JUNG, Carl (1875-1961) - photo 1
JUNG, Carl (1875-1961) - photo 2
JUNG, Carl (1875-1961) - photo 3

JUNG, Carl (1875-1961)

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£ 12 600
Auction dateClassic
14.12.2022 10:30UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
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ID 870804
Lot 61 | JUNG, Carl (1875-1961)
JUNG, Carl (1875-1961)

Autograph letter signed (‘C.G. Jung’) to Rivkah Sch[ärf] Kluger (‘Liebe Freu Doctor!’), Küsnacht, Zürich, 9 March 1959.

In German. 11/2 pages, 293 x 209mm, printed notepaper. Envelope.



Jung on penetrating the darkness of depression: an elegiac letter to his former student, Dr Rivkah Kluger. ‘I am sorry that you are so distressed’, the letter opens [translation]. ‘As a rule, "depression" means "being forced down". This may happen when one consciously feels to be not "up" somehow. Thus, I do not want to renounce this hypothesis offhand. If I had to live in a foreign country, I would select one or several people who appear to me to be likeable, and I would try to be useful to them, so that libido would come to me from the outside, even a somewhat simple form of it, such as the wagging tail of a dog, maybe. I would nurture animals and plants, and their thriving would bring me joy. I would surround myself with beauty – no matter how primitive and simple – objects, colours, sounds. I would eat and drink good things. When the darkness became denser, I would not rest but penetrate to its core and bottom until, within the pain itself, a light would appear to me, because in excessu affectus, nature herself will reverse itself. Full of violent rage, I would turn against myself and melt my lead with its heat. I would renounce everything and engage in the basest activities if my depression should drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark god until my hip was dislocated. After all, he is the same light and the same blue sky that he withholds from me’. This is what he would do, Jung continues – what others would do is another question: ‘No half measures or half-heartedness, though’. His correspondent’s dream shows her what [the Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz] would do, although Rivkah Kluger will not be able to do the same in California; he offers a suggestion for how she might do so symbolically. Abruptly, his mood darkens: ‘I might just as well be dead already. What would you have of me then? The world is there, and people live in it whether or not I exist. Nobody asked me what my world looked like when I lost my wife after 53 years of marriage. Our lives are grounded in ourselves, not in others’. Passing no further comment, he thanks his correspondent’s husband for the cigars, which he saves for Sundays only.



Dr Rivkah Kluger (1907-1987) trained under Carl Jung as a student, later practising for many years in Los Angeles and teaching seminars on mythology and biblical stories across the world. Jung’s mention of wrestling with the dark god until his hip was dislocated is a reference to Genesis 32:22-32. Unpublished.





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