Carl Gustav Jung's Pivotal Encounter with Sigmund Freud During Their Journey to America
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Swiss American Historical Society Review Volume 54 Number 2 Article 4 6-2018 The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: Carl Gustav Jung's Pivotal Encounter with Sigmund Freud during their Journey to America William E. Herman Axel Fair-Schulz Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review Part of the European History Commons, and the European Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Herman, William E. and Fair-Schulz, Axel (2018) "The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: Carl Gustav Jung's Pivotal Encounter with Sigmund Freud during their Journey to America," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 54 : No. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol54/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Swiss American Historical Society Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Herman and Fair-Schulz: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: Carl Gustav Jung's Pivotal Encounter with Sigmund Freud during their Journey to America by William E. Herman and Axel Fair-Schulz The year 1909 proved decisive for our relationship. - Carl Gustav Jung's autobiography. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) M any volumes in the scholarly literature explore the complex evolution of the relationship between Carl Gustav Jung and Sigmund Freud as well as the eventual split between these two influential contributors to psychoanalytic thought and more generally to the field of psychology and other academic fields/professions. The events that transpired during the seven-week journey from Europe to America and back in the autumn of 1909 would serve as a catalyst to not only re-direct the lives of Jung and Freud along different paths, but also re-shape the roadmap of psychoanalytic thinking, clinical applications, and psychology. The 1909 visit was instrumental in further strengthening psychoanalytic thought in America, while simultaneously loosening the lynch-pins holding together Jung and Freud's increasingly fragile relationship. We hope to offer evidence that 1909 was not only a decisive year in psychology at large, but also contributed to a divisive trend in their relationship. Our analysis of the Jung/Freud relationship focuses upon well-documented and jointly experienced events, rather than an Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2018 1 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 54 [2018], No. 2, Art. 4 2 June 2018 SAHS Review attempt to outline every aspect of the trip. Readers can make their own judgements regarding the nature of the complex and dynamically changing relationship between Jung and Freud. The Freud/Jung Split: From Friends and Confidants to Enemies The personal and professional breakup of Freud and Jung represented not just a small fracture, but an expansive fault zone. The sojourn to America in 1909 occurred when this pair of psychoanalysts developed an intensive close personal and professional relationship. By 1913 an irreconcilable rift had developed. In today's social media vernacular, Freud had to find a way to "un-friend" Jung. Even our current modernity has not solved the process of such intensive status changes in human relationships. The end of the Jung/Freud relationship came in 1913, when much more than theoretical divergence reinforced their irreconcilable differences. Freud wrote to Jung in January of 19 I 3: " I propose that we abandon our relations entirely. I shall lose nothing by it, for my own emotional tie with you has long been a thin thread - the lingering effects of past disappointments." 1 Even decades later, Freud would look at his former friend and protege with deep suspicion and bitterness. Breger described how Jung and a friend, Franz Riklin, Jr., in 1938 devised a plan where Franz personally visited Freud in Vienna to give him $10,000 of their own money to escape oppressive Nazi tyranny. Freud met Franz at the door, turned him away, saying "I refuse to be beholden to my enemies." 2 Jung wrote to Freud on January 6, 1913: "I accede to your wish that we abandon our personal relations, for I never thrust my friendship on anyone."3 1 William McGuire, ed. The Freud/Jung Lellers: Th e Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C . G. Jung , trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C . Hull , (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 539. 2 Louis Breger, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vi sion (New York , NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000), 359. 3 McGuire, 540. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol54/iss2/4 2 Herman and Fair-Schulz: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909 3 Due to the powerful professional positions held by Jung and Freud within the psychoanalytic movement, psychology, and related academic fields, this split was to influence the lives and views of many others. As Pierce pointed out, Jung's focus upon the soul and spirituality and Freud's focus upon more empirical and secular concerns meant, "their split made it difficult for a unified vision or a healing of this wound to occur."4 Stolorow suggested theoretical differences associated with each man's personal history and innermost identity caused this breakup.5 Kerr in his book, A Most Dangerous Method, examined the origins and future prospects of psychoanalysis and suggested that psychoanalysis early on "ceased to be merely a clinical method-it was never a science-and became instead both a movement and a Weltanschauung ."6 Ultimately, what broke them up was not their sexual secrets; these they had already fought to a draw in 1909. Nor was it the difference in their religions traditions; that too, had been put to discussion in 1909 and seemingly resolved. Nor was it even their very real intellectual disagreements about how best to develop the cannon of interpretation; these were long standing and always secondary to the political advantages of continuing their association. What forced them apart was when these three different realms-the sexual, the religious, the theoretical - became hopelessly intertwined, and they could no longer talk about them. Not to each other and not to anyone else.7 Our goal in this article is not to explore all of the multifaceted dimensions or explanations of the split between Freud and Jung. Instead, our task will be to highlight events during this famous 1909 visit to America that might shed light on what preceded the eventual breakup roughly three years after this American trip. 5 Robert D. Stolorow, Faces in a Cloud: lntersubjectivity in Personality Theory (Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1993). 6 John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: Th e Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein (New York, NY: Alfred A . Knopf, 1993) , 511 . Weltanschauung essentially means a systematic worldview. 7 Kerr, 511 . Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2018 3 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 54 [2018], No. 2, Art. 4 4 June 2018 SAHS Review Background for the 1909 Trip to America Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) was the Swiss founder of Jungian psychology who was invited to the Clark University 20th Anniversary Celebration in Worcester, Massachusetts, during the fall of 1909. He offered three lectures (on the word association method and the psychology of childhood) and accepted an honorary degree. As a small private, non-sectarian, teaching and research university founded in 1887, Clark University held a unique history. Originally established as the first all-graduate school in the United States of America, not offering undergraduate programs until 1902, it ranks as the second oldest university in the country to grant graduate degrees (Johns Hopkins University being the oldest). Jung's groundbreaking research on reaction times that indicated evidence for unconscious processes had caught the attention of Clark University President and well-known psychologist, G. Stanley Hall. At the young age of 34, Jung had two traveling companions from the Austo-Hungarian Empire for the trip to America: Sigmund Freud (the 53-year old venerable Viennese founder of psychoanalysis) and Sandor Ferenczi (a 36-year old psychoanalyst from Budapest). Our usage of the term "America" in the title and text of this article does not merely refer to the United States of America, but evokes a broader sense of North America. The rationale for this is because the three travelers briefly visited Canada, and Ernest Jones from the University of Toronto traveled with the group and attended the Clark Lectures. In a limited, but important sense at this critical point in history, the trio of European psychoanalysts truly had a North American adventure. Carl G. Jung began studying medicine at the University of Basel in 1895 and began working at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital in Zurich in 1900. His Hospital Director, Eugen Bleuler, was already well aware of the Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. Jung completed his 1903 dissertation titled: On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena and three years later sent a copy of his new book, Diagnostic Association Studies, to Freud https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol54/iss2/4 4 Herman and Fair-Schulz: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909: The Psychological Odyssey of 1909 5 (who had already purchased a copy of this book on his own). A close personal and professional relationship soon developed through written correspondence. During March of 1907, Jung and Freud met face-to-face for the first time in Vienna, and their continuous dialogue lasted some 13 hours. A Viennese "fly on the wall" might have interpreted this marathon conversation as a sign of the relationship's vitality with the inference that it would last forever. Sigmund Freud, some 19 years older than Jung, eventually spoke of Carl G. Jung as his "Crown Prince," since he could further extend the influence of psychoanalysis from Jewish to Christian circles and protect the psychoanalytic movement from internal or external attack.