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

Burghölzli-Zürich, 25 May 1908

Dear Professor Freud,

I enclose the draft contract from Deuticke. Four hundred pages should be about enough. Please would you forward the enclosed document to Deuticke if you agree with its contents. Binswanger tells me that he wants to publish his manuscript1 (a very fine case of hysteria) in the Jahrbücher, with an introduction by Prof. Binswanger. A welcome broadening of scope.

You must be wondering why I am so slack in writing these days. I have let everything drop and have spent all my available time, day and night, on Gross, pushing on with his analysis. It is a typical obsessional neurosis with many interesting problems. Whenever I got stuck, he analysed me. In this way my own psychic health has benefited. For the time being Gross is voluntarily going through with the opium withdrawal. Until the day before yesterday, I had been giving him the full ration so as not to upset the analysis by arousing feelings of privation. Yesterday he voluntarily, and with no feelings of privation, reduced the dose from 6.0 to 3.02 per day. Psychically his condition has improved a lot, so that the future looks less sombre. He is an extraordinarily decent fellow with whom you can hit it off at once provided you can get your own complexes out of the way. Today is my first day of rest; I finished the analysis yesterday. So far as I can judge, all that remains now will be gleanings from a very long string of minor obsessions of secondary importance.

The analysis has yielded all sorts of scientifically valuable results which we shall try to formulate soon.

I should be grateful if you would give me a date for the paper you promised for the Jahrbücher so that an early beginning may be made. I shall, if at all possible, include the survey of the literature in the first half-year issue.

With best regards,

Most sincerely yours, JUNG

We agree with your proposal: “Jahrb. für psychanalytische u. psychopatholog. Forschung.”