Letter from C. G. Jung to Sigmund Freud, March 11, 1908

Burghölzli-Zürich, 11 March 1908

Dear Professor Freud,

I am sorry I can't get around to answering letters as promptly and fully as you do. I always have a mass of other things to attend to before I can put myself in the right mood to answer your letters. I can never be rushed; if I am, all thoughts instantly go out of my head.

First I must go into the paranoia question. I have the feeling I ought to talk to you personally about it, as I ought to know your material; then your theory would be more intelligible to me. For instance, the Fl.1 case helped me greatly in understanding your views, since I always knew what you had in mind. Your line of thought on the paranoia question seems to be very different from mine, so I have great difficulty in following you. For you the choice-of-neurosis problem seems to play a crucial role. This is something I daren't touch. At present I am interested only in the way alleviation of the complex may be obtained. The following case may serve as an example: A 34-year-old woman declared that the assistant doctor, together with the nurse and an old woman (a patient), had burnt a child (uncertain whether it was the nurse's or the patient's!). Erotic advances to the doctor. The nurse is young and pretty, and the patient likes her very much. Pat. is sexually dissatisfied with her marriage and has to support an old mother. So: transference to the doctor, identification with the nurse, assimilation of the old patient as mother. She represses her marriage, also her children, makes a new, unadmitted transference (to the doctor), simultaneously obtaining wish-fulfilment in the role of the pretty nurse. All this in the form of an accusation that could easily pass over into persecution mania. Thus the complex is alleviated by the assertion that it is not in her but is being played out in objective reality by other people. By this means a very firm dissociation is achieved. The mechanism is an exaggeration of the normal