The

Jowmal of the History of the Beh5a&vd S&mcee
12 (1976):218-239.
THE EMPIRICIST AS REBEL:

JUNG, FREUD, AND THE BURDENS OF DISCIPLESHIP*
PAUL E. STEPANSKY
However little they share in common, both Freudian and Jungian comenta-
tors have long agreed that Jung’s theoretical development in the years fol-
lowing his psychoanalytic affiliation prompted an open“sp1it” with Freud and
the psychoanalyticmovement. Careful examination of Jung’s principal“rebel”
works does not sustain this thesis, however, but rather indicates Jung’s honest
belief that his limited appro riation of certain psychoanalytic mechanisms and
attendant theoretical modiLations constituted full-fledged loyalty to psycho-
analysis as he understood it. This perception receives significant support from
the Freud-Jung correspondence which reveals Jung openly articulating the
ground rules defining his loyalty to psychoanalysis fts early as 1906, and Freud
accepting, and even approving, his prot6g6‘s empirical reservations over the
course of the next five years.
“It is a hard lot to have to work alongside the father creator.”

-Jung to Freud
December 25, 1909
I
With a brutal finality that transformed uneasy collaboration into bitter
antagonism, both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung would seek to uncover
the sources of their “professional” differences within the exclusionist realm of
their respective depth psychologies. Writing only a year after the Munich “split”
of 1913, Freud reduced a complex chain of events to its most elementary psycho-
logical substratum. “The whole range of Jung’s innovations” had but one purpose:
“to eliminate what is disagreeable in the family complexes, so as not to find it
again in religion and ethics. For sexual libido an abstract concept has been sub-
stituted, of which one may safely say that it remains mystifying and incompre-
hensible to wise men and fools alike.” In order to preserve his “incomprehensible”
system intact, Jung had found it necessary “to turn entirely away from observation
and from the technique of psycho-analysis.”‘ In the short autobiographical study
he wrote eleven years later, Freud had not mellowed. Jung remained a pitiably
“infantile” secessionist whose fresh interpretation of the facts of analysis sought
only “to escape the need for recognizing the importance of infantile sexuality and
of the Oedipus complex as well as the necessity for any analysis of childhood.”2
*I am grateful for the encouragement and critical comments of Professor Franklin Baumer, Depart-
ment of History, and David Musto, M.D., Departments of History and Psychiatry, Yale University.
1. Sigmund Freud, “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914),” in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (hereafter SE), trans. and ed. James
Strachey et al. (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1964);
14: 62-63.
2. Sigmund Freud, “An Autobiographical Study (1925),” SE, 20:53.
A graduate of Princeton University, where he was a University Scholar in the history of psy-
choanalysis, PAULE. STEPANSHY i s currently a Ph.D. candidate in European intellectual history
at Yale University, and has begun work on a dissertation that WiU ezamine the thought of Alfred
Adler in the contezt of both European inteUectua1 hzstory and the history of the psychoanalgtic move-
ment, This past Spring, he was named one of Yale University’s first Kanzer Fund Fellows for
Psychoanalytic Studies in the Humanities.
216
THE EMPIRICIST AS REBEL 217
Jung’s rejoinder, if not so virulent, issued from comparable premises. Arguing

in 1929 that every psychology-his own included-had the character of a subjective
confession, he submitted that “What Freud has to say about sexuality, infantile
pleasure . . . as well as what he says about incest and the like, can be taken as the
truest expression of his personal p~ychology.”~I n his autobiography, Memmies,
Dreams, Reflections, Jung confessed that he had been struck with Freud’s (‘emotional
involvement” with the sexual theory from their very first meeting of February,
1907. Intuiting then that Freud envisioned sexuality as a veritable numinosum,
Jung was later “bewildered and embarrassed” when the Master beseeched him
to make the sexual theory his own “unshakable bulwark.” “One thing was clear,”
he wrote, “Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now construc-
ted a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had
substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality.”4
Such retrospective judgments, though illuminating from a psychobiographical
perspective, constitute a relative stumbling block for the historian of psychoanalysis
who must synchronize institutional development with the theoretical state of the
profession. In this case, the almost instantaneous psychological clarity with which
each man sized up his antagonist does not quite square with the chronology that
was to emerge. If Jung’s second reading of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1903
convinced him he (‘could not agree with Freud on the content of repression,”5
and if it took but one meeting to convince him of Freud’s emotionally charged
theoretical inflexibility, why did he consent to become his foremost prot6g6, the
prospective leader who would shoulder responsibilities that had grown too oppressive
for Freud himself?G On the other hand, if Freud came t o perceive Jung’s innovations
as defensive attempts to evade the “repulsive” sexual level of psychoanalytic in-
sight, how could he overlook this conspicuous trend in Jung’s thought as long as
he did, and why would he single out Jung as his chosen successor in spite of it? As
early as 1906, before his formal introduction to the Master, Jung’s defense of the
Freudian theory of hysteria incorporated heuristic distinctions between the “psycho-
logy of sexuality” and the “wider range of Freud’s psychology, that is, the psycho-
logy of dreams, jokes, and disturbances of ordinary thinking caused by feeling-
toned constellations,” while cautiously arguing that Freud’s assumption that all
hysteria reduced t o sexuality was “subject to the general limitation which applies
to empirical axiom^."^
3. C. G. Jung, “Freud and Jung: Contrasts (1929),” in Colketed W O : (hereafter
~ CW), trans.
R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon Books and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954-1973))
4: 334-335.
4. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, ReJlectwns, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York:
Vintage Books, 1963)) p. 151. Cf. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (New York: Harper
and Row, 1966)) p. 111: According to Jung, Freud’s trouble “was that he had remained a Jew who
had merely exchanged ritual obedience to the law of the Hebrew God for intellectual obedience t o
the laws of sexuality.”
5. Ibid., 147-149.
6. Freud, “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,’’ SE,14: 43.
7. C. G. Jung, “Freud’s Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg (1906), ” CW, 4:3-4. Jung
forwarded Freud an offprint of the Reply to Aschaffenburg, circumscribing it in the following way:
“I have tailored it a bit to my subjective standpoint, so you may not agree with everything in it.
I hope I haven’t misrepresented you! In any case I wrote it out of honest conviction” (Jung to Freud
26 November, 1906, in The FreWllJung Letters (hereafter FJL),ed. William McGuire, trans. Ralph
Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton Umversity Press, 19741, p. 9. Th? ‘ f e t e r d a m
Report” figured in an obtuse exchange of mid-April 1908, when Jung expressed some rmsgivlngs about
218 PAUL E. STEPANSKY
Moreover, Jung was forthright and direct in expressing his empirical qualms.
“What I can appreciate and what has helped us here in our psychopathological
work,” he wrote Freud on 5 October 1906, (‘are your psychological views, while I am
still pretty far from understanding the therapy and the genesis of hysteria be-
Cause our material on hysteria is rather meagre. . . . it seems t o me that though the
genesis of hysteria is predominantly, it is not exclusively, sexual.” Jung proceeded
to make clear to Freud the discriminating grounds on which his loyalty to psycho-
analytic doctrine should be construed. The “sexual theory,” he observed, involved
only ((delicate theoretical questions.” Freud’s “psychology,” on the other hand,
was “the essential thing.”s
I n offering this impressionistic but vital distinction, Jung openly formulated
a professional posture that, for the duration of his psychoanalytic collaboration,
would constitute both pledge and project. The pledge was to espouse a “psycho-
analysis” not as doctrine but as investigatory guide; the project was to use this
guide to arrive “empirically” at a developmental psychology that would be per-
sonally satisfying in terms of his own clinical understanding and experience. Freud
was quick to acknowledge the scruples of his prospective follower: “Your writings
have long led me t o suspect that your appreciation of my psychology does not
extend t o all my views on hysteria and the problem of sexuality,” he wrote Jung
on 7 October 1906, “but I venture t o hope that in the course of the years you will
come much closer t o me than you now think po~sible.”~In a reply written two
weeks later, Jung readily conceded that his reservations about Freud’s “far-reaching
views” might well be due t o lack of experience, but nonetheless voiced clear “alarm”
at the “positivism” of Freud’s presentation and questioned whether . . a number ((.
of borderline phenomena might be considered more appropriately in terms of the

other basic drive: hunger.”1° In a letter of 4 December 1906, Jung reiterated
his aversion to Freud’s positivism in a tone that was deferent but explicit:
If I confine myself t o advocating the bare minimum, this is simply because I
can advocate only as much as I myself have unquestionably experienced, and
that, in comparison with your experience, is naturally very little. I am only
beginning t o understand many of your formulations and several of them are
still beyond me, which does not mean by a long shot that I think you are
wrong. I have gradually learnt t o be cautious even in disbelief.””
Jung’s cautious disavowal of Freud’s ‘(positivism” did not initially dampen
his commitment t o that dimension of the theory that he believed essential, but
it did conspicuously qualify his published endorsement of the psychoanalytic credo.
I n his 1907 exposition of “The Freudian Theory of Hysteria,” Jung noncommittally
submitted that Freud had “never propounded a cut-and-dried theory of hysteria,”
that his discoveries did not a t present “lend themselves to the framing of general
theories,” and that prospective adherents need not “be put off by the obtrusion of
the content of the report and appealed to Freud for criticism (Jung to Freud, 18 Apra 1908, FJL
p. 139). Freud curtly responded that “only the sentence about child hysteria struck me as incorrect’’
(Freud to Jung, 19 April 1908, F J L , p. 140),. though nine months later he would cite approvingly
a Juhrbuch paper in which Jung “avenged (hunself) brilliantly for Amsterdam” (Freud to Jung, 22
January 1909, FJL, p. 201).
8. Jung to Freud, 5 October 1906, FJL,pp. 4-5.
9. Freud to Jung, 7 October 1906, FJL, p. 5.
10. Jung to Freud, 23 October 1906, FJL, p. 7.
11. Jung to Freud, 4 December 1906, FJL, pp. 10-11.
sexuality, for as a rule you come upon many other, exceedingly interesting things
which, at least to begin with, show no trace of sex.”i2 If theoretical reservations
like these actually expressed Jung’s latent resistance to the doctrine he espoused,
it would seem that Freud’s belated recognition of this fact embodied a dose of
resistance just as great. In all probability it was Freud’s refusal to act more quickly
and decisively than he did that provided the ominous potential for disparate
perceptions to develop : quite obviously, Jung’s conception of loyalty to Freud was
never the same as Freud’s conception of loyalty t o Freud.
This essay takes its raison d’6tre from the weight of this final assumption.
If Jung never conceived of psychoanalysis in the same way that Freud did, his
“break” with Freud loses much of the intent and finality that critics would later
ascribe to it. Admittedly, much of the interpretive problem lies with Jung and
Freud themselves. With the passing of time (with Freud it took only one year)
both men claimed to foresee the fatal course their collaboration would take with
a retrospective clarity that belied their expectations and working assumptions
at the time. Yet, later disciples and explicators have been something short of helpful
in penetrating beneath their own propagandistic verbiage. Ernest Jones, however
beneficent his intentions, has probably done more harm than good in perpetuating
current misconceptions. For Jones, Jung can never be more than a tragic weakling
whose enthusiastic endorsement of Freud’s work and theories from 1906 to 1910
was destined to succumb to “the recurring wave of resistance” which impelled him
to abandon sexual “truth” for his own disfigured variants of “libido” and
Edward Glover has carried the haughty preconceptions of Freud and Jones to the
fullest and most ridiculous lengths: Jung is a truculent misfit whose theoretical
divergence is a veritable function of his psychopathic need to oppose Freud on
any terms.14
The Jungians, if more sober, have been equally unhelpful. They prefer to
evaluate Jung’s positive contribution in timeless spiritual terms that obscure his
unpretentious clinical origins.l6 The pronounced tendency, therefore, has been
to take the later Jung’s retrospective assessment of the situation a t face value,
to explain the sources of Jung’s “break” with Freud by referring to the anti-Freudian
resting place at which mature “Analytical Psychology” would ultimately arrive.
For Ira Progoff, Freud simply did not understand history or religion; Jung did.
For Jolan Jacobi, Jung acknowledged the clinical explanatory power of man’s
inborn “spiritual and religious need”; Freud did not. For Georges Verne, Jung’s
departure from the Freudians related largely to his personal dissatisfaction with a
reductive unconscious that was valueless as a guide to the future.16
12. C. G. Jung, “The Freudian Theory of Hysteria (1907), ” C W , 4: 10, 18.
13. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1953-1957),
2: 126-129, 137-151.
14. Edward Glover, Freud or Jung (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950), passim, especially pp. 45,
67-69.
15. E.g., Eleanor Bertine, Jung’s Contribution to our Time (New York: C. G. Jung Foundation for
Analytical Psychology, 1967), especially pp. 3-30.
16. Ira Progoff, Jung’s Psychology and its Social Meaning (New York: Julian Press, 1953), p. 9 ;
Jolan Jacobi, The Psychologg of Jung, trans. K. W. Bash (New Haven: Yale Uqiversity Press, 1943),
pp. 59-60; George Verne, A Travers C. G. Jung: Retour a l’Authenticit6,” in Contact with Jung:
Essays on the Influence of his Work and Personality, ed., Michael Fordham, (Philadelphia and Mon-
treal: Lippincott, 1963), p. 16. Progoff has written a provocative reinterpretation of the whole course
of modern depth psychology on the basis of this kind of Jungian bias, The Death and Rebirth of Psy-
chology, (NewYork: Julian Press, 1956).
The historians of psychoanalysis, with the notable exception of Henri Ellen-

berger,” have done nothing but superficially reduce the “break” t o one or two
‘(divisive” concepts. Ives Hendrick, Clara Thompson, Ruth Munroe, and J. A. C.
Brown all trace Jung’s resignation from the International Psychoanalytic Society
to his inability t o share Freud’s views on the primacy and differentiation of sexual
libido from other types of psychic energy.’* Roland Dalbiez traces ‘(la divergence
entre les deux 6coles” to “la notion de symbole,” concentrating on Jung’s un-
happiness with a notion of symbol that reduced ideas to more or less deficient
substitutes of an original image or sensation.19 A. Hesnard can do no more than
locate the break in a “certaine tendance philosophique et mystique” that first
erupted in Wandlungen and Symbole der Libido.20
A close look at the relevant Jungian texts throws into serious doubt the collec-
tive impression these commentators seek to make: there are no significant “breaks”
between Jung’s “psychoanalytic” writings and the immediately post-Freudian
material which came to embody his “revolt.” Instead, the careful reader discovers
a consistent conception of what psychoanalysis actually meant and of what Freud
might legitimately expect of his followers. The two early papers on hysteria we
have cited plainly establish the leitmotif of this conception; for Jung, the early
Freud was destined t o remain an open-minded empiricist whose theoretical for-
mulations were never meant to exceed the limited clinical material on which they
were based.21
Consequently, Jung’s endorsement of the fundamental tenets of psycho-
analysis could never partake of Freud’s emotional conviction. I n his early writings,
cautious enthusiasm about the significance of Freud’s clinical breakthroughs is
invariably teamed with irritating academic qualifications that would have been
anathematic to the true “convert)) of that time. In his defense of the Freudian
theory of hysteria before the First International Congress of Psychiatry and Neu-
rology in September, 1907, Jung reduced Freud’s “theory” to a “working hy-
pothesis” and added that “no one knows whether Freud’s schema is applicable
to all forms of hysteria.”22 I n 1909, he considered Freud’s method of dream analysis
17. Ellenberger alone seems to recognize the fact that there wm a fundamental misunderstanding
“from the very start” with reference t o the conception of discipleship. See Henri Ellenberger, The
LXscovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 669-670.
18. Ives Hendrick, Facts and Theories of Psychoanalysis (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), p.
310; Clara Thompson, Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development (New York: Hermitage House,
1951), p. 163; Ruth L. Munroe, Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought (New York: Dryden Press, 1955),
pp. 539-544; J. A. C. Brown, Freud and the Post-Freudians (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 42.
19. Roland Dalbiea, La Mdthode PsychanalyLique et la Doctrine Freudienne (Paris: Descl6e de Brou-
coer et Cie, 1936), 1: 170-174. Cf. Jolande Jacobi. Complex, Archetype, Symbol, trans. Ralph Man-
heim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19591, pp. 88-94.
20. A. Hesnard, L’Oeuvre de. Freud et son Zmportance pour le Monde Moderne (Paris: Payot, 1960),
. 107. Cf. Morris Philipson, Outline of a Jungian Aesthetics (Illinois: Northwestern University
ffress, 1963), p. 52.
21. On 31 March 1907, Jung reacted negatively to the publication of Otto Rank’s doctoral dis-
sertation Der Kzinstler: Ansatze zu einer Sexualpsychologie [The Artist: An Attempted Sexual Psy-
chology] complaining to Freud that Rank’s “broadened conception of sexuality” was confusing and
antithetical to the thrust of Freud’s own terminology. He continued:“One also has the uncomfortable
feeling that Rank ‘jurat in verba magistri’ and lacks empiricism. In reading him I have more than
once had to think of Schilling and Hegel. But your theory is pure empiricism and should be p r e
sented empirically too. At any rate this beckons me onward as my foremost task.” Jung t o Freud,
31 March 1907, F J L , p. 26; cf. Jung to Freud, 11 March 1908, F J L , p. 134
22. Jung, “The Freudian Theory of Hysteria,” CW, 4: 23.
‘(a valuable instrument for resolving or overcoming the most tenacious resistances,”
but reminded his readers that the central distinction between manifest and latent
dream content was founded not on a dogma, “but on empiricism alone.”2a
Jung had one solid clinical contribution t o his credit that approached the
orthodox mold. I n “The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual
(1909))” he refracted the typical “parental constellation” as a “libidinal” obstacle
which the healthy child could successfully overcome. Here, Jung was confident
that “the magic power of the parents t o bind their children to themselves” consisted
of “nothing but sexuality on both sides,’’ and was willing t o reduce the typical
“infantile attitude” of parental dependence to “nothing but infantile sexuality.”24
Such token bits of clinical reductionism were never sufficient t o overcome his
empirical reluctance to generalize, however. In his “Contribution to the Psychology
of Rumour (1910-1911),” Jung properly reduced a simple schoolgirl dream t o a
wish for sexual union. In his review of Morton Prince’s The Mechanism and In-
terpretation of Dreams (1911) he ingeniously read erotic wish-fulfdlment into the
ostensibly nonsexual dreams of Prince’s patient. Nevertheless, he reiterated in
a short piece “On the Criticism of Psychoanalysis (1910)” that Freud’s method
was in reality “purely empirical and totally lacking in any final theoretical frame-
work.”26
I1
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1911-1912)26was the central Jungian
text that purportedly burst through the Freudian dike. I n his 1950 foreward t o
the fourth edition, Jung characterized the writing of the book as the veritable
“explosion of all those psychic contents which could find no room, no breathing-
space, in the constricting atmosphere of Freudian psychology and its narrow
outlook.” He proceeded to gauge his internal explosion, not against Freud’s theory
of neurosis per se, but to ‘( . . . the reductive causalism of his whole outlook, and
the almost complete disregard of the teleological directedness which is so character-
istic of everything psychic.”27 I n his autobiography, Jung reiterated the psycho-
logical momentousness of the book’s execution. By the time he was approaching
the end of the final chapter, “The Sacrifice,” he “knew in advance that its publi-
cation would cost me my friendship with Freud.” This realization proved so un-
nerving that, despite the reassurance of his wife, Jung could not touch his pen
for two months: “Should I keep my thoughts to myself, or should I risk the loss
of so important a friendship? At last I resolved to go ahead with the writing-and
it did indeed cost me Freud’s friendship.”28
These reminiscences reveal how the later Jung came t o construe the sign%-
cance of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido from the vantage point of mature
23. C. G. Jung,“The Analysis of Dreams (1909),” CW, 4:30-31, 25.
24. C. G. Jung, “The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual (1909),” CW,
4: 317n and 320n.
25. C. G. Jung, “A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour (1910),” CW, 4: 35-47; C. G. Jung,
“Morton Prince, ‘The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams’: A Critical Review (lgll),” CW,
4: 56-73; C. G. Jung, “On the Criticism of Psychoanalysis (1910)) CW, 4:75.
26. Beatrice HinkIe trans., The Psychology of the unconscious: A Study of the T r a n s f o m t i o n s and
Symbolisms of the Libido (New York: Moffat, Yard, and Co., 1916).
27. C. G. Jung, “Symbols of Transformation (1911/1912; 1952),” CW, 5: xrdii.
28. Jung, M e m i e s , Dreams, Reflections, P. 167.
Analytical Psychology; they tell us considerably less about his attitude a t the
time the book was written. I n its inception, Jung’s commitment to the psycho-
analytic exploration of mythology and archaeology hardly represented a self-conscious
thrust at Freud’s “reductive causalism.” Indeed, from the summer of 1909 to the
summer of 1910, the two men were equally enthusiastic about expanding psycho-
analytic inquiry in this direction, and they mutually reinforced joint aspirations
in the correspondence of this period. It was Freud whose speculative explorations
into the character of Leonard0 da Vinci first enabled him to broach “an interesting
excursion into archaeology” replete with “ideas about the nature of symboli~m,”~~
and Freud again capped Jung’s reciprocating interests with the jubilant imperative:
“I am glad you share my belief that we must conquer the whole field of mythology.
. . . We need men for more far-reaching carnpaign~.”~~ By November, 1909 Freud
was actively prodding Jung forward in his esoteric investigation^,^^ and by early
January he could placate Jung’s irritation at the suggested need for full-time
archeologists and philologists with the following mollifying endorsement:
Your displeasure a t my longing for an army of philosophical collaborators is
music to my ears. I am delighted that you yourself take this interest so seri-
ously, that you yourself wish to be this army; I could have dreamed of nothing
better but simply did not suspect that mythology and archaeology had taken
such a powerful hold on
The correspondence continues in this ebullient vein through the fall of 1910.
Freud gives his complete sympathy to Jung’s “deepended view of symbolism”;
he is “overjoyed” that mythology has given Jung the ‘‘ ‘fairytale forest feeling’
that comes of a sound conception”; and by June he is “eagerly awaiting” Jung’s
emergent mythology. In late June, Freud reacts t o a draft essay that would be
expanded into Part 1 of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido and finds that while
lacking “ultimate clarity,” “everything essential (in your essay) is right.” By
July, he sees even this temperate criticism as “premature,” compliments Jung in
October on the intuitive way he proceeded in his mythological work, and is “looking
forward eagerly” t o the “reborn paper.”33
When in the spring of 1911 Jung’s preoccupation with the psychology of
religion and mythology trails off into a more subterranean interest in the occult,
Freud’s explorational partnership in these matters does not flag for an instant:
I am aware that you are driven by innermost inclination to the study of the
occult and I am sure you will return home richly laden. I cannot argue with
that, it is always right to go where your impulses lead.34
By June, Freud’s perspective on occultism had “grown humble” under the impact
of occult experiences related to him by Ferencei after the Clark University con-
ference of 1909 and subsequently discussed with Jung :
29. Freud to Jung, 9 August 1909, F J L , p. 245.
30. Freud t o Jung, 17 October 1909, F J L , p. 255.
31. “I wa6 delighted t o learn that you are going into mythology. A little less loneliness. I can’t
wait t o hear of your discoveries.’’ Freud t o Jung, 11 November 1909, F J L , p. 260.
32. Freud t o Jung, 2 January 1910, F J L , p. 282.
33. Freud to Jung, 2 February 1910, F J L , p. 291; Freud to Jung, 22 April 1910, F J L , p. 310; Freud
to Jung, 9 June 1910, F J L , p. 328; Freud t o Jung, undated, F J L , p. 335; Freud to Jung, 5 July 1910,
F J L , p. 338; Freud t o Jung, 1 October 1910, FJL, p. 358; Freud to Jung, 23 October 1910, F J L ,
p. 362.
34. Freud t o Jung, 12 May 1911, F J L , p. 422.
I n matters of occultism I have grown humble since the great lesson Ferenc~’s
experiences gave me. I promise to believe anything that can be made t o
look reasonable.36
The collaborative understanding explicit in this phase of the correspondence
is fully consistent with textual analysis of the “rebel” work in question. Close
study of Wandlungen und Xyrnbole der Libido hardly convinces one of Jung’s violent
antipathy t o Freud’s causal reductionism. However “deviant” his exploration of
the symbol-making collective unconscious may have seemed, it was Freud himself
who, for Jung, provided both the materials and the rationale for his inquiry. If
present-day psychoanalytic researchers might now begin to confront the “indissol-
uble common bond bind(ing) us to the people of antiquity,” this was the direct
legacy of Freud’s “rediscovery of the Oedipus and if the time had
arisen for analysts to broaden individual analyses with a comparative study of
historical materials relating t o them, the model for such expansion was Freud’s
own “masterly” study of Leonard0 da V i n ~ i . Moreover,
~~ if the psyche in fact
possessed some degree of unconscious historical strata in addition t o “private”
infantile reminiscences, these might only be activated by introversion followed by
regression “according to the Freudian teaching.” Lastly, however extensive the
classical and philological themes contained in the Miller fantasies, Miss Miller’s
“vision of creation” remains first and foremost a function of an “erotic impression”;
the source of her symbolical productions is “an erotic
I n the second chapter of Part I1 of the book, “The Conception and the Genetic
Theory of Libido,” Jung appeared to drive an immovable wedge between his own
theoretical foundations and those of Freud. UnabIe to reduce either the “function
of reality” or pathogenic retreats from reality to an exculsive function of a Eibido
sexualis, Jung chose to replace the descriptive definition of libido contained in
Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality with a broader generic model;
libido in reality signified “psychic energy” as a universal creative power. For most
Jungian and Freudian commentators, this was the decisive reformulation which
made a “split” inevitable.
Once again, however, protagonists identified with a mature Jungian or Freudian
“tradition” have overlooked the perspective from which Jung’s reformulation
emerged. For Jung, the expanded field of application of the libido concept did not
represent a dramatic “break” with the past; it rather embodied a general change
that had occurred since the narrow formulation of the Three Contributions, and
35. Freud to Jung, 15 June 1911, FJL, p. 429. It is not clear what specific experiences affected
Freud so greatly. For Ferenczi’s preoccupation with the occult and his general influence on Freud
during this time, however, see Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic
Books, 1957), 3: 383-389.
36. Since Jung’s Collected Works contain only the 1952 rewritten version of Wandlungen und
Symbole &r Libido, I cite both the original German Deuticke edition and the early authorized transla-
tion by Beatrice Hinkle. C. G. Jung, Wandlungenund Symbole der Libido: Beitruge zur Entwicklung-
sgeschichte des Denkens (Leipzig und Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1912), p. 5; C. G. Jung, The Psychology
of the Uncmcious: A Study of the Transformationsand Symbolisms of the Libido, trans. Beatrice M.
Hinkle (New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1916), p. 5.
37. See Jung to Freud, 17 June 1910, FJL, p. 329; “Leonard0 is wonderful. ... The transition to
mythology grows out of this essay from inner necessity, actually it is the fist essay of yours with
whose inner development I felt perfectly in tune from the start.” Also, Jung to Freud, 11 August
1910, FJL, p. 345.
38. Jung, Wandlungen uncl Symbole der Libido, pp. 32, 57, 61; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious,
pp. 37, 67, 72.
one which could be attributed to Freud himself. To justify his own theoretical
amplification, Jung cites not only his own clinical investigation of dementia praecox,
but Freud’s analysis of paranoia in the Schreber case history.39 I n a long quotation
drawn from this work, Jung cites Freud’s own inability to accept the “universal
receding of the libido from the outer world” as a “sufficiently effectual” explanation
of the withdrawal from reality experienced in the psychoses. Here, the immature
state of instinct theory leaves Freud “absolutely helpless” to explain how the
withdrawal of “libidinal interest” might precipitate the withdrawal of a specifically
nonlibidinal kind of “ego interest,” but he nonetheless feels it probable that “proc-
esses of this sort form the distinctive character of the
Jung seizes upon this revelation with epigonic reverence. It is Freud himself
who “plainly touches upon the question whether the well-known longing for reality
of the paranoic dement . . . is to be traced back to the withdrawal of the ‘libidinous
affluxes’ alone, or whether this coincides with the so-called objective interest in
general.” On this basis, Jung claims “that Freud as well as myself, s&wthe need
of widening the conception of libido,”41and justifies his current project as a logical
attempt t o supplement an acknowledged clinical skeleton with concrete historical
and philological material.
Yet, even in appealing to Freud to convert the meaning of libido to a Schopen-
hauerian “will to live,” Jung takes special care not to disavow the legacy of Freudian
sexuality proper. His “energic” exegesis centers around a unified “primal” libido,
an undifferentiated pool of sexual energy from which ‘(affluxes” of sexual libido
are deflected from their original destination and gradually turned “in the phylo-
genetic impulses of the mechanisms of allurement and of protection of the young.”
In various functional disturbances, he claims that the function of reality is inca-
pacitated not only through an imbalance of “sexual” energy, but through the loss
of more recent adaptational modes to which an already differentiated and de-
sexualized quantity of libido has been applied.42 From a strict developmental
standpoint, however, Jung is careful to subordinate the “diverse applications
and forms” which the libido may ultimately assume to its sexual function proper:
With the development of the body there are successively opened new spheres
of application for the libido. The last sphere of application, and surpassing
all the others in its functional significance, is sexuality, which seems at first
bound up with the function of nutrition. . , . I n the territory of sexuality, the
libido wins that formation, the enormous importance of which has justified
us in the use of the term libido in general.“
39. See Sigmund Freud, “Psycho-Analytic Notea on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of
Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (lgll),’ SE, 12: 9-82. The passage Jung cites is found in pp. 73-75.
40. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, pp. 122-123; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious,
pp. 140-141.
41. Ibid. Cf. Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, pp. 131-132; Psychology of the Unconscious,
p. 152.
42. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, pp. 130-132, 125-126; Jung, Psychology of the Un-
conscious, pp. 150-153, 144-145. When Jung writes that “countless complicated functions to whch
to-day must be denied any sexual character were originally pure derivations from the general impulse
of propagation,” (Wandlungen,pp. 125-126; psychology, 144-145), he really seems to be saying
much the same thing that Heinz Hartmann would through the concept of the “secondary auton-
omy of ego development,” i.e. the notion that ego functions can become independent of the instinc-
tual drives on which they are initially dependent. See Heina Hartmann, Essays on Ego Psycho-
logy (New York: International Universities Press, 1964), pp. 105, 123, 134-137, 152, 177.
43. Jung, Wandlungenund Symbole der Libido, p. 129; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious,pp. 148-
149.
Critical scholarship has similarly overvalued the reformulation of the “incest”

concept Jung undertook in this work. The direction this change would take was
personally communicated to Freud in a letter of 17 May 1912. Jung’s cautious
phraseology and deferent tone hardly befit the truculent rebel he has been made out
to be. He ventures the “bold conjecture” that the free-floating anxiety of primitive
man may have led t o the incest taboo as part of a more general creation of taboo
ceremonies and that the incest taboo thus conceived need not correspond with the
specific value of incest sensu slrictiori. From this standpoint, he suggests that
incest is forbidden not because it is desired, ‘‘ . . . but because the free-floating
anxiety regressively reactivates infantile material and turns it into a ceremony of
atonement (as though incest had been, or might have been desired).”44 I n this
manner, Jung never denies the existence of ontogenetic incest fantasies; he simply
refuses to equate them with the institutional significance of the incest taboo. The
incest prohibition is not the singular offshoot of a strong incest wish, but as a
special psychological institution, it possesses “a much greater-and different-
significance than the prevention of incest, even though it may look the same from
the
In the crucial chapter in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido on “Symbolism
of the Mother and Rebirth,’’ Jung never went beyond this level of supplementary,
archaelogical insight, To be sure, he alleges that the Sun Myth “proves . . . that
the fundamental basis of the ‘incestuous’ desire does not aim at cohabitation, but
a t the special thought of becoming a child again, of turning back to the parents’
protection, of coming into the mother once more in order to be born again.”46
Yet this remains a cosmic, metapsychological goal not significantly different from
the implications of Freud’s own concept of “primal narcis~ism.”~~ On an instru-
mental level, Jung fully acknowledges the importance of “sexual” incest as the
intervening psychological reality precluding fulfillment of the more grandiose
cosmic quest. Orthodox Freudians notwithstanding, Jung never denies the “sexual”
immediacy of the incest prohibition on the ontogenetic level; indeed, it is the
sexual reality of the prohibition which prompts the spiritualization of libido in
mythical fantasies and religious systems, for only in this sublimated way can the
mother be symbolically i m ~ r e g n a t e d . ~ ~
Moreover, as clinician, Jung is hardly averse to the reduction of such symbolic
religious activities to their root libidinal substrate. In Christianity, he sees the
“negative of the ancient sexual cult,” that source of personal value which trans-
formed the brutal depreciation of the sexual object into the unattainable, symbolic
quest for the mother. Through the impetus of the incest resistance, “the beauti-
ful, sinful world of the Olympian God” was transmuted into “incomprehensible,
44. Jung to Freud, 17 May 1912, FJL, p. 505. CE. also Jung to Freud, 27 April 1912, FJL, p. 502
and June; to Freud, 8 May 1912, FJL, pp. 502-503.
4.5. Jung to Freud,’ 17 May 1912, FJL, pp. 505-506.
46. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, p. 216; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 251.
47. See Sigmund Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914),” SE, 14: 87-88. The most
stimulating interpretation of the cosmic implications of “primal narcissism” remains Norman 0.
Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meanzng of History (New York: Vmtage Books,
1959), up. 4C-54.
48. .j&g, Wandlungen und Symbok der Libido, pp. 216-222; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious,
pp. 215-258.
dreamlike, dark mysteries, which with their accession of symbols and obscure
meaningful texts, remove us very far from the religious feelings of that Roman-
Graeco World.,,49 Yet is such spiritual refinement of the libido intrinsically desirable?
In a spirit directly reminiscent of Freud’s polemical tract, “Civilized Sexual Morality
and Modern Nervousness (1908),” Jung replies in the negative. As a result of such
religious displacements :
There are those who have not yet learned to recognize sexuality as a function
equivalent t o hunger and who, therefore, consider it as disgraceful that certain
taboo institutions which were considered as asexual refuges are now recognised
as overflowing with sexual symbolism. . . . One must learn to understand that,
opposed to the customary habit of thought, psychoanalytic thinking reduces
and resolves those symbolic structures which have become more and more
complicated through countless elaborations.s0
Consequently, for the “countless neurotics” who are ill through an inability “to
seek happiness in their own manner,” Jung prescribes the proper Freudian remedy:
For all these, reduction to the sexual elements should be undertaken, in order
that they may be reinstated into the possession of their primitive self, and
thereby learn t o know and value its relation to the entire personality. I n this
way alone can certain requirements be fulfilled and others be repudiated as
unfit because of their infantile character.6l
111
Earlier in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido Jung traced the need to expand
the libido concept, not only to Freud’s analysis of paranoia in the Schreber case
history, but t o his own previous work with schizophrenics. I n his important study
ffber die Psychologie der Dementia PraecoxK2Jung first made use of the expression
‘(psychic energy” because he ‘(was unable to establish the theory of this psychosis
upon the conception of the displacement of the affluxes of libido.” Unlike the
hysteric and compulsive neurotics whose impairment involved only the regressive
introversion of a portion of libido, he commented, his dementia praecox patients
were not simply lacking “that portion of libido which is saved in the well-known
specific sexual repression . . . but much more than one could write down to the
account of sexuality in a strict sense.”63 If psychotic impairment could not be
rationalized in terms of a libido energetics narrowly conceived, the time had obvi-
ously arrived to broaden the concept. This retrospective assessment of his own
clinical work reinforced a calculated strategy to dispel any aura of dissension:
not only is Freud himself authoritatively cited in the theoretical reworking of
the libido concept, but Jung refers to his own clinical experience as a compelling
therapeutic reason for the change.
Yet one important issue remains : how self-evident was the clinical inadequacy
of the libido concept in ffber die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox itself? Had Jung
actually considered a (‘break” with Freud implicit in this 1907 study? Once again,
49. Jung, W a d l u n g e n und Symbole der Libido, p. 220; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 256.
50. J u g , Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, p. 221; Jung, PsychoEogy of the Wnconscious, p. 257.
51. J u g , Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, p. 223; Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 260.
52. R. F. C. Hull, trans., The Psychology of Dementia Praecox in the Collected Works, vol. 3, (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1960).
53 J u g , Wandlungen und Symbole der Libdo, P. 124; h u g , Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 143.
the most likely answer is no, but it presupposes Jung’s own heuristic distinction
between the empirical open-endedness of psychoanalytic principles and the more
tentative findings t o which Freud’s private clinical material pointed. I n lffber die
Psychologie der Dementia Praecox as in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, Jung
remains a devoted Freudian, but on his own Oerms. This becomes immediately
clear in the Foreword to the work, where Jung expresses his indebtedness to “the
brilliant discoveries of Freud,” but immediately circumscribes the nature of his
loyalty:
Fairness to Freud, however, does not imply, as many fear, unqualified sub-
mission to a dogma; one can very well maintain an independent judgment.
If I, for instance, acknowledge the complex mechanisms of dreams and hys-
teria, this does not mean that I attribute to the infantile sexual trauma the
exclusive importance that Freud apparently does. Still less does it mean that
I place sexuality so predominantly in the foreground, or that I grant it the
psychological universality which Freud, it seems, postulates in view of the
admittedly enormous role which sexuality plays in the psyche. As for Freud’s
therapy, it is at best but one of several possible methods, and perhaps does
not always offer in practice what one expects from it in theory. Nevertheless,
all these things are the merest trijles compared with the psychological principles
whose discovery i s Freud’s greatest merit; and to them the critics p a y f a r too little
attention.64
This disclaimer echoes the qualified endorsement which infiltrates practically
all of Jung’s psychoanalytic material, and it goes far in explaining Jung’s incomplete
appropriation of Freudian “concepts” in elucidating his “feeling-toned complex.”
He utilizes the concept of “condensation” in explaining the associative disturbances
of dementia praecox,66 and frankly confesses that Freud’s “theory” of repressed
ideas, in showing how trivial ideas may be accompanied by an intense feeling-tone,
“opens the way to understanding the inadequate feeling-tone in dementia prae-
COX.')^^ The concept of “symptomatic action” Freud elaborated in T h e Psycho-
pathology of Everyday Life is dubbed “a special instance of a complex constella-
tion.”s7 Jung’s “complex displacement” is a rather obvious instance of Freudian
“sublimation.”6* The disturbances induced by the “complex constellation” in
everyday life “fi1uStrate” one leitmotif of The Interpretation of Dreams : repressed
thoughts are prone to disguise themselves in similarities of either a verbal or visual
sort.69 In a sample analysis of a case of paranoid dementia, Jung unravels psy-
chotic neologisms through Freudian “free association” to a stimulus word, be-
cause “In this way the idea can be associated in all directions and its various con-
nections
This judicious appropriation of neutral dream mechanisms, however, is never
equated with unqualified adherence to the sexual aetiology of the neuroses. The
prevalence of feeling-toned complexes of an erotic-sexual nature may account
for Freud’s aetiological emphasis on the sexual trauma, but “this does not mean that
54. C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of Dementia,Praecox (1907),” CW, 3: 4. Italics added.
55. Ibid., pp. 25-26.
56. Ibid., p. 34.
57. Ibid., p. 44.
58. Ibid., pp. 49-50.
59. Ibid., pp. 54-55.
60. Ibid., p. 111.
every hysteria can be traced back exclusively to sexuality. Any strong complex
can call forth hysterical symptoms in those SO disposed; at least it seems
Furthermore, whde Freud’s “hysterical” mechanisms suffice to explain the origin
of hysteria, they do not explain why dementia praecox may arise instead of hysteria.
Consequently, if Freud has ‘(strictly speaking, said all that is essential in his works
on hysteria, obsessional neurosis, and dreams,” Jung’s elucidation of dementia
praecox through a descriptive consideration of the more open-ended feeling-toned
complex “goes a little beyond the scope of Freud’s views.”62
Jung once more approaches psychoanalysis as a matter of theoretical pre-
disposition, not as a body of formulated dogma. His clear refusal to embrace the
sexual aetiology of the neuroses-the one aspect of psychoanalytic dogma that
was the testing ground for true adherents-was simply not conceptualized as
substantive grounds for dissent. On 5 October 1906, he wrote Freud that he would
shortly be sent “a little book” in which he [Jung] “approach(ed) dementia praecox
and its psychology from your [Freud’s] ~ t a n d p 0 i n t . l ’The
~ ~ autobiography restates
Jung’s apprehension of the work as a solid psychoanalytic contribution: it was
only because of h e r die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox that Jung actually
(‘came to know Freud.”64 I n his enthusiastic adoption of Jung as favored prot6g6,
Freud seemed strangely indifferent to the qualified nature of Jung’s appropriation
of the banner. Jung-cautious, open-minded, and uninterested in blind adherence
to dogma-was perfectly willing to consider himself a psychoanalyst on his own
clinical terms. Freud apparently made no attempt to discourage this beIief.85
IV
Jung’s “evolutionary” broadening of the libido concept in Wandlungen und
Symbole der Libido cannot be linked to a more self-conscious “break” with psycho-
analytic dogma in Uber die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox. His principal concern
in the latter work was simply to describe the feeling-toned complex with the mech-
anisms of dream-work elucidated in The Interpretation of Dreams, not to contest
the ability of “sexual libido” to account for the schizophrenic’s withdrawal from
reality.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that Jung perceived himself as a Freudian
renegade after Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido had been written. I n the Preface
to the important series of lectures he delivered at Fordham University in September
1912, he dutifully protested that his (‘modest and temperate criticism” proceeded
61. Ibid., pp. 67 and 133.
62. Ibid., pp. 35, 37-38.
63. Jung to Freud, 5 October 1906, FJL, p. 5.
64. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 149.
65. Two key letters beautifully illustrate the working of this arrangement, Jung’s modest reply to
Freud’s (missing) criticism of The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (Jung to Freud, 29 December 1906,
FJL, pp. 13-14)and Freud’s subsequent, almost self-effacingdenial of his criticism (Freud to Jung,
1 January 1907,FJL, p. 17). Freud’s letter is particularly noteworthy because it typifies his pa-
tronizing assurance that Jung’s professional reservations need not be taken at doctrinal face value.
In fact, Freud’s overdetermined suppositional writing embodies two distinct strains contributing
t o this assurance: 1)the implicit belief that Jung’s caution is only a matter of transitory “resistance”
to psychoanalytic insight, and 2) the added assumption that any outright “deviance” can be no
more than a calculating social pose. This latter contention is particularly easy to understand, in-
asmuch as J u g did make repeated mention of the need to make psychoanalysis socially palatable
to resistant outsiders, though he always distinguished this priority from his own intellectual and
clinical reservations.
from clinical work that ((in no wise approaches Freud’s quite extraordinary exp-
perience and insight,” but still might help ‘(expressthe observed facts more suitably
than Freud’s version of them.” Cloaking his reformulations with the mantle of
William James’ pragmatic rule, he denied that his attitude . . . signifies a ‘split’
((
in the psychoanalytic movement. Such schisms can only exist in matters of faith.
But psychoanalysis is concerned with knowledge and its ever-changing formula-
tions.”66
I n the course of these lectures, Jung repeatedly insists on the empirical open-
mindedness which has characterized his “loyalty” to Freud from the beginning.
Psychoanalysis, he begins, cannot be elaborated as ‘(awell-established, neatly round-
ed doctrine . . . from the practical and the theoretical side.” As his first demon-
stration of this tentative state of affairs, Jung refers not to his own clinical work
with schizophrenics, but to the progress from the narrow “trauma theory” of
neurosis to the clinical assumption of repression-a product of Freud’s own “bril-
liant empiri~isrn.”~~ Regrettable as it may be, psychoanalysts “have no presentable
theory,” and contrary to the opinions of his critics, Freud himself (‘is anything
rather than a theorist. He is an empiricist, as anyone must admit who is willing
to go at all deeply into Freud’s writings and to try to see his cases as he sees them.’J68
Yet, this ostensible paucity of “theory” hardly prevents Jung from enthusi-
astically endorsing Freud’s operational constructs. Freud’s concept of libido is
embraced as “that dynamic factor which we were seeking in order to explain the
shifting of the psychological scenery,” and Jung alleges he will retain its “sexual
meaning in the Freudian sense . . . as long as possible. . . .”69 With Freud, he agrees
that the same libido is operative before and after puberty, and that while its bio-
logical urgency remains insignificant until puberty, those affective phenomena of
childhood that fall “within the realm of the wider concept of sexuality” lack nothing
of “adult” intensity.7o His “subversion” of the libido concept is again portrayed
in innocuous evolutionary terminology which Freud himself has ostensibly sanc-
tioned. If the “energic” manifestations of libido remain constant, the difference
between immature and mature sexuality must really be conditioned by a change
in the “localization” of libido.7i I n utilizing this insight to arrive a t a “presexual
stage” of primal libido that functions to distill the real “energic” value out of the
libido concept, however, Jung can once more refer to the Schreber case history as
Freud’s own attempt to “come to terms” with the changed meaning of the original
sexual definition of libido, and tfber die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox as the
site of his own clinical moment of truth. The theory of dementia praecox, he submits,
could not be based “on the theory of displacements of libido sexually defined,”
for in dementia praecox the loss of the reality function is so extreme ‘(that it must
involve the loss of other instinctual forces whose sexual character must be denied
absolutely.” Consequently, reality cannot be a “function” of sex and the sexual
libido cannot be the sole proving ground for reality-tested adaptati~n.’~
66. C. G. Jung, “The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1912),” CW,4: 86.
67. Ibid., pp. 88-91-92; cf. 132-133.
68. Ibid., p. 142 and 167.
69. Ibid., p. 111.
70. Ibid., p. 115.
71. Ibid., p. 118.
72. Ibid., pp. 118-122.
The theoretical use Jung makes with his “energic” libido model is in itself
unexceptional, and hardly betokens the emotive “resistance” to psychoanalytic
insight Freud would quickly detect. He rejects Freud’s separation of a hypothetical
life instinct into an instinct for the preservation of the species (sexuality) and an
instinct of self-preservation (the nutritive function), arguing that for a long time
the life-process consists “only in the functions of nutrition and Yet,
Jung’s divergence from Freud is not substantive, but rather hinges on the semantic
ambiguity that Freud himself later found it easy to acknowledge. Jung too recog-
nizes the pleasurable quality of the infantile act of sucking, but rejects Freud’s infer-
ence of a “sexual quality” to this pleasure on reasonable empirical grounds. Variants
of the sucking impulse (e.g. sucking the thumb) may not directly serve the infant’s
food intake, but they can hardly constitute “sexual pleasures” on that count alone.
They more probably represent “nutritive pleasure” because “the form of pleasure
and the place where it is obtained belong entirely to the sphere of nutrition. The
hand which is used for sucking is being prepared in this way for the independent
act of feeding in the future.” To be sure, “bad habits” associated with sucking may
pass over into masturbation and retrospectively achieve a legitimate sexual charac-
ter, This does not mean, however, that the original act of sucking posits a distinct
sexual act along with its nutritive function:
Its sexual character can be argued only by a petitio principii, for the facts
show that the act of sucking is the first t o give pleasure, not the sexual function.
Obtaining pleasure is by no means identical with sexuality. We deceive our-
selves if we think that the two instincts exist side by side in the infant, for
then we project into the psyche of the child an observation taken over from
the psychology of adults.74
If this tempered denial of infantile sexuality represented a “break” with the
analytic tradition, it was one destined to gain more than a modicum of credibility.
Freud’s 1914 recognition of the developmental primacy of “anaclitic” object-
choice-the initial dependency of the sexual instinct on the ego instincts providing
nutritional gratiiication-amounts to the same operational conclusion.7~ I n his
own series of introductory lectures delivered five years later, Freud again expressed
a remarkably Jungian empirical outlook. His twenty-first lecture on the “Devel-
opment of the Libido and the Sexual Organization” exhibited that altogether
commendable open-mindedness which Jung sought t o discover in him all along.
“At the moment,” he confessed, “we are not in possession of any generally recog-
nized criterion of the sexual nature of a process, apart, once again, from a connection
with the reproductive function which we must reject as being too narro~-minded.”7~
He proceeded to label the infant’s “originally indifferent bodily pleasure” sexual
only because adult sexuality itself could not be defined as more than “organ plea-
sure”-usually, but not invariably, focusing on one pair of organs. Freud viewed
the theoretical possibility of a variant of organ pleasure which was not “sexual”
as abstruse and clinically unessential: “I know too little about organ pleasure and
its determinants.” This much, however, he readily confessed :
73. Ibid., p. 105.
74. Ibid., p. 107.
75. Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” SE, 14: 87.
76. Sigmund Freud, “Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part 3) (1917),” SE, 16: 320.
THE EMPIRICIST AS REBEL 23 1
. . . we call the dubious and indefinable pleasurable activities of earliest

childhood sexual because, in the course of analysis, we arrive at them from the
symptoms after passing through indisputably sexual material. They need not
necessarily themselves be sexual on that account-agreed !”
Jung’s subsequent modification of the aetiology of neurosis in the 1912 Fordham
lectures is no more substantive than his relatively inconsequential squabbling
over the existence of infantile sexuality. When he claims that the cause of patho-
genic conflict lies not in childhood experience but ((in the present moment,” he
means only to suggest that a contemporary obstacle has t o be encountered before
the libido can be jolted onto that regressive tract that might reactivate childhood
fantasie~.’~Freud said essentially the same thing in a paper written the same
year.7e As a therapist, Jung’s strategy for cure remains identical to Freud’s: make
the regressive libido ‘(serviceable” again by freeing the patient from the burden of
“mistaken infantile fantasies” through enlightenment. Only when the libido has
seized hold of the actualities of life and is utilized to solve “necessary tasks” does
the job of analysis end.8o Always, Jung the empiricist stands steadfastly by the
results of his association experiments: if his test results point t o the unconscious
‘(complexes”inducing reaction disturbances, it is the same tests that point t o the
“present” site of neurotic conflict.81
Investigation of the relevant Jungian texts circumscribes with still greater

clarity the question this inquiry first sought to pose: in what sense can Jung be held
accountable for a self-willed “break” with his senior colleague? Jung hardly consid-
ered himself a derelict Freudian during this period, and in terms of his cautious
theoretical development, there is little reason why he should have felt obliged to
do so. He had openly articulated the empirical ground rules governing his loyalty
to Freudian doctrine as early as 1906, and in his subsequent work he really produced
nothing that betrayed them. I n his initial characterization of the sexual aetiology
of the neuroses as a “delicate theoretical question,” Jung certainly gave testimony
to a very real difference between himself and Freud, but it was an honest difference
that characterized the entire duration of his collaboration and which Freud himself
cheerfully accepted for some six years.
The longstanding assumption that the import of Wandlungen und Symbole
der Libido was in itself suflicient to reorient Freud to the ((deviant” implications
of Jung’s mythological research is simply not sustained by a close examination
of the relevant correspondence of this period. As early as June 1910, we noted,
Freud had reacted to a draft version of the first part of this work in a wholly unex-
ceptional way, making minor textual corrections, isolating one “untenable point,”
but concluding that (‘everything essential” in the essay was right. This preliminary
approval established a positive rapport which extended through the summer of
77. Ibid., p. 324.
78. Jung, “The Theory of Psychoanalysis,” CW, 4: 162-166, 168, 170; also C. G. Jung, “Psycho-
analysis and Neurosis (1913),” CW, 4: 246-251.
79. See Sigmund Freud, “Types of Onset of Neurosis (1912),” SE, 12: 231-238.
80. Jung,“The Theory of Psychoanalysis,” CW, 4: 188-189, 224.
81. Ibid., pp. 148-150, 181.
1912.82 It was only when Jung wrote in the fall of 1911 of his proposal t o “supple-
ment” the libido concept articulated in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sex-
uality with a “genetic factor” that would make it applicable t o dementia praecox
that Freud even broached the possibility of a misunder~tanding.~~ Yet, after Jung
restated at greater length his clinical inability t o reduce the loss of the reality
function in dementia praecox to the repression of a libido that reduced to sexual
hunger,S4 Freud promptly reasserted an empirical open-mindedness that probably
helped confirm Jung’s own certainty about the suitability of his revisions within
psychoanalytic theory:
I am all in favour of your attacking the libido question and I myself am ex-
pecting much light from your efforts. Often, it seems, I can go for a long while
without feeling the need t o clarify an obscure point, and then one day I am
compelled t o by the pressure of facts or by the influence of someone else’s
ideas.85
Four months later, Freud restated this approval in a way which explicitly conceded
the possibility of an “independent” disciple whose revisionist formulations could
be naturally subsumed within a flexible, empirical, psychoanalytic fold :
I am eagerly looking forward t o your second libido paper with its new concept
of the libido, because I imagine that the “Declaration of Independence” you
announced a while ago is expressed in it and may indeed have related to nothing
else. You will see that I am quite capable of listening and accepting, or of
waiting until an idea becomes clearer to me.86
When the input of this correspondence is evaluated alongside Jung’s own

perception of his “loyalty” to Freud, the net effect is to recast the coordinates
circumscribing the Jung-Freud “split” in a new and prospectively more manage-
able way: the real issue to be examined is not why Jung “broke” with Freud, but
why Freud felt impelled after seven years to elevate relatively long-term differ-
ences with Jung to the status of major obstacles that would preclude any collab-
oration a t all. This is an extremely complex question which is well beyond the
scope of this essay, though the recent publication of the complete Freud-Jung
correspondence does make available a crucial tool for investigating the problem.
Before the burden of Jung’s “break” can be adequately refracted in the context
of Freud’s personal psychology, however, it will be necessary to clarify with new
precision the issues involved in the initial “adoption” of Jung. I n the remainder
of this essay, I simply want to highlight one such issue which is explicitly documented
in Freud’s correspondence with other colleagues, but which is in fact implicit in
the textual analysis of Jung’s own psychoanalytic writings.
This concerns the paradoxical quality of Jung’s long-term collaboration with
the Viennese psychoanalytic circle. While it is possible to accept Jung’s initial
distinction between the “sexual theory” and the “psychological theory” as a matter
of outright intellectual honesty, it is more difficult t o explain Freud’s total willing-
82. For key demonstrations of this rapport, see Freud to Jung, 1 September 1911, FJL, p. 441 and
Freud to Jung, 12 November 1911, FJL, p. 459.
83. Freud to Jung, 30 November 1911, FJL, p. 469.
84. Jung to Freud, 11 December 1911, FJL, p. 471.
85. Freud to Jung, 17 December 1911, FJL, p. 472.
86. Freud to Jung, 21 April 1912, FJL, p. 500; Cf. Freud to Jung, 13 June 1912, FJL, p. 510.
new to embrace Jung on his own delimited terms. As both a professional and social
movement, psychoanalysis was squarely predicated upon the developmental
vicissitudes and repressed offshoots of the sexual instinct. This simple truth, the
legacy of Freud’s split with Breuer over the unquestioned supremacy of “defensive”
hysterias, rapidly became the infallible gauge through which the psychoanalyst’s
therapeutic integrity and his critic’s post-Oedipal maturity could be measured.
As a therapy for the neuroses, its claim to distinction and its revolutionary legacy
revolved principally on the new-found motive power of the sexual instinct, “the
most important and only constant source of energy of the neurosis.8’
Moreover, apart from the aetiological reductionism by which psychoanalysis
became clinically distinctive, the social reaction to its exclusive reliance on sexual
aetiology went far in determining the way the psychoanalytic movement could be
conceptualized by both followers and critics. By contending that the sexual factor
was operative in a11 neuroses, psychoanalysis unquestionably threatened a Viennese
haute bourgeoisie saturated with the moralistic-scientific culture of law.88 Sub-
sequently, the movement’s social credibility had to be sought within the coordinates
imposed by an assaulting social value system. Concurrently with a clinical reduc-
tionism which dictated how psychoanalysis could cure went a culturally induced
selectivity which determined what psychoanalysis could mean: the sexual question
became the only significant institutional question.89
These considerations make the initial gulf between Jung and Freud much
greater than Jung ever believed it to be. Behind Jung’s free-floating conceptu-
alization of psychoanalysis, however, lies a second more relevant question : what
prevented Freud from straightening Jung out on the centrality of the “sexual
question” from the very beginning of their association? Why did he name as his
heir apparent a disciple whose ruthless empiricism undercut the social and clinical
crusade that was already well under way?
To a degree, these questions can be approached by resorting to the wish-
fulfilling prophecy that Jung’s theoretical timidity would yield to the libidinal
input of additional clinical experience. This hope is optimistically broached in
Freud’s second letter to Jung of 7 October 1906 and by 6 December of that year
Freud was willing to construe Jung’s substantive reservations as a veritable promise
“to trust me for the present in matters where your experience does not enable you
to make up your own mind. . . From this confident, wish-fulfilling inception,
Freud proceeded to designate Jung his crown prince successor with an alacrity and
87. Sigmund Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905),” SE, 7: 163.
88. See Carl E. Schorske, “Politics and the Psyche in fin de sihcle Vienna: Schnitzler and Hofmann-
sthd,” American Historical Review 66 (1961): 933 and Jones, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 2:
108-109.
89. I explore the relationship between the development of instinct theory and the institutional
priorities of the psychoanalytic movement more deeply in my History of Aggression in Freud, un-
published Senior Thesis, Princeton University, 1973, pp. 141-151. The interdependence between
the medical and social conceptualization of psychoanalysis and the reception of Freud’s sexual
theories has been documented for the case of America by John C. Burnham, Psychoamlyais and
American Medicine, 1894-1918: Medicine, Science, and CuUure, Psychological Issues Monograph 20
(New York: International Universities Press, 1967), pp. 108 ff. and, more fully, by Nathan Hale,
Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in th United States, 1876-1917 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1971), especially pp. 189-194, 267-273, and 291-307.
90. Freud to Jung, 7 October 1906, FJL, p. 5 ; also Freud to Jung, 6 December 1906, FJL, p. 13
and Freud to Jung, 19 A p d 1908, F J L , p. 140.
finality that cannot be objectively explained on the basis of Jung’s published

“defences” of psychoanalysis and his own circumscribed research interests. For
Freud, it apparently sufficed that Jung should never abandon any portion of the
theory essential t o Jung. After Jung’s first brief visit to Vienna in early March
1907, Freud felt able t o confide t o his protege the special fate that awaited him:
Your visit was most delightful and gratifying: I should like to repeat in writing
various things that I confided t o you by word of mouth, in particular, that
you have inspired me with confidence for the future, that I now realize that
I am as replaceable as everyone else and that I could hope for no one better
than yourself, as I have come to know you, t o continue and complete my work.
I am sure you will not abandon the work, you have gone into it too deeply and
seen for yourself how exciting, how far-reaching, and how beautiful our sub-
ject is.91
A mere three months later, Freud bemoaned that Jung’s letters had become a
“necessity” for him, and in mid-August reported that his personality had been
“impoverished” by a temporary interruption in their corresponden~e.~~
It was precisely because Freud’s wishful adoption was prematurely affected
a t such an early stage in their relationship that Jung’s empirical reservations
could for a time recede into the background, intellectually acknowledged by Freud
but emotively dissociated from his affective sense of Jung’s “chosen-ness.” As
early as 31 March 1907, shortly after the first brief visit to Vienna, Jung admitted
to Freud outright his great difficulty with the “broadened conception of sexuality,’’
and proposed that for purposes of clarity and potential support, the sexual terminol-
ogy should be reserved only for the most extreme forms of “libido,” while “a less
offensive collective term should be established for all the libidinal manifestations.”gS
Freud’s reply, while firm, acknowledged the tactical plausibility of Jung’s suggestion
without discrediting or even questioning the private motives that underlie it.94
I n mid-August of that same year, Jung interrogated Freud on the aetiological
singularity of the sexual drive in a way which could easily have cleared up disparate
perceptions, frankly asking whether or not hysterical symptoms existed which
“though co-determined by the sexual complex, are predominantly conditioned by a
sublimation or by a non-sexual complex . . .’’95 Freud proceeded to feed Jung’s
difficulty with the “sexual question” with an answer that was benign in tone and
noncommittal in content:
For the present I do not believe that anyone is justified in saying that sexuality
is the mother of all feelings. Along with the poet, we know of two instinctual
91. Freud t o Jung, 7 April 1907, FJL,p. 27.
92. Freud to Jung, 10 July 1907, FJL,p. 75 and Freud t o Jung, 18 August 1907, FJL,p. 76.
93. Jung to Freud, 31 March 1907, FJL,p. 25.
94. Freud to Jung, 7 April 1907, FJL,p. 28: “I appreciate your motives in trying to sweeten the
sour apple, but I do not think you will be successful. Even if we call the ucs. “psychoid,” it will still
be the ucs., and even if we do not call the driving force in the broadened conception of sexuality
“libido,” it will still be libido, and in every inference we draw from i t we shall come back to the very
thing from which we were trying to divert attention with our nomenclature. . .. We are being asked
neither more nor less than to abjure our belief in the sexual drive. The only answer is to profess i t
openly.” Jung’s next letter to Freud did not indicate any perception of a “rebuff”; Jung apparently
did not even believe Freud was dissuading him from this terminological enterprise: “Of course YOU
are right about ‘libido,’ but my faith in the efficacy of sweeteners is deep-rooted -for the present”
(Jung to Freud, 11 April 1907, FJL,p. 32). Cf. also Jung t o Freud, 19 August 1907, FJL,p. 78.
95. Jung to Freud, 19 August 1907, FJL,p. 79.
sources. . . . I regard (for the present) the role of sexual complexes in hysteria
merely as a theoretical necessity and do not infer it from their frequency and
intensity. Proof, I believe, is not yet possible. . . . I know that we somewhere
encounter the conflict between ego-cathexis and object-cathexis, but without
direct (clinical) observation I cannot even spe~ulate.~6
Jung’s reply to this letter capped an interchange that could only serve to reinforce
the viability of his own peculiar variant of “loyalty” to the movement: “I am very
grateful t o you for formulating your view of the role of sexuality; it is much what
I e~pected.”~’In the course of 1908, Freud bypassed at least two equally con-
spicuous opportunities for setting Jung straight.98
Such candid reservations could easily have undermined Jung’s singular status
with Freud. They did not. From the summer of 1907 until well after the appearance
of Part I of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido in the fall of 1911, Freud was more
than willing to utilize Jung as a supportive, sympathetic ally in the fitful and often
exasperating propagation of psychoanalysis. Indeed, not only were Jung’s empirical
qualms destined to be swallowed up by this mutual undertaking, but the very
tactical compromises Freud espoused in the opportunistic quest to win new adherents
could only have minimized the import of these qualms in Jung’s own mind. Thus,
by repeatedly urging upon Jung the necessity for defining adherence to psycho-
analysis loosely enough to attract. ambivalent personalities who were prominent
in the main current of institutional psychiatry, Freud in reality lent credence t o
Jung’s own subjective certainty that his psychoanalysis was the empirical equiva-
lent of Freud’s, that it in fact abandoned no portion of the theory essential t o
either of them.
In this regard, the case of Bleuler is perhaps the most instructive. One of the
great pioneers of psychiatry, revising the very concept of dementia praecox and
making major contributions to the understanding of autism and ambivalence,
Jung’s chief on the Burgholdi staff may have been receptive to psychoanalysis
as early as 1901, and Jung pronounced him “completely converted” t o the cause
in his first letter to Freud in the fall of 1906. By the spring of 1907, however, Jung
wrote Freud that Bleuler demonstrated resistances “more vigorous than ever,”
“insuperable unconscious resistances to analyzing his own dreams and associations,”
and “emotional inhibitions” to grasping the libido c0ncept.9~ By the fall of 1910,
Freud’s estimation of Bleuler had plummeted in accord with Jung’s recurring
criticisms, but he remained intent on using all his personal influence to win Bleuler’s
96. Freud t o Jung, 27 August 1907, FJL, p. 80.
97. Jung to Freud, 29 August 1907, FJL, p. 81.
98. I n March, Jung wrote Freud of his “concurrence” with the pronounceiyent of the “young
Binswanger” that while certain cases of hysteria turned out as Freud predicted, . . . we must assume
that t,here are various other forms of hysteria for which different formulas will have to be found”
(Jung t o Freud, 3 March 1908, FJL, p. 127). Freud acknowledged the reference t o Binswanger
without mentioning or disputing the “pronouncement” (Freud to Jung, 5 March 1908, FJL, pp.
131-132). I n August, Jung, writing Freud of Stekel’s new book Conditions of Nervous Anziety,
regretted the author’s “frequent neglect of the conflict, which s e e m t o me far more important than
the sexual troubles, these, as we know, can be endured for years so long as no conflict is piled on top
of them. Some cases even show quite clearly that the symptoms arise not from sexual defects but
from the conflict” (Jung to Freud, 11 August 1908, FJL, p. 166). Freud subsequently subscribed
“in every detail t o (Jung’s) criticism of Stekel’s book,” though he thought the criticism on the whole
too harsh. No mention was made of the important distinction Jung’s criticism incorporated (Freud
t o Jung, 13 August 1908, FJL, pp. 168-169).
99. Jung to Freud, 5 October 1906, FJL,p. 5 and Jung t o Freud, 31 March 1907, FJL,p. 25.
allegiance, however nominal, to psychoanalysis. Commenting on his own frustrating

correspondence with Bleuler, Freud informed Jung that the loss of his chief “ . . .
would be regrettable and would widen the gulf between us and the others. Con-
sequently it is worth a sacrifice to hold him, of what I don’t know yet, . . . l l l o o
A week later, Jung informed Freud of Bleuler’s failure to defend psychoanalysis
against the attacks of Oppenheim a t the October meeting of German neurologists
in Berlin. Freud quickly decided to issue Bleuler a “kind of ultimatum.” He
confessed to Jung that the correspondence with Bleuler had up t o that point been
“exhausting,” for while agreeing with Jung’s low estimation of him on the one hand,
. . . on the other considerations of a selfish and sentimental nature, with which
you are acquainted, have inclined me t o moderation and, for instance, deterred
me from asking him the question which you suggest and which I would very
much have liked to ask, the famous question: Why didn’t you say so aloud?
(i.e., in Berlin).lol
When subsequent “softening up” by Jung revealed that Bleuler might join
the Zurich Psychoanalytic Society “if we are prepared to pay a very high price”
and produced a favorable letter from Bleuler t o Freud, the latter “rejoiced” at the
prospect of holding him. I n November, 1911, however, Jung was still complaining
to Freud of the harmful effects of Bleuler’s “stubborn opposition” and failure to
achieve reconciliation with psychoanalysis. By the end of the month, Freud in-
formed Jung that with Bleuler’s resignation from the Zurich Society, the ‘‘ ‘last
trouser-button of (his) patience had snapped.’ ” Even admission of this outright
failure to solicit Bleuler’s compromising good graces could not dampen Freud’s
willingness t o concede the importance of Bleuler’s support, however. Five months
later, he informed Jung t o his “regret” that Bleuler’s withdrawal from the Zurich
group “seems to have done the group more harm than I could foresee,” and added
he “would greatly welcome the news that he had rejoined.””J2
Such repentant misgivings were voiced long after Bleuler had articulated an
empirical viewpoint that drastically qualified the nature of any allegiance he
might give psychoanalysis. I n explaining to Freud his resignation from the Zurich
Society and hesitancy to join the International Psychoanalytic Association in the
fall of 1910, he had made explicit his personal rejection of any psychoanalytic
Weltanschauungwhose advancement required a sacrifice of personality, his scientific
antipathy to the “closed door” policies of institutional psychoanalysis, and his
disavowal of any Psychoanalytic Association that must serve as the carrier of a
“movement” and guard and proselytize the “truth.llloa
100. Freud to Jung, 23 October 1910, FJL, pp. 360-361.
101. Freud t o Jung, 31 October 1910, FJL, p. 365.
102. Jung to Freud, 13 November 1910, FJL, p. 371; Freud to Jung, 25 November 1910, FJL,
p. 372; Jung to Freud, 14 November 1911, FJL, p. 461; Jung to Freud, 24 November 1911, FJL,
466-467; Freud to Jung, 30 November 1911, FJL, p. 468; Freud to Jung, 21 April 1912, FJL, PP.
499-500.
103. Frane Alexander and Sheldon T. Selesnick, “Freud-Bleuler Correspondence,” Archives of
General Psychiatry 12 (1965)1-9. Ludwig Binswanger, one of Freud’s more accommodating“mediating
links” between psychoanalysis and academic psychiatry also “sounded out” Bleuler at the request
of the Zurich Society, and testified t o the integrity which underlay his reservations: “I thought that
Bleuler’s refusal to join ww a protest only against the union of science and this kind of scientific
conventicles.” See Ludwig Binswanger, Sigmund Freud: Reminiscences of a Friendship, trans. N.
Guterman (New York and London: Grune and Stratton, 1957), pp. 24-26.
Ironically, it was Jung who obtained firsthand exposure to Bleuler’s scientific

distance from psychoanalysis and who repeatedly felt summoned to deflate Freud’s
unrealistic prophecy that he might still be won. In the course of this task, it was
Jung the disciple who was repeatedly subjected to a “Freudian” proselytizing
pragmatism that minimized theoretical uncertainty to the point of virtual insig-
nificance. Indeed, when it was a question of garnering a viable connecting link to
the academic community, Freud was more than willing to become an open-minded
empiricist with a vengeance. To Bleuler he protested that the International As-
sociation was not “exclusive” and even offered him the opportunity t o propose
changes that would make it acceptable to him. The “doctrinal” implications of
this compromising attempt to accommodate a recalcitrant empiricist could hardly
have been lost on Jung.
This opportunistic depreciation of theoretical recalcitrance on behalf of nec-
essary proselytizing activity helps explain the possibility of Jung’s own extended
discipleship, but it does not explain the inevitability of his initial adoption by Freud.
If Freud’s own “character armor” (Reich) preserved the explicit belief that in-
creased clinical experience and reflection would move Jung in the direction of
orthodoxy, it remains necessary to isolate the reason why Jung alone seems to
have evoked such defensive maneuvering in the first place.
Previously published Freud correspondence seems to point in a promising
interpretive direction. We know, for example, that Karl Abraham, the most ortho-
dox of Freud’s disciples, expressed continual qualms over Jung’s silence on the
“sexual theory,” and that Freud repeatedly refused to take his pupil’s reservations
to heart. I n a letter of 3 May 1908, Freud tried to pacify an offended Abraham
whose paper for the upcoming Salzburg Congress had generated a “slight conflict”
with Jung. While sympathizing with Abraham, Freud bluntly stated his unwilling-
ness t o let “serious dissensions” arise between his two prot6g6s:
Please be tolerant and do not forget that it is easier for you than it is for Jung
to follow my ideas, for in the first place you are completely independent, and
then you are closer to my intellectual constitution because of racial kinship,
while he as a Christian and a pastor’s son finds his way to me only against
great inner resistance. His association with us is the more valuable for that.
I nearly said that it was only by his appearance on the scene that psycho-
analysis escaped the danger of becoming a Jewish national affair.’”
Freud here candidly owned up t o the subjective, personal reasons impelling him
to accept Jung’s loyalty on Jung’s own terms. As the only important Gentile
member of the original psychoanalytic group, Jung was always destined t o be the
crucial bridge to a hostile Gentile world. Three months later, in anticipation of
his first visit to Zurich-Burgholzli, Freud was willing to broach this mission to
Jung himself. “My selfish purpose, which I frankly confess,” he wrote, “is to
persuade you to continue and complete my work by applying to psychoses what
I have begun with neuroses. With your strong and independent character, with
your Germanic blood which enables you to command the sympathies of the
public more readily than I, you seem better fitted than anyone else I know to carry
104. Freud t o Abraham, 3 May 1908, in A Psycho-Amlytie Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud
and Karl Abraham 1907-1986 (hereafter PAL), ed. H. C. Abraham and E. L. Freud, trans. B.
M m h and H. C. Abraham (dew York: Baslc Books, 1965), p. 34.
out this mission.”105 This perception not only helps explain Freud’s prolonged
defense of Jung’s theoretical divergence, but underlies his subsequent insistence
that Jung assume the permanent presidency of the International Psychoanalytic
Association at the Second Congress a t Nuremberg in 1910. Fritz Wittels, Freud’s
earliest biographer, recalls the protest meeting this insistence generated among
the Viennese analysts and the counter-argument Freud presented to his angry
colleagues a t the time :
“Most of you are Jews, and therefore you are incompetent to win friends for
the new teaching. Jews must be content with the modest role of preparing
the ground. It is absolutely essential that I should form ties in the world of
general science. I am getting on in years, and am weary of being perpetually
attacked. We are all in danger.” Seizing his coat by the lapels, he said, “They
won’t even leave me a coat to my back. The Swiss will save us-will save me,
and all of you as we11.”lo6
I n a letter of 23 July 1908, Freud hinted to Abraham that Jung had t o be
salvaged for the movement a t any cost. Jung’s personal skepticism was considered
less important than the social benefits of his institutional affiliation. I n reply to
Abraham’s grave doubts, Freud was willing to “surrender” Bleuler, but planned
to go to Zurich to patch things up with Jung.lo7 When this meeting appeared to
ensure Jung’s dedication to the movement, Freud was frankly jubilant,loS and
for the next five years continued to give Jung’s empirical skepticism the benefit
of the doubt whenever codict arose. On 26 December 1908, he defended Jung’s
refusal to publish Abraham’s reviews in the Jahrbuch in strident terms: “Jung
made a decision that is obviously within his rights as editor and I believe that
anyone who undertakes office and responsibility is entitled to a certain amount
of elbow room.” On 27 April 1909, he defended Jung’s paper on “The Significance
of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual,” claiming his student had “taken
a part of the whole, but he has done SO very effectively.” Over a year later, when
Abraham communicated an improved prognosis on the possibility of overcoming
“Jung’s resistance,” Freud was particularly gratified : “I am glad your prognosis
in the matter of Jung is good, I know you are not exactly an optimist about him.”lOg
It was not until 27 March 1913, that Freud finally appeared ready t o accept Jung’s
work a t its theoretical and clinical face value, and hence sacrifice any institutional
assets he might represent.”O
105. Freud to Jung, 13 August 1908, F J L , p. 168.
106. Fritz Wittels, Sigmund Freud: His Personality, His Teaching, and His School, trans. Eden m d
Cedar Paul (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), p. 140. Cf. David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish
.
Mystical Tradition (Princeton: Van NoFtrand, 19581, p 55 65, 122-123. Wittels’ account of this
scene parallels the reminiscences of Wdhelm Stekel, W ~ Ocliimed responsibility for organizing the
protest meeting, and has been conceded basic accuracy even by Ernest Jones. See Wilhelm Stekel,
Autobiography (New York: Liveright, 1950), PP. 128-129 and Ernest Jones, Free Associations: Memo-
ries of a Psycho-Analyst (London: Hogarth, 1959), pp. 215-216.
107. Freud t o Abraham, 23 July 1908, F A L , pp. 46-47.
108. Freud t o Abraham, 29 September 1908, F A L , p. 51.
109. Freud to Abraham, 26 December 1908, F A L , p. 62; Freud to Abraham, 27 April 1909, F A L ,
p. 78; Freud to Abraham, 11 August 1912, P A L , p. 122.
110. Freud to Abraham, 27 March 1913, F A L , p. 137; “Jung is in America, but only for five wee&,
that is he will soon be back. I n any case he is doing more for himself than for psycho-analysis. I
have greatly retreated from him, and have no more friendly thoughts for him. His bad theories do
not compensate me for his disagreeable character. H e is following in Adler’s wake, without being
consistent as that pernicious creature.”
The general tenor of this correspondence lends considerable credence to the

innocent protestations of “loyalty” that infiltrate all of Jung’s major “deviant”
works. Freud, it seems, obsessed with the institutional fate of his struggling brain-
child, consciously deceived Jung in allowing him to believe his conditional appro-
priation of dream mechanics and energetics constituted full fledged loyalty to
the movement. Given Jung’s distorted working assumptions about the limited
nature of psychoanalysis, he never had reason to doubt that his “empirical” modi-
fications followed a sensible evolutionary logic and would be ultimately endorsed
by Freud himself.
Jung never “broke” with Freud. Furthermore, his limited conception of
psychoanalysis and his deferent tone to Freud belie the retrospective clarity with
which Jung himself foresaw the fatal course his Freudian collaboration would take.
I n reality, he continued even after the rupture to be a loyal disciple of Freud on
the modest grounds in which he conceived of discipleship.”’ The entire episode,
therefore, is hardly indicative of an evolving breech that eventually reached crisis
proportions. It is rather a long and ominous testimony to Freud’s emotional
investment in the institutionalized movement his work had created, an investment
so enormous that it might permit him t o appropriate as loyal adherents honest
clinicians whose “empirical” shortcomings left them with something less than
the faith.
111. Cf. Roland Cahen, “Vingt Ans Apres,” in Contact with Juw: Essays on the Influenee of his
Work and Personality, pp. 6-7.

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Jowmal of the History of the Beh5a&vd S&mcee

THE EMPIRICIST AS REBEL:

“It is a hard lot to have to work alongside the father creator.”

Jung’s rejoinder, if not so virulent, issued from comparable premises. Arguing

of borderline phenomena might be considered more appropriately in terms of the

The historians of psychoanalysis, with the notable exception of Henri Ellen-

Critical scholarship has similarly overvalued the reformulation of the “incest”

. . . we call the dubious and indefinable pleasurable activities of earliest

Investigation of the relevant Jungian texts circumscribes with still greater

When the input of this correspondence is evaluated alongside Jung’s own

finality that cannot be objectively explained on the basis of Jung’s published

allegiance, however nominal, to psychoanalysis. Commenting on his own frustrating

Ironically, it was Jung who obtained firsthand exposure to Bleuler’s scientific

The general tenor of this correspondence lends considerable credence to the

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