Jung and Rhine

Beginning of article

[Editor's Note: The following letter appeared originally in Quadrant: The Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology (VIII: 2, Winter 1975, pp. 73-75) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Foundation. We felt that the letter would be of considerable historical interest to readers of the JP.]

The publisher John Farrar arranged a luncheon party in October of 1957 at which J. B. Rhine, the pioneer in experimental ESP research, and Jung, who was in the United States for his Terry Lectures at Yale, first met. William M. Sloane (1906-74), an associate editor at Farrar and Reinhart, had just finished work on Rhine's New Frontiers of the Mind and was soon to begin editing a collection of Jung's Eranos Lectures to be published under the title The Integration of the Personality (1959). Before they met, Jung had read Sloane's novel To Walk the Night, which was first written as a play in 1932. It contained so true a portrait of the anima's immortal aspect that, in the words of Mrs. Win. Sloane, "the great man couldn't believe Bill had never read a word of his and was delighted to have his anima theory borne out of that fashion. "Jung cited Sloane's novel in "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore" (CW 9, i, par. 356), and Toni Wolff wrote an extensive commentary on the novel a few years later.

To Joseph C. Sloane

October 31, 1937

... I was ... at a lunch arranged by John Farrar in honor of Dr. Rhine and Dr. Jung. I sat at the right hand of Jung, and we talked a good deal during the meal. He is a very great man in his person, in his inner stature, in the authority, range, and architecture of his mind. With such men, whether they are right or wrong does not matter. I thought at once of Uncle Will. (1) Jung is a bigger man--I can give no …