137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession Part 14

To avoid unnecessary duplication, I use abbreviations of the sort "Pauli (1952), p. 253," which means the work listed in the Bibliography (pp. 311320) under Pauli, dated 1952, with the quotation cited on p. 253.

Letters from PLC are cited according to the code "Pauli to Weisskopf, January 17, 1957: PLC7 [2445]," which is the letter Pauli wrote to Weisskopf on January 17, 1957. [2445] means it is the 2,445th letter in Pauli's published correspondence and also stands for the letter's catalogue number in PLC7, which is the volume containing Pauli's correspondence from 1957.

The correspondence between Pauli and Jung in P/J is cited according to the code "P/J [76P], August 5, 1957." [76P] designates the 76th letter written by Pauli [P] to Jung, dated August 5, 1957.

Unless indicated otherwise, all use of italics in quotations occurs in the original text.

Prologue.

"difficult transition from three to four": Pauli to Fierz, October 3, 1951: PLC4 [1286].

"against the rationalism of the eighteenth century": Sommerfeld (1927), p. 195.

"connects with the old mystic elements": Pauli to Hertha Pauli, October 11, 1957: PLC7 [2707].

"with his Prism and silent Face": William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book Three, line 59.

"He was the last magician": Keynes (1947), p. 27.

"in the doctrines of alchemy": Brewster (1831), p. 271.

two or three flips out of ten thousand: See Benedict Carey, "A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors," The New York Times, February 10, 2007.

"in principle, the whole world": Pauli (1952), p. 259.

"the darkest hunting ground of our times": Jung to Ira Progoff, January 30, 1954, copy at the ETH; quoted in Bair (2004), p. 553.

Chapter 1 * Dangerously Famous.

"fur-coat ladies": See Bair (2004), p. 98 and p. 683, private communication to her.

"like a large genial cricketer": Hayman (1999), p. 300.

"powerful arms": Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, "Dr. Jung: A Portrait in 1931," Harper's, May 1931.

"dangerously famous": Jung to Bailey, November 25, 1932. From Jung and Ruth Bailey's correspondence, ETH; quoted from Bair (2004), p. 401; private communication, Samuel Beckett to Thomas McGevey, undated note, postmarked January 1935.

"going to Jung was somehow very chic and modern": Jung to Bailey, November 25, 1932. From Jung and Ruth Bailey's correspondence, ETH; quoted from Bair (2004), p. 401; private communication, Samuel Beckett to Thomas McGeevy, undated note, postmarked January 1935.

"without any direct line of tradition": MDR, p. 38.

"a tremendous experience for me": MDR, p. 122.

"where nature would collide with spirit": MDR, p. 130.

"the So-Called Occult Phenomena": CW1, pp. 388.

The friend, sadly to say, laughed: See Hayman (1999), p. 36.

"heroic efforts": F/J [265J], July 19, 1911.

"license to be unfaithful": F/J [175J], January 30, 1910.

"thin close-cropped hair": Quoted from Gay (1989), p. 202.

he tried a "talking cure": Anna O., a patient of Breuer's, coined the term "talking cure" in the early 1880s. See Gay (1989), p. 63.

"dabbling in spookery again": F/J [50J], November 2, 1907.

"becoming red-hot-a glowing vault": MDR, pp. 178179.

"catalytic exteriorization phenomenon": MDR, pp. 178179. Note: British spelling has been corrected to American spelling.

"Sheer bosh": MDR, p. 179.

divesting "him of any paternal dignity": F/J [139F], April 16, 1909; also in MDR, p. 397.

"what we are bringing to them": Interview with Jung's son Franz by Bair, in Bair (2004), pp. 159 and 700 (note 92).

"personal authority above truth": MDR, pages, 181182.

"spiritual aspect and its numinous meaning": MDR, p. 192.

she had confessed it to him: Over the years Freudians dismissed Jung's claim as malice. But in December 2006 a German researcher happened to read the ledger of a tiny hotel tucked away in the Swiss Alps. In Freud's distinctive handwriting were the words "Dr Sigm Freud u frau [Dr Sigmund Freud and wife]," but, in fact, the woman with him was not his wife but Minna Bernays, his sister-in-law. Freud sent a postcard to his wife describing the beautiful scenery the two of them had seen. Ralph Blumenthal, "Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire that Dr. Freud Didn't Suppress," The New York Times, December 24, 2006.

began to enter his dreams: MDR, p. 189.

the personal unconscious and the conscious: In his 1919 lectures in London, "Instinct and the Unconscious," Jung tells us that he "borrowed the idea of archetype" from writings of Saint Augustine. (CW8, pp. 135-136). It also appears in Gnostic literature, with which Jung was familiar from his university days.

namely, the collective unconscious: See CW8, p. 372.

"new life to the people to whom they came": Foreword to the Swiss edition of CW12, p. vii.

"images of my own unconscious": MDR, p. 233.

"and reads to him from a scroll": MDR, p. 38.

ill.u.s.trated in the manner of a medieval ma.n.u.script: MDR, p. 213.

"Jung was a walking asylum in himself": Hull to Savary, June 20, 1961, quoted from Bair (2004), pp. 292293.

Chapter 2 * Early Successes, Early Failures.

a few minutes at Gottingen station: Gamow (1985), p. 64.

Wolfgang Ernst Friedrich Pauli: The name Friedrich came from his maternal grandfather Friedrich Schutz, who often took the young boy on long walks around Vienna.

"'Antimetaphysical ancestry'": P/J [60P] March 31, 1953; translation from von Meyenn and Schucking (2001), pp. 4344.

"flows into the Danube Ca.n.a.l": Airmail letter, January 1959, from Hertha to Wolfgang, CERN Archive Collection, Doc.u.ment PLC Bi 120.

played "Silent Night" on the piano: Autobiographical statement by Hertha Pauli, in Guide to Catholic Literature, CatholicAuthors.com.

Pauli said no, but Hertha insisted: Peierls (1960), p. 175; and Cline (1987), pp. 136137.

das U-boot (the submarine): Enz (2002), p. 15.

found out about his Jewish ancestry: Interview with Ewald by T. S. Kuhn, AHQP, p. 15.

a chemist named Pascheles-who was in fact himself: I thank Karl von Meyenn for this story, which had been told to him by Pauli's close friend Marcus Fierz.

speaking of herself as "half-Christian": Communication from Drs. Susanne Blumesberger and Ursi Gabl, who have been researching Hertha Pauli's papers at the Austrian National Library. See also Hertha Pauli's biographical statement at CatholicAuthors.com. Even her publisher in New York City, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was under the impression she was Catholic. See New York Public Library Ma.n.u.scripts and Archives Division, Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc. Records: Box 273 (General Correspondence Folder), particularly office memos from June 1970.

"With me everything is complicated": Pauli to Jaffe, November 28, 1950: PLC4 [1172].

little personal correspondence: See the editorial note by Karl von Meyenn in PLC8, p. 1376.

the most beautiful theory ever formulated: In 1905 Einstein had discovered the special theory of relativity. It is "special" or restricted in that it covers only measurements made in laboratories moving at a constant speed in a straight line and does not include gravity. General relativity includes measurements made in laboratories moving in every direction, including a circle.

a paper on relativity theory: Pauli (1919).

increased as the war went on: PLC1, p. xxiv.

"There I have indeed made a mistake": Jordan (1971), p. 33.

"I have with me a really astonishing specimen": Sommerfeld to von Geitler, January 14, 1919; for facsimile go to www.irz-muenchen.de/~Sommerfeld/gif100/0584_01.gif.

"I find it impossible to understand how": Weyl to Pauli, May 10, 1919: PLC1 [1].

"the sureness of critical appraisal": Einstein (1922), p. 184.

at "the moment meaningless for physics": Pauli to Eddington, September 20, 1923: PLC1 [45].

"not really as stupid as it may have sounded": Hoyle (1994), p. 310. See also PLC8, pp. 12051206.

"laboratory fellow sufferer": Pauli to Sommerfeld, September 29, 1924: PLC1 [64].

"eight o'clock in the morning": Interview with Heisenberg by T. S. Kuhn, AHQP, November 11, 1963, p. 28.

"a simple farmboy": Born (1975), p. 212.

"it was nothing serious at all": Interview with Heisenberg by T. S. Kuhn, AHQP, November 30, 1962, p. 3.

"with great concentration and success": Heisenberg (1971), p. 27.

"That helped me a lot": Interview with Heisenberg by T. S. Kuhn, AHQP, November 30, 1962, p. 8.

"I believed I was the best formalist of my time": Interview with Pauli by Jagdish Mehra, February 1958, in Mehra and Rechenberg (1982), p. xxiv.

"toward the knowledge of the unity of the laws of the world": Born (1923), p. 537.

"this confidence [in Bohr's theory] was shaken": Interview with Heisenberg by T. S. Kuhn, AHQP, November 2, 1963, p. 8.

"W. Pauli is now my a.s.sistant": Born to Einstein, October 21, 1921, in Born (1971), p. 58.

"cannot bear life in a small city": Born to Sommerfeld, January 5, 1923, in Sommerfeld (2004), p. 137.

"until the small hours of the morning": Born (1975), p. 212.

"I shall never get another a.s.sistant as good": Born to Einstein, November 29, 1921, in Born (1971), pp. 6162.

"He also plays the piano very well": Born to Einstein, April 7, 1923, in Born (1971), p. 75.

"All existing He[lium]-models are false": Heisenberg to Pauli, March 26, 1923: PLC1 [34].

"I met Niels Bohr personally for the first time": Pauli (1946), p. 213.

"Gottingen's famous school of mathematics": Heisenberg (1971), p. 38.

"somewhat Kabbalistic": Sommerfeld (1923), p. 59; see also Pauli (1946), p. 166.

no one went to bed before 1 a.m.: Heisenberg to Karl and Helen Heisenberg, June 15, 1922, quoted from Ca.s.sidy (1992), p. 128.

"far exceeds my abilities": CSP, Volume II, p. 1073.

"It was given by Nature herself without our agency": Sommerfeld (1923), p. 237. In atoms with one electron in their outer sh.e.l.l-such as hydrogen and sodium-each of their spectral lines is split into two, called doublets. In atoms with two electrons in their outer sh.e.l.ls, each line is split into three-triplets. Scientists only discovered the reason for this when spin was postulated.

"a revelation": Einstein to Sommerfeld, February 8, 1916, in Hermann (1968), p. 40.

"than your beautiful work": Bohr to Sommerfeld, March 1916, in Hoyer (1981), Volume 2, p. 603. See Kragh (2003) for further historical details concerning the fine structure constant.