Letter from C. G. Jung to Sigmund Freud, June 19, 1908

Burghölzli-Zürich, 19 June 1908

Dear Professor Freud,

At long last I have a quiet moment in which to gather my wits together for a letter. Until now the Gross affair has consumed me in the fullest sense of the word. I have sacrificed days and nights to him. Under analysis he voluntarily gave up all medication. The last three weeks we worked only with very early infantile material. Little by little I came to the melancholy realization that although the infantile complexes could all be described and understood, and although the patient had momentary insights into them, they were nevertheless overwhelmingly powerful, being permanently fixated and drawing their affects from inexhaustible depths. With a tremendous effort on both sides to achieve insight and empathy we were able to stop the leak for a moment; the next moment it opened up again. All these moments of profound empathy left not a trace behind them; they quickly became insubstantial, shadowy memories. There is no development, no psychological yesterday for him; the events of early childhood remain eternally new and operative, so that notwithstanding all