A Jungian Answer to “Yahweh as Freud”

It is a privilege to comment on the remarkable symposium dealing with “Jung's Secret Confrontations With Freud,” published in the American Imago, Spring 1981. The papers are so rich that only a partial commentary can be offered at this time.

It has only been in recent years with the publication of the private journals, diaries, and documents from the lives of these two great founders of depth psychology that a systematic and accurate psychohistorical analysis of their lives can be undertaken. Dr. Slochower deserves praise and gratitude from the analytic and psychiatric community for the work he has done in bringing data and new interpretations of this particular phase in the life of Jung and his individual development. More light is not only thrown on Jung's life but also on Freud's life in his intense interaction with Jung.

This paper will focus primarily on Dr. Slochower's basic paper entitled, “Freud as Yahweh in Jung's Answer to Job.” The data that Slochower has unearthed cannot be disputed, i.e., the connection between Freud, Jung, and Answer to Job. (Jung's Letter of .) Even as there is certainly room for other interpretations of the data, which will be attempted by the writer, basically many of Slochower's conclusions are accurate, apt, and extremely enlightening in enlarging our understanding of this most significant chapter in Jung's life.

I feel that what can be added is perhaps reinterpretation of some of the data that Dr. Slochower has dug up as well as a commentary on issues not touched by him. In fact, in many ways, he has not gone far enough in his psychohistorical