This essay deals with the correspondence between Erich Neumann, Jung’s best known and most important student, and C.G. Jung, and situates this correspondence within the context of the November pogroms of 1938. A detailed analysis of four letters, two by Neumann and two by Jung, shall shed light on the question to what extent the incipient murder of the Jews becomes the nervus probandi of the relationship between Neumann and Jung. Neumann’s reflection about the collective Jewish determination in the face the Novemberpogroms 1938, brings Jung to an alleviative relativization and secularization of his former position. This precipitates a deep crisis and feelings of disorientation and desertion in Neumann; a negative father complex is constellated, discharged in a dream. Moreover the analysis traces how certain culturetheoretical assumptions are undermined in the face of the impending catastrophe.
Keywords: Jung-Neumann-correspondence, Jung’s ethnospecific differentiation of the unconscious, November pogroms 1938, Jung’s self-correction, Neumann’s dream.