Jung's 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'1

We know from his letters to Fliess and from The Interpretation of Dreams how Freud had yearned to visit Rome but had put off the fulfilment of that wish until 1901 when he was forty-five. He had rationalized his inhibition in various ways; for instance, 'at the season of the year when it is possible for me to travel, a residence in Rome must be avoided for reasons of health'. To this observation (in The Interpretation of Dreams) he added, in 1909, a dryly understated footnote: 'I discovered long since that it only needs a little courage to fulfil wishes which until then have been regarded as unattainable'. As Jones explains in his biography: 'It was only after four years of determined and unsparing self-analysis that Freud at last conquered [his] resistances and triumphantly entered Rome'.

C. G. Jung's posthumously published memoirs, here reviewed, contain the confession: 'I have traveled a great deal in my life, and I should very much have liked to go to Rome, but I felt that I was not really up to the impression the city would have made upon me… I always wonder about people who go to Rome as they might go, for example, to Paris or to London. Certainly Rome as well as these other cities can be enjoyed æsthetically; but if you are affected to the depths of your being at every step by the spirit that broods there, if a remnant of a wall here and a column there gaze upon you with a face [Freud's?] instantly recognized, then it becomes another matter entirely… In my old age—in 1949—I wished to repair this omission, but was stricken with a faint while I was buying the tickets. After that, the plans for a trip to Rome were once and for all set aside.' Seen against the background of Jung's familiarity with The Interpretation of Dreams and his knowledge of Freud's self-analysis, this statement constitutes a profound (though unintended) self-revelation.

It is not surprising that Jung had misgivings about publishing this book, though to be sure his misgivings were c