Correspondence

Dear Andrea Sabbadini:

I read the articles in the first edition of the journal Psychoanalysis and History with great enthusiasm and interest. The one by Peter Homans was most interesting, and the one on translations of Freud was also very good. However, I must say that I was disappointed when I read the article by Harold Blum on Freud and Jung.

First, let me say that I do not wish to defend Jung or attack Freud. That seems to be the pattern since the break-up of their relationship way back when. There is a tone in the article which displeased and saddened me very much. It sounded like the same old complaints about Jung, and for me the problem was that the quality of the scholarship around Jung was lacking and not up to the standards of a historical journal. I am so eager to see this Journal promote good, honest, scholarship, so that we can get beyond the name-calling that has dominated the discussion of the relationship between the two men. I did not find this with regard to Blum's discussion of Jung, especially near the end of the article.

Let me give you some examples. Blum speaks of Jung's Fordham University Lectures (1(1): 53). If one reads them, one finds there that Jung says that not all cases of neuroses are caused by infantile sexuality. He in no way implies that infantile sexuality does not constitute an important factor in neuroses. Blum states that this lecture confirms Jung's ‘flight from the universal importance of incest and its prohibition’. Jung does not flee from the universal fact of incest, but rather he interprets it as a central theme in the development of the individual. In 1912 Jung interpreted ince differently from Freud, but he never abandoned the importance of it. For Jung incest was seen as a symbolic return to the mother. Over time Jung's perspective on the mother became much larger in scope. In his ‘Psychology of the Transference’, published in 1946, incest and the incest prohibition play a central role in the resolution of the transference