The Jung-Kirsch Letters

The Correspondence of C.G. Jung and James Kirsch

Ann Conrad Lammers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138843493
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317276906
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

This book charts Carl Gustav Jung's 33-year (1928-61) correspondence with James Kirsch, adding depth and complexity to the previously published record of the early Jungian movement. Kirsch was a German-Jewish psychiatrist, a first-generation follower of Jung, who founded Jungian communities in Berlin, Tel Aviv, London, and Los Angeles. Their letters tell of heroic survival, brilliant creativity, and the building of generative institutions, but these themes are darkened by personal and collective shadows.

The Nazi era looms over the first half of the book, shaping the story in ways that were fateful not only for Kirsch and his career but also for Jung and his. Kirsch trained with Jung and acted as a tutor in Jewish psychology and culture to him. In 1934, fearing that anti-Semitism had seized his teacher, Kirsch challenged Jung to explain some of his publications for the Nazi-dominated Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Jung's answer convinced Kirsch of his sincerity, and from then on Kirsch defended him fiercely against any allegation of anti-Semitism.

We also witness Kirsch's lifelong struggle with states of archetypal possession: his identification with the interior God-image on the one hand, and with unconscious feminine aspects of his psyche on the other. These complexes were expressed, for Kirsch, in physical symptoms and emotional dilemmas, and they led him into clinical boundary violations which were costly to his analysands, his family and himself.

The text of these historical documents is translated with great attention to style and accuracy, and generous editorial scaffolding gives glimpses into the writers' world. Four appendices are included: two essays by Kirsch, a series of letters between Hilde Kirsch and Jung, and a brief, incisive essay on the Medical Society for Psychotherapy. This revised edition includes primary material that was unavailable when the book was first published, as well as updated footnotes and minor corrections to the translated letters.

Index

Page references in italic indicate illustrations. These are also listed in full at the beginning of the book, after the Contents. With regard to footnotes, where a subject or person is discussed only in a footnote, with at most a passing mention in the text, the page number is followed by the letter ‘n’ and the note number, e.g. 3n1; but where discussion is to be found in both the text and notes, only the simple page number is given, with the following exceptions: (1) where the note, but not the textual reference, continues onto the next page, both references are given; (2) where the identity is obscure in the text but clarified in a note, the note is given after the page number, but enclosed in brackets, e.g. 170[n62].

• AAGP see Allgemeine ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie
• Abe, Masao 234[n108]
• Abimelech 272
• Acher, “the Second” (Elisha ben Abuyah) 152[n81]
• active imagination 166, 176, 189, 217, 290, 292
• Adam 147, 149, 153
• Eve’s creation from rib of 223–4
• Adam Kadmon 142n38
• Adler, Gerhard xiii, xxx, 41n34, 58, 62, 102n32, 105, 119, 157n2, 159n9, 185, 249–50, 252, 316
• on geomancy 127n73
• photograph 226
• Adler, Miriam_ photograph 226
• adoption, as children of God 153
• Adumbratio Kabbalae Christianae 142–3, 143[n42]
• affects 267, 271
• in the Jew 50
• in Kirsch 189, 192–3, 195, 210, 220, 231, 251
• Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius 87[n80], 88
• Ah...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface by Thomas B. Kirsch
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction by Ann Conrad Lammers
• 1928–1932, Berlin
• 1933–1934, Tel Aviv
• 1935–1938, London
• 1940–1947, Los Angeles
• 1948–1949, The Institute
• 1950–1952, Aion and Job
• 1953, Jungians in L.A.
• 1954, Habent sua fata
• 1955–1958, Zurich/Tokyo
• 1959–1961, Mysterium
• Appendix A: “Then he will open the ears of men” James Kirsch, Tel Aviv, spring 1934
• Appendix B: Letters of C. G. Jung and Hilde Kirsch
• Appendix C: “‘The Red One’: A psychological interpretation of a story by Jack London.” Lecture given on the 22nd of May, 1954, at Carmel, California, by James Kirsch, MD
• Appendix D: A brief history of the AAGP/IAAGP
• Editor’s note
• Translators’ note
• List of letters
• Selected bibliography
• Index