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Concurrently with the work being done in Vienna, another group of young doctors, both men and women, had got together in Zurich around Evgen Bleuler and Carl Jung to discuss Freud’s ideas, and very quickly began to apply them. The rapidity with which they did this is indicated by a few biographical details. As Christian Delacampagne reports, (in Jaccard, 1982, vol. I:246), Jung, the son of a Protestant minister, became a medical assistant at the Burghölzli (the Zurich mental hospital) at the age of 25. He was to become the chief physician in 1905, at the age of 30, and in 1906 he discovered Freud’s theories. In fact according to William McGuire (Introduction to the Freud-Jung Correspondence, :9–10), Jung had read The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 but had not understood it (a remark made by Jung himself); he then went back to the book in 1903. In fact, most of Jung’s publications from 1902 to 1905 contain quotes from Freud.
Bleuler and Jung thought that they might be able to get to the root of the problem of schizophrenia (still called ‘dementia praecox’ by Jung at that time) using this new theory. Bleuler had conducted an episodic correspondence with Freud from 1904, and Jung corresponded regularly with him from 1906 to 1912. Throughout these few years the Burghölzli seems to have been more attractive than Vienna, for we note the visit of Karl Abraham and also of Max Eitingon, Herman Nunberg, Ernest Jones and Sándor Ferenczi. All these pioneers of psychoanalysis would go to Vienna later on.
While this Swiss group studied the theories of the unconscious and psychoanalytical treatment with enthusiasm, the problems of infantile sexuality seem to have given rise to many more reservations. It is all the more interesting, therefore, to see Jung take an interest from the outset in the treatment of children. On 13 May 1907, Jung wrote to Freud: ‘At the moment I am treating a 6-year-old girl for excessive masturbation and lying after alleged seduction by the foster-father.