Correspondence

Dear Wilhelmina Kraemer-Zurné,

Thank you very much for your thought-provoking letter re: ‘After the Fall’. Of course, I disagree with you, though it is not so much with your premisses (i.e. that envy is primary) as with the conclusions to which they lead you. Your letter in fact demonstrates how an apparently arcane theoretical issue can have profound clinical implications in terms of one's overall moral attitude to the world and, ipso facto, to patients.

I do not believe I have been ‘seduced’ by Satan in the sense of being ‘tricked’ or ‘taken in’. However, I have taken an empathic attitude towards him (cf. Kohut) in that I have been prepared to enter into the world as he sees it. As Jung repeatedly stressed, ‘you can exert no influence, if you are not susceptible to influence' (Jung, 1931). Milton's poetry works to achieve this effect — the dramatic tension is created by the fact that his rational argument works against it. Were Satan a repugnant figure or even a mere ‘seducer’ he would hardly be a substantial adversary for God. In fact, as Lucifer, he was the bringer of light, the brightest of all the angels.

Just as there is a dramatic and, indeed, a moral paradox in that Satan is a more attractive and exciting figure than God (cf. the Devil has all the best tunes), so it is a profound paradox of the Christian creation myth that evil arises in a perfect world. I speak now not of Eden where, as I argued in the article, Satan represents the element of imperfection, but of heaven itself. This brings me to what I think is the most important point you raise — that Satan's envy started in heaven when he had not yet lost anything. I realized when I read this criticism that this was an issue I had skirted by saying (p. 77): ‘Satan, as he appears in the poem, is driven by the pain of original loss’. Consideration of the origin of Satan's envy in heaven has raised so many questions in my mind that it could be the subject of another article in itself. I shall therefore try and