Letter from C. G. Jung to Sigmund Freud, February 11, 1910

Küsnach-Zürich, 11 February 19101

Dear Professor Freud,

I am a lazy correspondent. But this time I have (as always) excellent excuses. Preparing the Jahrbuch has taken me an incredible amount of time, as I had to work mightily with the blue pencil. The bulk of the manuscripts goes off today. It will be an impressive affair.

Enclosed is the list of addresses. Please let me know if I have forgotten anyone from abroad. You will see that I am setting about it on a rather large scale—I hope with your subsequent approval. Our cause is forging ahead. Only today I heard from a doctor in Munich that the medical students there are taking a massive interest in the new psychology, some of them poking fun at the gentlemen at the Clinic because they understand nothing about it.

Meanwhile I too have received an invitation from the apothecary Knapp in Bern to join the I.F.2 I have asked for time to think about it and have promised to submit the invitation to the Nuremberg Congress. Knapp wanted to have me also for lectures. The prospect appals me. I am so thoroughly convinced that I would have to read myself the longest ethical lectures that I cannot muster a grain of courage to promote ethics in public, let alone from the psychoanalytical standpoint! At present I am sitting so precariously on the fence between the Dionysian and the Apollinian that I wonder whether it might not be worthwhile to reintroduce a few of the older cultural stupidities such as the monasteries. That is, I really don't know which is the lesser evil. Do you think this Fraternity could have any practical use? Isn't it one of Forel's coalitions against stupidity and evil, and must we not love evil if we are to break away from the obsession with virtue that makes us sick and forbids us the joys of life? If a coalition is to have any ethical significance it should never be an artificial one but must be nourished by the deep instincts of