Letter to the Editor

DEAR SIR,

It has come to my attention that in catalogue No. 608 of the autograph auction house J. A. Stargardt, of Marburg, Germany, 27 holographs of C. G. Jung were offered for sale. They were letters and cards written to a former student of his, Wolfgang Kranefeldt, one of the founders of the Berlin Institute of Psychotherapy.

Among the excerpts from Jung's letters published in the catalogue, the one of 9 February 1934 impresses me as important enough to be brought to your attention. Jung wrote as follows:

… As is known, one cannot do anything against stupidity, but in this instance the Aryan people can point out that with Freud and Adler, specific Jewish points of view are publicly preached and, as can be proved likewise, points of view that have an essentially corrosive character. If the proclamation of this Jewish gospel is agreeable to the government, then so be it. Otherwise, there is also the possibility that this would not be agreeable to the government …

(… Gegen die Dummheit kann man bekanntlich nichts tun, aber in diesem Falle köonnen die arischem Leute darauf hinweisen, dass mit Freud und Adler spezifisch jüdische Gesichtspunkte öffentlich gepredigt werden und zwar, wie man ebenfalls nachweisen kann, Gesichtspunkte, welche einen wesentlich zersetzenden Character haben. Wenn die Verkündigung dieser jüdischen Evangelien der Regierung angenehm ist, so ist es halt eben so. Andernfalls ist ja auch die Möglichkeit vorhanden, dass dies der Regierung nicht angenehm wäre …)

Ellenberger in The Discovery of the Unconscious (pp. 667, 668) describes the controversies between those who denounced Jung for his anti-Semitism, and those who defended him, accepting his claim that he used his Nazi associations to protect his Jewish colleagues. They see no anti-Semitic hostility in his differentiation between Jewish and 'Aryan' psychotherapy. Ellenberger himself, while not overtly taking sides, seems to sympathize with Jung's friends.

Despite Jung's protests, and those