Early Studies in Parapsychology at Duke
C.G. Jung to J.B. Rhine April, 1946
Dear Dr. Rhine,
Your kind letter has given me some courage to envisage the possibility of writing up the parapsychological phenomena which I happened to observe during my carrier as a psychiatrist. I'm sorry to be so late in answering your letter, but after my illness I have to go slowly and any letters that require particular attention are likely to be postponed or get shuffled under. I kept your proposition in mind, but they really require a whole book. I will try however to answer your questions once in as brief a way as possible, because they interest me and I'm rather inclined to agree with your view that it would be perhaps in a way helpful if I could bring myself to think over these matters a bit more than I have done hitherto. I can't deny having often thought of such questions, but I must confess that I feel peculiarly helpless vis a vis the task they present. I think very highly of the importance of parapsychology. Besides the psychology of the unconscious it is certainly the most fascinating aspect of psychical activity. For the time being, however, it is still a mere object of theoretical science and we are still far from any practical use of the said phenomena, except police somnambules and water diviners. Yet such applications do not help us very much further in the understanding of the phenomena. In this letter I shall not try to answer your very profound questions. I must have a quiet time when I can think over these matters at leisure, in order to realize all the splinters of thoughts which are hovering about. But I think you can reckon with a great possibility of receiving a reply after a while.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung
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