READING JUNG BACKWARDS?
THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN
MICHAEL FORDHAM AND RICHARD HULL
CONCERNING “THE TYPE PROBLEM IN POETRY”
IN JUNG’S PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
The editing and translation into English of the Collected Works of Jung was the largest-scale scholarly project ever undertaken in the world of Analytical Psychology, yet it has received scant attention to date. It is little appreciated that in the course of this endeavor, the editors and translators had to grapple with complex textual and historical matters concerning the reading of Jung’s work that have by no means been resolved.
One reason for this occlusion is that the bulk of the discussions of these issues took place in the correspondence between the editors and translators, which has not been published. The most regrettable consequence of this has been the virtual disappearance of Richard Hull. Hull’s correspondence, some of which is publicly available in the Bollingen Archive in the Library of Congress, shows him to have been a witty, acerbic, and astute commentator on Jung. It has been a great loss that his capability as a commentator, rather than simply as a translator, has not been more widely known. In his autobiography, Michael Fordham recalls Hull as follows: “… he had a beautiful mind and his translations were a pleasure to read even though they are sometimes criticized for ‘improving’ too much on the original Jung!”1
The publication of a segment of the editorial correspondence serves to further document the history of the editing of the Collected Works.2 In addition, the editorial correspondence forms a convenient starting point for a closer consideration of Jung’s texts, as they raise issues that are still of concern. For they pose the question not only of the interpretation of Jung’s text, but how one is to read Jung in the first place. In rescuing Hull from the galleys, they form the propaedeutic for a consideration of his translations, enabling one to glimpse the mode in which he understood Jung’s work, and how he conceived the “task of the translator.”
The following segment of correspondence between Richard Hull and Michael Fordham concerns Jung’s Psychological Types. In his autobiography, Michael Fordham recalls: “There was another interesting episode in the editorial work, when it came to the chapter ‘The type problem in poetry’ in Psychological Types. Richard Hull wanted to restructure it so as to make the presentation more logical. I managed to show him that to do so would destroy the richness of Jung’s writing. I take pride in having convinced him.”3 The correspondence shows a concern with the “question of the text” that is still so sadly lacking in Analytical Psychology. The discussion remains perhaps the most detailed textual study of the “type problem in poetry” to date. If there is one volume in Jung’s oeuvre that suffers most from the neglect of close reading, while yoked to “empirical” research and a deluge of popularized simplifications, it is Psychological Types.
Chapter Five of Psychological Types consists of an extended commentary by Jung on a novel by Carl Spitteler entitled Prometheus and Epimetheus, and is divided into five sections: 1. Introductory remarks on Spitteler’s typology, 2. A comparison of Spitteler’s with Goethe’s Prometheus, 3. The significance of the uniting symbol, 4. The relativity of the symbol, and 5. The nature of the uniting symbol in Spitteler.
Hull commences by asking Fordham: “May I ask you to participate in a small experiment?” Hull’s startling suggestion concerns a complete rearrangement of the narrative of text, which would place section 5 prior to section 3, thus linking the material on Spitteler. Contemporary readers may be surprised at encountering Hull’s alternative version, and realizing how close this came to being the “official” version of the text. All that remains of it in the published version is an editorial note at the beginning of section 3) which suggests that “the reader may find it helpful to read the whole of section 5) at this point, as it also describes (§§ 450ff.) the fate of the redeeming symbol, the jewel whose loss was mentioned earlier (§§ 300, 310).”4
The correspondence that ensues takes up the intricate issue of textual autonomy and the divining of authorial intention in Jung’s work. For regardless of whether one decides in favor of Hull’s proposal, it is clear that it arose out of the recognition of a crucial tension within the text, which it sharply raises to the fore. In Psychological Types, Jung elaborates his notion of esse in anima, which gives an ontological priority to fantasy. This, together with its independence from the functions, brings Jung’s articulation of it into conflict with his concurrent attempt to develop a functional and innate typology.
As Fordham notes in his letter of 3 December 1965, Jung seems to assume the reader’s familiarity with Spitteler. Hence, a word or two about him is in order. Spitteler was a Swiss epic and lyric poet, who was born in Liestal near Basel in 1845 and died in 1924. In 1919, he won the Nobel prize for literature, so Jung’s commentary on his esteemed countryman and namesake occurred when Spitteler was at the height of his fame, and would have lent Psychological Types a heightened literary topicality.
Spitteler first crucially appears in Jung’s work in 1912 in Transformation and Symbols of the Libido, where Jung cites him as key source for the term “imago”:
… psychological factor which I sum up under the “imago” has a living independence in the psychic hierarchy, i.e., possesses that autonomy which wide experience has shown to be the essential feature of feeling-toned complexes … My use of “imago” has close parallels in Spitteler’s novel of the same name … In my later writings, I use the term “archetype” instead, in order to bring out the fact that we are dealing with impersonal, collective forces.5
Thus from the outset, Jung’s notion of the autonomy of the psyche is closely bound up with his reading of Spitteler.
Spitteler’s Prometheus and Epimetheus was first published in 1881. Jung reads the text as a revelation of the depths of the collective unconscious. While it is hard to understand how Jung claimed that it contained a “deeper truth” than Goethe’s Faust and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, it is easy to see the features that would have appealed to Jung. James Muirhead notes apropos Spitteler in his translator’s preface:
In these epics he has created a mythology and a cosmogeny of his own, producing singlehandedly what it had taken generations of myth-makers to evolve. The gods and heroes of Prometheus … though bearing Greeks names, are new creations, sometimes showing little resemblance to their titular prototypes … While, however, adopting the usual machinery of heroes and supernal beings, Spitteler has made his myths acceptable by keeping them in close touch with the problems of common life.6
Spitteler would thus be one of the forgotten ancestors of today’s “mythic revival.” As to Spitteler’s reaction to Jung’s interpretation of his work, his biographer notes that he regarded the idea of a “translation” of his work into abstract psychological concepts both impossible and unnecessary.7
Finally, some remarks can be made concerning Hull’s “experiment.” Hull’s strategy curiously mirrors Jung’s own recommendation to the perplexed “Westerner” when faced with The Tibetan Book of the Dead—that one should read it backwards. Hull’s experiment suggests that one may have need of similar strategies for navigating the “Bardo” of the Collected Works. The experiment also curiously recalls the remarkable opening section of Julio Cortazár’s novel Hopscotch:
In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all. The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which there are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience. The second should be read by beginning with Chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter …8
With the verso of the text now restored, the reader is invited to partake in Hull’s experiment.
Notes
1. Michael Fordham, The Making of an Analyst, ms., 137. For memorials to Hull, see William McGuire, “R. F. C. Hull: Recollections,” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1975), and notices by Gerhard Adler, Michael Fordham, and William McGuire in the Journal of Analytical Psychology 21, no. 1 (1976).
2. For an account of the editing of the Collected Works, see William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1982).
3. Michael Fordham, The Making of an Analyst, ms., 134.
4. CW 6, footnote to § 318.
5. CW 5, §62, footnote 5. The last sentence quoted here was an addition to the 1952 Symbols of Transformation. Spitteler’s Imago appeared in 1906. A brief summary of it, together with a description of its reception by the early psychoanalysts, is given by Ellenberger in The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 794–95. Ellenberger also suggests that it forms the source of Jung’s notion of the anima.
6. “Prefatory note by translator,” Carl Spitteler, Prometheus and Epimetheus: A Prose Epic, translated by James F. Muirhead (London: Jarrolds, 1931), 12. Jung seems not to have been alone in the comparison of Spitteler with Goethe and Nietzsche, as evidenced by Muirhead’s article “Carl Spitteler and the Epic Novel,” in Essays by Divers Hands: Being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, n.s., vol. 11, edited by Henry Imbert-Terry (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932).
7. Werner Stauffacher, Carl Spitteler: Biographie (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1973), 610. Stauffacher also notes that there is a copy of Psychological Types bearing Jung’s dedication in Spitteler’s literary remains. Jung was apparently aware of Spitteler’s reaction. In 1936, he said:
Spitteler was too much possessed by the figures of the background, his ego was woven into them and his descriptions are too exuberant and spun out. This happens when there is not enough objectivity. Spitteler was exceedingly angry at the idea that his work could be symbolical, or that it had any significance beyond his actual intention. He said he could just as easily have written a song “May is here,” if he had been so disposed. Artists are often exceedingly resentful of the idea that their work does not consist entirely of the foreground which they have spun out of their conscious resources. (E. T. H. seminar, 12 June 1936, 4)
8. Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch, translated by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Pantheon, 1966).
Acknowledgments
The originals of the letters are in the possession of Michael Fordham and Birthe-Lena Hull, whom I thank for assistance in preparation, and for permission to publish.
Brief references to other editorial matters in Hull to Fordham, 27 October 1965 and 27 November 1965, have been omitted, as indicated by three dots. Hull’s letter of 27 October 1965 also contains some marginal annotations by Fordham, which have not been reproduced, as the points are taken up in his letter of 29 October 1965.
{Hull to Fordham}
27 October 1965
Dear Michael,
May I ask you to participate in a small experiment? Would you read through the enclosed pages {Marginal note: “Under Separate Cover.”—Ed.}, which represent ch. V of Psychological Types, with particular attention to the arrangement of the Spitteler material, and then look a le Baynes version,{1} which follows the original order?
As you will see, I have placed section 5 of the original, “The Nature of the Uniting Symbol in Spitteler,” immediately after section 2, “A Comparison of Spitteler’s with Goethe’s Prometheus,” and followed it with the introduction to the original section 3, “The Significance of the Uniting Symbol” (Baynes, pp. 234–242). In this way all the Spitteler material is brought together and presented as an independent chapter, which is rounded off with the paragraph that concluded ch. V in Baynes (p. 336). The remaining sections of the original, 3a–d and 4a–b, each form a separate chapter.
I suggest this arrangement partly because sections 3a–d and 4a–b have nothing to do with poetry, the theme of ch. V, but chiefly because section 2 repeatedly anticipates explanations which are only given in section 5. For example, the reference on p. 249 (end) of the typescript (Baynes p. 228 end and 229 top) to the pact with Behemoth and to the divine children, and on p. 255 (Baynes p. 234) to the pact with evil, remains incomprehensible until the story of Behemoth and the children is recounted a hundred pages later (pp. 357ff.; Baynes pp. 333ff.). Again, the reference to the loss of the jewel (p. 243, Baynes p. 222) is explained only on pp. 353ff. (Baynes pp. 329ff.). Similarly, section 5 refers back to details in 2, which by that time the reader may well have forgotten. Another point of importance is that the introduction to “The Significance of the Uniting Symbol” (pp. 255–262, Baynes pp. 234–242) reads like a recapitulation and general criticism of the Spitteler material, as though serving rather to sum up this whole section than to introduce a new one. Further, by presenting sections 3a–d and 4a–b as separate chapters, due prominence is given to the concept of the uniting symbol.
Besides the division into three chapters and the regrouping of the Spitteler material, I’d like to draw attention to the passage on 292–295 (Baynes pp. 269–272). This excursus on Parsifal (mentioned only once before, Baynes p. 239) seems to have very little connection with Taoist symbolism. The “primordial image” in question can hardly be tao, except in the very general sense that tao unites the male-female opposites among others. But it does have a direct connection with the vas-uterus symbolism symbolized by the Grail, which is discussed on pp. 313ff. (Baynes pp. 290ff.) Tentatively, therefore, I have inserted this passage towards the end of section 4a, where it introduces the discussion of the derivation of symbols not from repressed sexuality but from archaic residues, and forms a link with section 4b, where the Grail legend is taken up again.
I have discussed these proposed rearrangements with Gerhard [Adler], and though he agrees that they present the material in a more logical order and clarify the exposition he is not in favor of them, on the ground that Jung left ch. V unchanged throughout the new editions for 40 years, including the Ges. Werke edition of 1960. He is, however, quite willing that I should raise the matter with you and ask for your opinion. He also agrees that Jung might well have authorized such a rearrangement (as he did in other cases) had he been alive. If you feel there is a good case for a “linear presentation” as opposed to the famous “circular thinking,” thus considerably easing the task of the student, please would you discuss it with Gerhard when he returns? Another point to be considered is the conformity of the paragraph numbering with the G. W. edition. Gerhard suggests that if long paragraphs are broken up they should be numbered a–b–c etc. This has been done nowhere before in our edition, though of course there would be no objection to it on that score …
… Looking forward to hearing from you, and with best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Richard
{Fordham to Hull}
29 October 1965
Dear Richard,
A letter like that puts me on the spot because I spent a lot of my time editing papers for the Journal doing with them what you want to do with Jung. and If you had been let loose on his writings earlier I am sure there would have been a lot more Jungians about than there are now! However, I agree with Gerhard that we should withhold our editorial ‘good sense.’
Quite recently I have been reading through the essays in volume 13 and getting quite mad with the way Jung jumps about even in these. It does nothing to help further his thesis and confuses the reader. As I understand it all this is due to Jung plunging himself into active imagination—and the carnage of it gets reflected in his writings. This by the way was noticed by Avis Dry.{2} We could be justified in tidying up if Jung had not said that his writings are a self-expression, and it is useful to have the varying degrees of order and disorder recorded so that these can be correlated with the account given in Memories Dreams and Reflections and probably other publications to appear later.
There is a compromise I think which we might imply try: it is to put in editorial footnotes, cross-referencing pages you cite. The reader who wants to fill in the gaps can do so more easily and I will discuss this with Gerhard.
As you evidently like doing this kind of work would you consider looking at a collection of my papers—my more recent publications and issues—to think of ways of making them into a book, or if you cannot, to tell me how to make a book out of the ideas in them?
Best wishes,
Yours,
Michael
{Hull to Fordham}
2 November
… PS Your letter has just arrived—best thanks. Yes of course: at the time Jung was writing TYPES he was going through old harry with his unconscious, as we know from the autobiography. But I wonder whether part of the “carnage” in this book and elsewhere is due not so much to active imagination as to his peculiar method of composition. Jung’s lack of systematization is often excused (or condemned) as “circular thinking,” but if one examines the manuscripts one sees that he didn’t think circularly at all. In the case of the Mysterium, for instance, the theme of each chapter is developed in a perfectly logical, “linear” way first of all, and then come innumerable insertions, and insertions within insertions, pages long, of amplificatory and illustrative material, so that when at last he picks up the thread again he has to recapitulate some point in the previous argument. It is this that gives the impression of “circularity.” Besides this, I found several instances where the typist slipped up and put an insertion in the wrong place, or where Jung had keyed an insertion into two different places! Naturally I don’t pretend that this could have happened to section 5 of ch. V of TYPES, but I think it may very well have happened to the passage about the Grail: it could have found its way accidentally to the end of the wrong chapter. There is absolutely nothing in the Chinese material about sexuality. I would therefore plead very ardently for its transfer to section 4a. I have tried to get hold of the MS. but without success. As to section 5, well, if this rather obvious little bit of tidying up would spare the reader irritation and even win adherents to the cause, wouldn’t that be doing Jung a service?
I do like doing this kind of work, certainly, and would be very happy to look at a collection of your papers.
Best wishes,
R.
{Fordham to Hull}
24 November 1965
Dear Richard,
’The type problem in poetry’ was a at one time a much admired and much puzzled-about piece. I remember distinctly that I repeatedly got bogged down in the passages about Behemoth and the divine children and even the second more explanatory passage did not help very much until I discovered a second-hand copy of Muirhead’s translation.
On re-reading my Baynes, which I had not looked at for many years, I was gratified to find quite sensible and helpful pencil marks which made me understand where I had got the sense of the chapter and where I had got lost.
It is, as you rightly imply, a most indigestible proposition and I am not sure that even now I have truly mastered it and understood why Jung wrote it like this. However as it stands it is coherent and in line with the method Jung uses elsewhere—most in Symbols and Mysterium. He takes a text and uses it as a basis to expatiate upon. Is not that one reason why he has returned in the last section to Spitteler?
I would infer that his idea was as follows:—
1) Start with Spitteler and show how extraversion and introversion are looked at by an introvert.
2) Compare with Goethe (an extravert) and see how he works on the same problem. Then suggest an interpretation of their solutions.
3) Extract problem of opposites for excursus on eastern mysticism and the way they are dealt with by the eastern mystics. End with a link to a western solution (Parsifal).
4) Take up the soul question, indicated at the start, and then the relation of the soul to God as a western development.
5) End up with Spitteler to give coherence to the seemingly lost theme, i.e. Spitteler (and Goethe secondarily) on types as manifestation of opposites.
In line with this view, it is understandable why “The significance of the uniting symbol” “reads like a recapitulation and general criticism of the Spitteler material.” It is because he is now going to leave it for 78 pages and so he wants to “sum up this whole section.”
I think this is a feasible, if not the correct reading of what was in Jung’s mind. It agrees with your thesis that his writings have a linear coherence. Certainly Jung’s thinking is not circular—it can be diffuse and disjunctive but I have never noticed circularity—where, by the way, did this idea come from? I have come across it once or twice but never thought it was a serious proposition.
I think we have to recognize that this chapter has much more of the eruptive element in it—deriving from active imagination—than the others and is of interest just for that reason.
Now to turn to your more specific points. Jung’s habit of hinting at one point and taking it up in more detail later on is characteristic. He once expatiated on this to me and it has often helped in understanding his writing. He said that he put out a hint so that it could germinate in the readers’ minds. Some would notice it, think about it so that when he took it up later some readers will already have an idea with which to meet the later exposition. You may say that it does not come off if there are 100 pages between the two and I shall agree with you, but we are here to edit Jung in the light of what we know of him.
Likewise his habit of making jumps without explaining himself is, I agree, disconcerting, cf. your relevant objection to the excursus on Parsifal in connection with Taoism. I would think that the answer lies on p. 98 (Baynes) where Jung fills in the gap (171 pages!—worse and worse for the student you may say and with truth!).
I should be unfair if I did not say that though I think your arrangement interesting and has stimulated me a good deal as you can see, I think that it introduces chapters with virtually no reference to types in them. I could only wish this were a book on the dynamic relation between introversion and extraversion rather than a book on types, but it is not and the reconciling symbol has therefore to be almost smuggled in through poets as Jung does. Finally you say that eastern mysticism and the service of the soul is not poetry—I am not so sure, but am no poet!
This letter is sent direct to you and its contents have not been seen by Gerhard because I want to hear what you think without making it all into an editorial issue. All the same as you say my conclusion is the same as his but on different grounds.
Best wishes,
Yours,
Michael
{Hull to Fordham}
27 November 1965
Dear Michael,
I was very glad to have your long and interesting letter on ch. V of TYPES. Your exposition of the rationale of this chapter seems to me to be perfectly feasible and I have no doubt it is a correct interpretation. The slight rearrangement I have proposed, however, does nothing to damage the actual structure of the chapter; on the contrary, I would claim that the structure is thereby reinforced as regards both the presentation of the material and its psychological interpretation. To take the most obvious example, the opening words of section 3 (Baynes p. 234): “If from the standpoint now gained …” But we have gained no new standpoint as regards the “compact with evil,” first mentioned out of the blue on p. 228/9 as the “compact with Behemoth and his evil host.” We have no idea what this compact is, and we do not know the role of Epimetheus in it. This is explained only at the end of section 5. In your rationale you say of this section: “End up with Spitteler to give coherence to the seemingly lost theme, i.e. Spitteler (and Goethe secondarily) on types as manifestation of opposites.” In other words, if I understand you correctly, you correlate the material in this section with the problem of opposites as represented by Spitteler’s attitude-types, and as resolved by the reconciling symbol. Of orig. section 3 you say: “Extract problem of opposites for excursus on eastern mysticism.” Now, by placing section 5 before section 3, it seems to me that we kill three birds with one stone:
1) We put the story of Behemoth and the pact with evil in its proper context, so that we really have gained a new standpoint when we come to orig. section 3.
2) We have retrieved the “seemingly lost theme:” Spitteler’s attitude-types.
3) We have placed the problem of opposites represented by this theme where it serves as a comprehensive introduction to the excursus on eastern mysticism and on the reconciling symbol.
In case you didn’t take a copy of your letter, I recapitulate your rationale and correlate it with the section headings (p. refs. to Baynes). It was merely a proposition to divide the chapter into three parts, thus introducing, as you say, new chapters with no reference to types in the headings (more about this later). The original structure as a single chapter could still be preserved:
1. Introductory Remarks on Spitteler’s Characterization of Types
[Start with Spitteler and show how extraversion and introversion are looked at by an introvert.]
2. A Comparison of Spitteler’s with Goethe’s Prometheus
[Compare with Goethe (an extravert) and see how he works on the same problem. Then suggest an interpretation of their solutions.]
3. The Nature of the Uniting Symbol in Spitteler (p. 319 par. 2—p. 336 minus last par.)
[Your rationale of orig. 5, modified: Spitteler’s attitude-types (extraversion and introversion) as illustration of the conflict of opposites reconciled by the symbol: “soul’s jewel” = “saviour,” etc.]
4. The Significance of the Uniting Symbol (p. 234–242)
[My rationale: Recapitulation and general criticism of Spitteler material.]
5. The Uniting Symbol of Eastern Religion (p. 242–269)
[illustrate problem of opposites by excursus on eastern mysticism.]
6. The Relativity of the Symbol
a) Service of Woman and the Soul (p. 272–297 + 269–272 [Parsifal])
b) Meister Eckhart (p. 297–319 par. 1 + 336 last par.)
[Take up the soul question, indicated at the start, and then the relation of the soul to God as a western development. Period. End of chapter.]
In your rationale you take the Parsifal passage as a link to a western solution of the problem of opposites. This is undoubtedly true, but one has to work to get that link! It is nowhere explicitly stated to be such; it is presented as an incongruous appendix to Taoism. By placing it at the end of 6a above, we put it in the context of the historical material (Grail symbolism) and of the psychological interpretation of this symbolism (derivation from archetypal engrams). The passage is still a link, but the link is in its proper place.
The division into three chapters, as originally proposed, was designed also to give prominence to the concept of the uniting symbol. (This, by the way, is the only change in Jungian terminology I regret. “Reconciling symbol” is so much more emotive I would withdraw this division in order to keep the chapter whole and to avoid introducing chapters whose headings, unlike all the others, do not refer specifically to the type problem. But I would question your view that the reconciling symbol has to be “smuggled in through the poets” because this is a book on types rather than on the dynamic relation between introversion and extraversion. It depends very much on what you mean by “types.” The book, as I see it, is fundamentally about attitude types and only secondarily about function types. The function types are, so to speak, mere exponents of introversion and extraversion. Indeed ch. X, “General Description of the Types,” is expressly organized on the division between the extraverted type and the introverted type, the “general types,” while the function types are called “special types” (Baynes, p. 412; see also first par. on p. 9). In the genesis of Jung’s ideas, wouldn’t you say, the concept of introversion and extraversion definitely comes before that of the function types; the original two functions, thinking and feeling, are more like expressions or even mere concomitants of the movement of libido. This comes out particularly clearly in the Jung-Schmid correspondence{3}: they get to abusing each other not as “thinkers” and “feelers”—for it is admitted that introverts can feel and extraverts think, even if badly—but as incorrigible introverts and extraverts. You can change your function with luck, but you’re stuck with your attitude for life! I send you the translation of this correspondence, as I’m sure you’ll find it amusing as well as instructive in all sorts of ways. The copy is not yet corrected as there are some queries for Gerhard, so please bear with any obscurities.
This is no doubt an academic point so far as the organization of ch. V is concerned, but I do hope you will give further consideration to this new grouping of the sections. TYPES is supposed to be Jung’s classic; anything that aids clarity for, we hope, generations of students to come is surely to the good? If even you got bogged down on first studying this chapter and are not sure even now that you understand why Jung wrote it like this, Lord help the innocent student! It took me six months’ work on the book to get a clearer grasp of its basic cohesion, the details of which, I would maintain, are sometimes obscured less by design than by inadvertence. You concede that Jung’s thinking has a “linear coherence” and is not “circular,” a euphemism in most cases for muddled. (They take this circularity very seriously in Zurich. If you don’t think circular, you’re nothing, a rationalizing victim of mere logic. The mystique of circularity justifies every sloppiness in argument and presentation.) Finally, to edit Jung, or any author, in the light of what one knows of him means making use of a highly differential criterion. So much depends on who “one” is and what “one” knows! The two combined reinforce a personal equation which may be at odds with another person’s equally subjective (or, as he will claim) objective view of the same material. Thus you know the value of Jung’s “discontinuous” exposition, a characteristic that was often quite deliberate, whereas I value his no less deliberate linear coherence. To strike a balance between the two is very difficult …
With best regards,
Richard
{Fordham to Hull}
3 December 1965
Dear Hull,
I am much enjoying this correspondence and want to continue somewhat further with it.
First about the ‘standpoint gained.’ I admit difficulty in finding it, but surely it is that of the ‘medieval magician’ who represents an element ‘still untouched by the christian cleavage’ and who can therefore be the carrier of the reconciling symbol since evil has not got the same absoluteness developed by Christians. I would see in this the beginning of Jung’s enthusiasm for alchemy of which he does not seem to have been sufficiently certain at that time.
The trouble about the divine children and ‘the compact with Behemoth and his evil host’ was not soluble to me until I read the Spitteler material. I concluded that it arose from Jung’s assumption that the reader is familiar with Spitteler. Once one has looked at the book all becomes clear and one stops thinking in terms of the Bible! You may reply that it was only because I picked up the volume by chance in a second hand book shop that I am clear now—and you would say this with justice that I might have gone to the B. M.! However you have, I think, implied a possible solution: a footnote giving the relevant details from Spitteler and referring the reader to the later passage.
I fully admit the persuasiveness of your arrangement which appears to me personally, though not as editor. Incidentally, it brings to light another feature of this chapter which may have something to do with this tireless seemingly silly and nefariously used argument about circularity. Circularity is characteristic of affective processes (circumambulation) and not thought. Your remark about Zurich amplifies for me the muddle, defensive evasions of real issues, infantile outbursts, and obstinacy of which I have had plenty!
There are two elements in Jung’s thesis. First there is the collective unconscious idea which makes it possible to ignore differences due to history and geography, physics, chemistry, etc. and extract the common factor (the archetype); second there are the differences which are used in varying ways. There is no difficulty I take it about the geography (east and west) but I think it is worth noting that there is temporal arrangement.
|
Early sections on Spitteler |
18th & 19th centuries |
Thus there is a sort of circle involved resulting from, logically speaking, the condensation of two theses.
Your remarks about editing contain two issues. You are wrong in thinking that I appreciate Jung’s ‘discontinuities’ which I think are often due to concealed thought disorders (!) and I wish that the logical linear coherence of his argument too often left implicit had often been made more explicit. I also agree with what you say about editing but our conclusions are different. It is because of the ‘subjective’ factor that I am not in favour of making textual changes except when it can be shown that the typist or such like has been muddling things up. I think on the other hand that editorial notes can be used to clarify obscure points and I don’t see why this could not be done with this chapter.
My understanding of types is as follows: C. G. defined six variables (two attitudes and four functions). This makes a rather formidable number of possible combinations restricted by the incompatibilities on the basis of which he could describe 8 types (cf. general descriptions of them). He defines a type by the predominatingly conscious attitude and function. True, as you say, each type can display the other attitudes, functions (inferior attitudes and functions). This was driven home to me once when Baynes used to tell me I needed to work at my ‘inferior feeling’ and this made me think angrily that he was a fool!
Yes I think that introversion and extraversion is put first in this volume because he might have described the types under functions, i.e. four main types with two, extraverted and introverted, subsidiary attitudes. In view of the later importance he attaches to the four this arrangement would have been logical—but he did not do this.
I believe Jung considered that a type was basically irreversible and linked to hereditary predisposition. A book on types does imply this and so should be emphasised rather than the symbolic solution between opposites. Strictly speaking if types are reconcilable they are not types in the above sense but a way of describing aspects of one self. This at any rate was the source of my idea that the reconciling (uniting) symbol had to be ‘smuggled in through the poets.’ Otherwise it tends to undermine the typological idea. It is for this reason that I think that your division which aims to give ’due prominence to the concept of the uniting symbol’ may give undue prominence to it …
Yours,
Michael
EDITOR’S NOTES TO THE LETTERS
1. The reference is to H. G. Baynes’s translation of Psychological Types (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1923).
2. The reference is to Avis Dry, The Psychology of Jung: A Critical Interpretation (London: Methuen, 1961).
3. The Jung-Schmid letters, which throw an incomparable light upon the genesis of Jung’s thinking on psychological types, have been published in German. See Hans Konrad Iselin, Zur Enstehung von C. G. Jungs Psychologischen Typen: Der Briefwechsel zwischen C. G. Jung und Hans Schmid-Guisan in Lichte ihrer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Sauerlander, 1982).
Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture 55 (1994): 110–27
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