“Perhaps you will serve as our guide tomorrow. Dr. Freud is an avid hiker, as am I. We would relish being escorted by one who knows the way.” It was the young doctor at his most charming.
“There are others who know the terrain better than I,” Eleanor said. “But I would be honored to serve as your guide.”
The next morning, Eleanor sat at a breakfast table some distance from the two visiting doctors, and she took great delight in seeing them dive into the rich offerings of eggs, bacon, biscuits, and the pancakes that were a camp specialty. Afterward, when they met outside the dining hall, ready to depart, Jung caught Eleanor with a surprise.
“I’m afraid Dr. Freud has been stricken with a stomach ailment and will not be able to join us.”
The announcement came suddenly, at a time when Eleanor could not modify the day’s plan, no matter how uneasy she felt. The tall, confident Dr. Jung allowed his robust enthusiasm to carry the decision. “I do not think that the good doctor’s incapacity will dampen our appreciation of a day in the mountains. What do you think?”
“I think we should carry on,” she said, perhaps too hastily and against what would have been thought at home as better judgment. And so that is how the two of them ended up spending the afternoon alone together in the Adirondacks wilderness.
Dr. Freud had indeed missed some of the strenuous parts of the Putnam Camp visit, having been famously indisposed, some stomach ailment he blamed on American food. Since she was the one quite familiar with the mountainscape, Eleanor chose the more strenuous course, but also the one that left the two hikers quite alone, which, considering the young doctor’s demeanor and their obvious attraction to each other, Eleanor recognized only afterward as potentially dangerous. It was, as expected, on that long arduous walk in the New York wilds, far away from the other guests, that the attraction became manifest, and the potential danger heightened.
17
A ROMANTIC IDYLL
Not giving much thought to the fact that now the two hikers would be alone together and how that might be perceived, Eleanor and her guest charged off, following the course of the brook bordering one side of camp up a hill, straight into what Jung called “a northern primeval forest.” It didn’t take long for the guest to realize he had entered a whole new way of hiking, with a whole new way of leading and being led, the Putnam way. Again, without much thought, Eleanor was simply modeling what uncles and aunts and cousins had modeled before, entering the expansive wilderness of their family camp with gusto and total commitment of personal energy. From earliest girlhood, she remembered one lederhosen-clad elder or another bursting forth with, “Follow me,” and striding up some steep path to a waterfall or a meadow she had not seen before. “Look at this beauty,” she would hear from earliest age, and look around in wonder at what family heritage had caused to be her own.
Carl Jung seemed overcome with the joy of being out in the American vastness, and at such a pace, with such a vibrant woman. He had been effusive ever since stepping off the train at the Lake Placid railway station, the scale of the country’s wilderness having been in his imagination from childhood, this “Wild West.” Now actually finding himself in the center of it made him explode with appreciation, even while finding himself catching his breath.
“Look at this,” he would say, waving his arms out at the magnificent pines and shrubs he saw all around. At one point they startled a pair of deer from a small meadow, and at another they saw a bald eagle off in the distance. “This is everything one would hope for,” he said. Eleanor found herself absorbing his enthusiasm with a vicarious delight.
Rain had been falling intermittently for days, with wind still lightly gusting as they scrambled along narrow trails, over tree roots and black mire, and scaled a series of rude wooden ladders propped against boulders.
“I love showing all this off,” Eleanor said at one of their infrequent pauses along the familiar trail.
“It is a unique opportunity,” the energetic Jung said, catching his breath. “A unique opportunity of becoming acquainted with the utter wildness of this formidable landscape.”
Always ahead of him the vision of Eleanor, spry and cheerful, skipping forward in her long hiking skirt, expounding on the natural histories of their surroundings without a pause for breath, filled him with energy of his own.
“I used to come here as a girl,” she said. “It was my salvation.” She rattled off the names of flora and fauna and the mountain peaks as if she had been an Adirondack mountain tour guide all her life. They struggled up one last slope to reach finally a cliff edge where Eleanor announced, “Here it is, the view I wanted so much for you to see.”
And the Swiss doctor looked out at nothing but further layers of thick foliage, huge moss-covered boulders, and tall trees with endless other chains of remote, seemingly uninhabited mountains beyond mountains, stretching off to infinity, or at least to Canada.
“A wild glacial landscape,” he exclaimed. “Virgin forest as far as the eye can see.” And he took in also the image of the woman beside him, one that stayed with him indelibly for the next fifty years. “A breathtaking life force,” he concluded later on, giving the captivation of this first impression considerable thought.
The skies cleared and the wind stopped as if by command as they sat beside a stream and watched small trout darting about in a clear pool. Eleanor could not remember feeling so free or so animated. And further along, on a grassy flat beside another pool, she signaled that they would stop and sit again.
“I am sorry that your friend Dr. Freud is not seeing this,” Eleanor said, wondering how it might affect his dour nature. “I gather that he is something of a city dweller.”
“Actually, Dr. Freud loves his vacations in the mountains around Vienna,” Jung said. “His children find him hard to keep up with.”
“He seems not terribly fond of our mountains.”
“Oh, he finds much to like here. He is not feeling at his best—stomach ailments, you know. It is just that he is by nature a little cautious in his expression.”
“A caution that you do not seem to share,” Eleanor said with a smile.
“Dr. Freud finds me a bit unrestrained.”
“A little less restraint would be good for all of us,” Eleanor said, noticing her own comfort with this conversation. “I think Dr. James finds Dr. Freud a bit rigid and serious.”
“He seemed very pleased at meeting him.”
“Oh, yes. He believes Dr. Freud’s influence very significant and his lectures historic. He came to the conference especially to hear Dr. Freud’s ideas, and still—” She paused.
“He was not as impressed as he wanted to be?”
“Perhaps not as much as he expected to be. Dr. James found the lectures a little dry and mechanical. But he has said many times that he has no doubt that they will become the cornerstone of the new movement in psychology, here and in Europe, and that Dr. Freud will be thought of as one of the great innovators of the twentieth century.”
“Is that a prophecy?”
Eleanor laughed. “Oh my, I have been presumptuous in speaking for Dr. James.”
“And of my lectures?”
“You too will have your appeal, but perhaps after—” She stopped herself.
“After?” he said without taking any form of offense.
Eleanor looked down. “I didn’t mean to be judgmental.”
“No, no,” Jung interrupted. “I understand, and it has been said before. After I separate my ideas from Dr. Freud’s influence?”
Eleanor looked uncomfortable for just a moment, as if she had said too much. “Oh, I hope I have not been too forward. I did not mean to imply—”
He cut her off again. “You seem to have a very authoritative perspective on Dr. James, Mrs. Burden. And on the future.”
“Oh goodness,” she said. “I don’t mean to be all that. I am certainly sorry if I have been inappropriate.”
“Oh, no, it is quite appropriate. I enjoy the frankness.
Dr. Freud and I have been very close. On this trip alone we will spend seven weeks together. And yet we do indeed have our differences. Ones that Dr. Freud feels uncomfortable with, I fear. We agree on most matters, you realize. It is just that there exist some fundamental disagreements, ones we have not entirely worked out.”
“And what are those?”
“One superficial matter. In his treatment, for instance, Dr. Freud’s patients lie on a couch while he sits behind them silently, out of sight. I prefer a face-to-face method on chairs placed close together, more a dialogue between two interesting people.”
“And how is that so different?” Eleanor said.
“Dr. Freud believes the physician should intrude in no way on his patients’ free flow of thoughts. That distance is very important to him.”
“And you?”
“I do not wish to lose any facial expressions or physical manifestations.” Jung laughed. “I suppose you could say I cannot help myself.”
Even now in their conversation beside an Adirondack stream Eleanor could see that more passionate style at work, the doctor’s eyes studying her face, observing inflections in her voice, drawing her into the conversation with the intensity of those eyes. Dr. Freud she knew to be far more detached and objective.
“And there is a problem with that personal approach?” she asked.
“Dr. Freud would tell you that I contaminate the process,” Jung said, then laughed again.
“I think Dr. James would have more sympathy with your methods.”
“I am gratified to hear you say that. You seem to know well the man’s mind.”
“Dr. James and I have become very close over the years, perhaps you know.”
“I envy you that.”
“He served as something of a godfather to me as I was growing up. He was a friend of my mother, who died when I was eight, and I think he saw himself as one of my protectors, a bit formal and distant perhaps, but one I very much needed. He gave away my hand at my wedding, you know.”
“So I understand. And now?”
“Now we are very close, and he is more a confidant. Upon my return from Vienna in 1898, I told him of my encounter with Dr. Freud and his ideas, and I made sure that he received The Interpretation of Dreams the following year. I knew they would find much of value in each other.”
“Dr. James must have been deeply impressed, seeing you no longer as a bright-eyed college girl.”
“Yes, I think he found that I had grown more worldly, for better or worse. He has taken me in more as a colleague in thought, and I have greatly appreciated the changing role.”
“And his impression of me?”
“Dr. James was very impressed with your ideas. I think you and he have a greater interest in the less formal aspects of the human mind,” Eleanor said. “He is at heart, as are you, I believe, a pantheist.”
Jung looked surprised. “You find me a pantheist?”
“Perhaps I exaggerate—”
“Oh, no,” Jung interrupted. “Please finish.”
“Have you read Dr. James’s Edinburgh lectures?”
“The Varieties of Religious Experience,” he said, “yes, I have read them and have found them very much to my liking.”
“That is his very broad definition of the religious experience, one which you would find very similar to your views, it would seem.” She looked to see that he was following and took heart. “It is just that you and Dr. James, like the ancient Greeks, seem to see the spiritual in many forms and in all things, in a broad spectrum of humanity and in nature all around you.”
“That is another way of describing it. I have come to think of myself as a Gnostic. And I think I should include Dr. James within that description.”
“A Gnostic?” Eleanor said, musing on the idea. “I fear I am not totally familiar with the Gnostics.”
“They were at the time of the early Christians, you know. A Gnostic, one who pursues gnosis, the fullness of knowing. It is one dedicated to knowing the reality of the inner life through direct experience and personal revelation. It was this quest for gnosis which led me to grant fundamental importance to dreams, fantasies, and visions, to attempt to understand them through the study of literature, philosophy, and religion, and, ultimately, to adopt psychiatry as a career.”
“And that is a unique calling?” Eleanor said.
Jung paused and gave the question more weight than perhaps the questioner intended. “You know I have for a long time thought of myself as made up of two separate personalities. Number one was the son of my parents who went to school and coped with life as well as he could, while number two was much older, remote from the world of human society, but close to nature and animals, to dreams, and to, yes, God. Number two has no definable character at all. Born, living, dead, everything in one, a total vision of life. As a psychiatrist I came to understand that these two personalities were not unique to me but present in everyone. Only I was for some reason more aware of them than most, particularly of number two. In my life number two has been of prime importance, and I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come from within.”
“The earthbound self and the universal self,” she said. “And you see Dr. Freud as too much number one.”
“Well, that is putting too fine a point on it perhaps, but, yes, I suppose so.”
“And Dr. James as a fellow number two.”
“Intriguing,” Jung said. “And how do you see Dr. James as number two?”
Eleanor frowned slightly and gave the question some thought. “Defining that is a tall order,” she said. She paused again before offering, “Dr. James’s definition of the mind’s work is broad enough to encompass the transcendentalists and the Buddhists and the Hindus. We know that much. He would say that our normal waking, rational consciousness is but one kind, while all about it lie potential forms that are entirely different.”
“And he encourages us,” Jung said, continuing her thought, “to spend our energy exploring those other potential forms?”
“Exactly. We may go through life without suspecting the existence of those alternate forms of consciousness, but if we apply the proper stimulus, they will appear to us in their completeness.”
“That is where we find his interest in meditation and the pursuit of mystical experience, taking certain drugs perhaps, the realms of what Dr. James calls parapsychology?”
“Yes, exactly. Here is where he found Dr. Freud interesting and definitely provocative. His controversial theories have caused a sensation, to be sure, and perhaps set the stage for what he calls psychoanalysis. That is Dr. Freud’s great contribution, I am certain Dr. James would say, but at the same time that it is all too literal and restricting.”
“His sexual theories?”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, looking down again. “A Boston lady does not speak of such things, you know.”
“Oh, I am sorry to be so bold.”
Eleanor smiled. “You do not need to worry, Dr. Jung. We are very far from Boston out here. And besides, I am one who wishes to be bold in such matters.”
“I am glad that I am not offending,” he said, pausing. “Sexual theory, seen as bold even in Vienna and Zurich, is the very source of our disagreement,” Jung said quickly, rushing past any embarrassment. “Dr. Freud considers the cause of repression always to be sexual. For me, the causes are much broader than that. The narrowness is highly unsatisfactory to me.”
“Dr. James would find agreement with you, I believe.”
“Does he think me literal and restricted by Dr. Freud’s ideas?”
“I believe he sees your ideas as more in agreement with his, as they begin to consider more of those parapsychological elements.”
“Such as séances and mystical experiences?”
“Yes.”
“And are there other occurrences?” Jung asked.
Eleanor paused, thinking. She had wanted to tell him of Will Honeycutt’s thesis and now found the moment. “A former student of
Dr. James wrote a remarkable senior thesis in the physics department at Harvard College, and Dr. James took it seriously, as I think you would have.”
“And Dr. Freud would not have?”
“Perhaps,” Eleanor said. “This student carried on a discussion with a character who appeared in his dreams. The revelations in this imagined conversation were thought brilliantly accurate by some, and—”
“And demented by others,” Jung said, finishing her thought, as if familiar with the phenomenon.
“Exactly. He was, after all, hearing voices. Dr. James mentioned on a number of occasions that he thought you would have been among those who found the consultation with dreams brilliant. In matters like this, he finds you capable of a great, expansive future, if only—”
Again, the young doctor cut her off. “And he sees my close association with Dr. Freud limiting in that regard? In this case of what we could call active participation in one’s dreams?”
“Again, I do not wish to be presumptuous in speaking for Dr. James,” Eleanor said, pausing.
“But he does see me as being restricted?”
“Yes. I do not wish to be blunt,” she said, pausing again. “But, yes, I believe Dr. James sees you as held back from areas like this active imagination,” she added, using a term she had learned from the Vienna journal.
“And Dr. Freud would not be interested in this—” He paused. “This active imagination,” he said slowly, repeating the term.
“Yes,” she said. “I think he would not find my Harvard friend’s thesis interesting and would find the practice of conversing with characters in dreams outside his interest.”
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