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26th September 1955
My dear Fordham:
Thank you for your letter. I don't want to stop our correspondence at this point. Please try to find time to answer this second letter.
Firstly, you have not dealt with my main point, perhaps because I introduced other ideas. Can you answer it now? Do you see what I mean and do you agree? There are two points of view, and when I say the environment must have a theoretical start of absolute adaptation I am only talking of one point of view: that of the observer. The infant is not yet emerged from primary identification. (We are referring to processes that belong chiefly to the very start—i.e. even before birth.)
Secondly, don't you agree that when we use the word self, a perfectly good English word, we are agreed about the term, even although we may differ as to what we can use it for in our descriptions of any one stage of an individual's development; by contrast, when we use the term Ego we are introducing a term for our own benefit, and we must define it. I think Freud started off this idea of using the term Ego and we are therefore bound to follow his developments in the use of the term, and justify our variations in the use of the term. I think that Jung did a disservice to clear thinking by distorting Freud's term, Ego, and thus making it very difficult to follow the developing ideas of the way the term can be useful.
The term conscious presents a special difficulty. You use the word as a term when a perfectly good English word “self-conscious” is at hand. I don't believe Jung intended this muddle, it is a matter of translation, and I wish you could put it right. It's all difficult enough anyway, especially for intelligent young students coming at psychology and making a genuine attempt to assess each contributor's contribution.
We seem to agree that another language will have to be used to clear up the mess, but we ought all of us (I'm no angel) to avoid using ordinary English words as terms, and avoid failing to use ordinary E