A Response to J. L. Henderson

(The author has asked that it be pointed out that his ‘Response’ was styled for the purpose and atmosphere of the Saturday workshop of which Dr Henderson's paper formed a part, and was, therefore, directed at the lecture as given rather than as edited by Dr Henderson for publication in this journal.)

Two weeks ago I began to think about this workshop and my promised response to Dr Henderson's lecture. I did not have a copy of his lecture then, and was not certain that I would have a chance to read it before I heard it ‘live’. I felt anxious about the prospect of having almost no time to prepare my thoughts. I remembered having come across Dr Henderson's name in many of Jung's seminars, and looked them up, just to give myself something to get on with.

I found that he first appeared in the Dream Analysis Seminars in October 1929, and spoke learnedly about Selene and Hecate the following month, having been one of a committee which had been set the task of reporting on the moon.

Good Heavens! I thought, this man has lived through almost all of the twentieth century; he can hardly have been born later than 1907 or 1908, and here we are now only eight years from the end of the century.

Over the next few days ill-defined thoughts about time kept coming into my mind. I am still not clear exactly what is intriguing or fascinating me, but some of my thoughts have been as follows:

I am nearly fifty years old now; I would not say I feel old exactly, but I can distinctly feel the creaking and dimming of my bodily self. And yet thirteen years before I was even born, there was Dr, or Mr Henderson as he then was, already old enough and mature enough to sit and exchange erudite lunacy with Dr Jung. And now, in what seems to me like several ages of the world later, I am about to find myself sitting beside the selfsame Dr Henderson, having listened the previous evening to his C. G. Jung Memorial lecture. He certainly