ABSTRACT
JUDGING FROM JUNG'S autobiography (1963), the most significant experience of his adult life was the encounter with Sigmund Freud. In its intensity, as well as in the bitterness that was its outcome, the relationship echoes the Nietzsche-Wagner idyll of the previous generation. Yet, the personal break between Freud and Jung remained inexplicable on the basis of the participants' contemporaneous statements about the matter (see also Jones, 1955). The only helpful observation made by either protagonist was Freud's judgment that Jung's ultimate divergence from psychoanalysis was due to his espousal of "a new religioethical system" (1914b, p. 62). But this self-evident conclusion explains neither what the two men originally had to offer each other, nor how they managed to become the closest of collaborators in the face of fundamental philosophical differences. In looking upon Jung's defection as an untoward event, Freud merely betrayed his failure to understand Jung's actual position throughout their relationship.
