Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Typed letter signed (‘C.G. Jung’) to Stephen Abrams, [Küsnacht], 11 July 1960
In English. One page, 295 x 209mm, headed letter-paper, scattered corrections and Greek characters added in ink. Provenance: Stephen I Abrams (1938-2012) - Sotheby's, 29 & 30 April 1980, lot 289

Jung’s final letter to Stephen Abrams, on a puzzling case of continuous positive ESP results. Noting that ‘archetypal constellations usually are more or less momentary and don’t extend over longer periods’, he details the case of ‘a man who was practically invulnerable even to rapier thrusts through kidneys and liver. His remarkable achievements lasted over several years. It was accompanied by a pious and devoted attitude. He was unselfish and idealistic. Two bad friends succeeded in persuading him that there was money in it. The next experiment killed him. In this case it was quite obvious that he owed invulnerability to an intensely religious attitude which is an archetypic constellation. It is possible that also other conditions like physical traumata, diseases and physiological constellations can maintain an "abaissement" of consciousness, which enables unconscious effects to cross the threshold. I should not wonder at all if synchronistic phenomena would manifest in form of physiological effects’. Stating that the mathematical theory of information is beyond his understanding but describing it as interesting nonetheless, he allows that it is quite possible, even probable, ‘that man has a much greater amount of ESP at his disposition than one generally supposes. This must be so if it is true that synchronicity belongs to the basic qualities of existence’.

The present letter concludes the correspondence between Jung and the young parapsychologist Stephen Abrams (see previous four lots) on the topic of parapsychology and synchronicity. The same year this letter was written, Abrams moved to Britain in 1960 to work on an extra-sensory perception at Oxford and head its parapsychology laboratory.