany, even quite terrible things, but when it then shows up, it still seems unbelievable."
Closer to home he got involved in the business and politics of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie, AÄGP), the later International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (IAÄGP), when he became second chairman in 1930, after Ernst Kretschmer's resignation as acting president in 1933, and finally president in 1934. His chairmanship of a society that was dominated by its national-socialist German section was heavily criticized at home and abroad. In reaction Erich Neumann, who was undertaking training with Jung in Zurich at that time, wrote a letter to Jung expressing his concern and urging Jung to justify his decision (4 N). (See chapter on "Discussing Anti-Semitism.") Less controversial was the foundation of the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie in 1935.
Another institution that originated from those years and that is inextricably linked with the names of Jung and Neumann is the Eranos conference. Founded in 1933 by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, the annual gathering in Ascona was an exchange of thoughts between scholars of different fields. Neumann expressed his fascination with the event in an almost hymnic way, calling it a link in the aurea catena of the great wise man leading through the ages: "Eranos, landscape on the lake, garden and house. Unpretentious, out of the way, and yet ... a navel of the world, a small link in the golden chain." Whereas Jung took part and gave lectures at most of the Eranos conferences from 1933 until 1951, Neumann presented an annual paper from 1948 until 1960. Aniela Jaffé, referring to the famous "terrace-wall" sessions when Jung used the conference intervals to discuss the psychological relevance of the presentations outside on the terrace, gave this account of Neumann's impact on Eranos: "These wall sessions were the unforgettable highlights of the summer. They acquired a different character when Erich Neumann of Tel Aviv was there for then a dialogue developed between the two and we listened." The Eranos meeting always took place for eight days in August. In those summer days Jung was free from many obligations that were bestowed upon him during the rest of the year. Besides seeing his patients, writing books and articles, leading his correspondences with colleagues and scholars, and looking after his vast family, teaching increasingly added to his workload. Since 1925 Jung had been holding seminars at the Psychological Club on a regular basis. The seminars in the 1930s—which are occasionally mentioned in the correspondence—included the vision seminar (1930–34) based on the visions of Christiana Morgan, the seminar on Kundalini yoga (1932), and the seminar on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1934–39). Jung sent a copy of the manuscript of the latter to Neumann in 1935 (14 N, n. 269). As the letters show, Jung tried to keep Neumann informed about the theoretical developments in analytical psychology by sending him his latest publications and copies of seminar notes. Jung also gave lectures at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) from 1933 to 1942 on a vast range of topics from the historical roots of complex psychology to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, sometimes accompanied by seminars such as a seminar on children's dreams from 1936 to 1940.
In 1935 Jung was awarded a professorship at the ETH (12 N, 9 February 1935). Jung sent Neumann a copy of his inauguration lecture from 5 May 1934 titled "A review of the complex theory" ("Allgemeines zur Komplextheorie") to which Neumann referred in his letter 14 N. That was only one of the many decorations that came with his sixtieth birthday in 1935. To honor the birthday occasion a festschrift was organized and published under the title Die kulturelle Bedeutung der komplexen Psychologie, which included articles by many of Jung's most ardent followers and collaborators (17 N, 29 October 1935; 18 J, 22 December 1935).
The 1930s also saw a change in Jung's theoretical interest. His work on the Liber Novus and his attempts to explore and depict his experiences of self-observation, which had occupied him since 1913, ceased and were gradually replaced by an ever-growing fascination with alchemy and its importance for the individuation process.
III. Correspondence between Palestine and Zurich, 1934–40
Whereas Julie and Micha had already left for Palestine in February 1934, Erich remained in Zurich until May when they met again in Tel Aviv. Their first address was 37 Sirkin Street, where the family stayed until they moved to 1 Gordon Street in 1936. Dvora Kutzinski, who Julie analyzed and who subsequently became an analyst and lifelong friend of the Neumanns, described the apartment (on Gordon Street) as follows:
It was an apartment they bought with "key money." Old. Modest. Two children. When patients came, they had to disappear. One waited in the children's room, and the front room was for his mother. Erich's patients waited on one side of the curtain. Julia's patients waited in the children's room. He had patients on the hour; she on the half hour.
Soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv, Neumann writes a long letter (seven pages) to Jung. And already in this first letter from Palestine we can find many topics that will occupy their correspondence until 1940, when the war interrupted their exchange.
Zionism, the Jewish People, and Palestine
Neumann's first impressions from Palestine showed signs of disappointment. His high expectations of the Jewish people and their ability to create an idealistic Jewish state were shattered during these first weeks in Tel Aviv. As his son Micha Neumann put it: "Father thought he would come here and find all his good buddies from Berlin but instead he found a great many Poles, very simple people, artisans, builders, merchants, speculators, people of the Fourth Aliyah (1924–1931) —not idealists like those from the Second Aliyah (1904–1914)." Erich Neumann felt alienated by those immigrants, and equally he had nothing in common with the Jewish orthodoxy around him. Though he had nothing but praise for those who worked behind the scenes for the coming generation that would be the first to form the basis of a nation: "We are Germans, Russians, Poles, Americans etc. What an opportunity it will be when all the cultural wealth which we bring with us is really assimilated into Judaism" (5 N, June/July 1934).
Accordingly he rejected Jung's assumption that the Jewish migration to Palestine could not lead to a form of Alexandrianism. For Neumann, the ability to assimilate would create something new, but it would also unleash the Shadow, the effects of which had been repressed by external forces during the diaspora.
The Earth Archetype
Whereas Neumann seemed partially disillusioned with the Jewish people in Palestine, he discovered to his astonishment an archetypal connection with the land. He describes how his anima started to connect to the earth, suddenly "appearing in dreams all nice and brown, strikingly African, even more impenetrable in me, domineering" (5 N, June/July 1934). It is most fascinating to observe how the thoughts that occupied Neumann during those first weeks in Palestine returned almost twenty years later in his 1953 Eranos lecture on "The Meaning of the Earth Archetype for Modern Times" ("Die Bedeutung des Erdarchetyps für die Neuzeit"). There, his personal encounter with the anima and her expression as an earth archetype is amalgamated with his psychological findings on the development of consciousness, his new ethics of shadow integration, and his research on the archetype of the Great Mother, which he was undertaking during these years. In his lecture he shows how, in its weaker states, the patriarchal view of consciousness had to repress the earth archetype, which threatened to swamp consciousness completely. Hence consciousness had to reject its unconscious and matriarchal origins, a rejection that can be seen in the Platonic-Christian hostility toward the body and sexuality. As modern man has been unchained from the heavens, the sky and the spiritual realm, he falls prey to the cruel manifestations of the Great Mother. Only the conscious acceptance of this dark side of the earth archetype, meaning the integration of the instinctual unconscious forces—here Neumann's ethics come into play—will make it possible for the archetype to express itself creatively rather than through cruelty. Together with the Great Mother appears the serpent (see Neumann's dream): The evil serpent of the Old Testament changes into the serpent of redemption as depicted in the Gnosis or the Sabbatean myths. What we can see in this example is the significance of Neumann's experience of Eretz Yisrael not only for his own individuation but also for the development of his psychological theories.
Discussing Anti-Semitism
Another topic Neumann raises in the first Tel Aviv letter to Jung concerns an article by James Kirsch in the Jüdische Rundschau. This article, from 29 May 1934, is a reaction to Jung's article "The State of Psychotherapy Today" ("Zur gegenwärtigen Lage der Psychotherapie") published in the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete, which was the journal of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie). In his article, Jung emphasized the importance of the "personal equation" in psychotherapy. He deploys the idea that the analyst must be conscious of his own shadow and uses this argument in order to attack Freud and Adler, who allegedly ignored or repressed their Jewish resentments toward non-Jews. This, according to Jung, led to a fatal situation in which Jewish categories were wrongly applied to the unconscious of Christian Germans or Slavs. Especially the argument that "the Jew is a relative nomad" and would never be able to create his own form of culture because of his need for a civilized "host people" (Wirtsvolk), was received with a certain bewilderment among his Jewish followers in Palestine.
Given the nature of Jung's arguments, Kirsch's article exercised a kind of constraint. He accuses Jung of exercising a one-sided view of Jewishness: Jung, according to Kirsch, sees Freud only as a Galuth Jew and projects this image of Freud onto the entire Jewish people. In so doing, Jung ignores the latest developments of a specifically Jewish culture, of which the most significant sign could be seen in the return to the old land. But one could also learn from the great psychologist Jung about how to engage with these elementary primal forces that have been unleashed, through the return to the Jewish land, onto the individual soul.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Analytical Psychology in Exile by C. G. JUNG, Erich Neumann, Martin Liebscher, Heather McCartney. Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xi
I. The First Encounter xi
II. C. G. Jung in the 1930s xiv
III. Correspondence between Palestine and Zurich, 1934–40 xviii
Zionism, the Jewish People, and Palestine xviii
The Earth Archetype xx
Discussing Anti-Semitism xxi
Kirsch-Neumann Controversy xxvii
The Rosenthal Review xxviii
Last Time in Zurich xxx
IV. The Long Interval, 1940–45 xxxii
V. Correspondence between Israel and Zurich, 1945–60 xxxiv
In Touch with Europe Again xxxiv
Coming Back to Switzerland xxxvii
Enemies in Zurich: The New Ethic xlii
Partial Reconciliation with Zurich l
Late Recognition liv
VI. The Legacy of Erich Neumann lv
Editorial Remarks lix
Translator’s Note lxi
List of Letters 1
Correspondence 7
Appendix I 355
Appendix II 361
Bibliography 371
Index 411
What People are Saying About This
"This is an important work that presents a definitive English translation of the extant correspondence of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann. The book is clearly of very high scholarly caliber in all respects, and it will become a primary reference source for Jung scholars and researchers."—Graham Richards, author of Race, Racism, and Psychology: Towards a Reflexive History"This work is a significant contribution to the field of Jung studies. It offers Neumann's unique perspectives as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who lived first in Zurich and then settled in Palestine. Of particular interest is Neumann's dialogue with Jung concerning the archetypes of Jewish culture and Jung's involvement with psychotherapists who remained in Germany after Hitler came to power."—Geoffrey Campbell Cocks, author of The State of Health: Illness in Nazi Germany