Adversaria (3)
‘Their ideas were beautiful and academic, like pictures in a gallery, but somewhat remote’ —Carl Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard & Clara Winston, p. 68)
Just as his mission in life, to solve the puzzle of existence, represented an act of love for human kind, his love for Adele was analogous. His love of human kind was abstract, universal, and not direct to the particular. Particular people, flesh and blood living people, human bipeds, or factory products, as he called them, were best loved at a distance. His love of Adele had that distance. He loved her abstractly, as a sister, and not personally, as an individual. He could not have her play a role in his everyday life, because then he would have had to recognize her as a person.
‘My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my own light.’ —Carl Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard & Clara Winston, p. 88)
‘…the surest moment is also the most amazed, the least possessable. We’ll never know. Life is tender. And cruel’ —Philippe Delerm (Second Star, 100%, trans. Jody Gladding)
When Freud visited me in Zürich in 1908, I demonstrated the case of Babette to him. Afterward he said to me, “You know, Jung, what you have found out about this patient is certainly interesting. But how in the world were you able to bear spending hours and days with this phenomenally ugly female?” I must have given him a rather dashed look, for this idea had never occurred to me. In a way I regarded the woman as a pleasant old creature because she had such lovely delusions and said such interesting things. And after all, even in her insanity, the human being emerged from a cloud of grotesque nonsense.