Letter from C. G. Jung to Sigmund Freud, January 25, 1908

Burghölzli-Zürich, 25 January 1908

Dear Professor Freud,

Yesterday evening (at our little Freud gathering) Dr. A—– conveyed to me your greetings and your injunction that I should write to you more often. As you see, I'm doing it! Best thanks for the greetings—but I'm always afraid of boring you with my all-too-frequent letters. In the end you would be forced to complain of my manic busyness. Perhaps you have already done so in another connection, to wit, the pretentious title of the circular. Dr. Jones in London was quite shocked by it.1 I have therefore sent out a special circular to the few people invited, explicitly stressing the completely private nature of the project. Actually this may be superfluous, but I think one can never be careful enough. Dr. Abraham has already announced a lecture on the psychosexual differences between Dem. praecox and hysteria.

I hope you will be pleased with the proposed arrangements. I am on tenterhooks for your opinion. You will now have received my primitive lecture2 and wondered at the sentiments that peek through it—sentiments d'incomplétude compensated by sentimental posing. If you can't appeal to people's heads then maybe you can get at their hearts. I am an odd mixture of fear and courage, both of them extreme and off-balance.

I have just received the galleys of my Amsterdam lecture. Publication won't be long now.

Have you read the Berlin discussion in the Neurologisches Zentralblatt?3 You will see that friend Bezzola has discovered the once falsely so-called “Breuer-Freud” method. Isn't that something? Liepmann4 is slyly making himself a little door through which he will suddenly burst upon the scene as the one who knew all about these vulgar things ages ago. He has struck the right note: “Stale news!” Such will be the inscription over the portal leading to the first circle of the purgatorio of your theory. A pity there are never enough good men around to applaud