Introduction

James Kirsch's unique importance to C. G. Jung, about which Thomas Kirsch comments, seems to have been related to a combination of factors. Kirsch also remained close to Jung in terms of the personal, psychotherapeutic relationship that was their starting point. Jung's letters to Kirsch, in contrast, were preserved from the beginning, with few exceptions. Kirsch evidently held everything from Jung with reverent respect, from the longest epistle to the smallest postcard. In mid-August 1982 Kirsch wrote to Beat Glaus, then the scholar at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Library with primary responsibility for the Jung Archive, to explain why he would not immediately send a batch of Jung's letters to the archive as planned. Several of Aniela Jaffé's letters to Kirsch, written in her capacity as Jung's secretary, were found in a file that had been sent to Kirsch years before by Robert Hinshaw, Jaffé's literary executor in Switzerland.