March the 13^th 59 Portland Court

London W.

Dear Abraham:

In reply to your interesting circular, received this morning:

(A). London: The only member of our group that could be counted on to support the resolution is myself. The situation is as follows: Most of the members are in the country or elsewhere in the Empire. Only eight come regularly to the meetings. One of theses, a woman, has just been »analysed« for five weeks by Jung, and is in a state of akute Übertragung. Four others are beginners, knowing very little German, and hardly anything of Jung’s position or its significance. They are all promising men, and I am steadily educating them in Psycho-Analysis, and hope that in some time they will be able to appreciate the problems at issue and decide what is true and what is false; this may take a year. Then come two who know something about the matter, Eder2 and Bryan.3 Eder inclines to Jung’s side on philosophical grounds and the private attachments to him. Scientifically he is much more on our side, but I am sure he would not vote in either direction. The other, Bryan, is definitely on our side throughout, but not in a partisan spirit. He does not read German, knows little of the history of the controversy and is a mild mannered man, who would not take any strong action. I could not doubt get him to sign a petition, but not to take a stand against a majority. Men coming into the movement now are much less concerned with the personal differences than we who have lived through them. If I brought forward such a resolution as you propose, at this early stage in the development of our society, my opinion is that they would vote for no action to be taken in the matter. On the other hand if a referendum were taken I could probably induce several to vote on our side, it being much easier to influence them to express an opinion when asked for it, than to initiate an active step in a question they feel they do not yet fully understand the bearings of.

B.) General. There are nine groups, counting the new additional one in New York, you count on more than three out of those nine sending in a petition to Jung. I believe that what I have said about the London group applies to the new Ward’s Island group in New York, where McCurdy4 could get men to side with us in a referendum, but not to petition Jung, not daring much who is President of an Association they are never likely to attend; the New York group, on the other hand would (through Jelliffe5, be more on Jung’s side). To petition Jung in May (or better, as soon as the March number of the Zeitschrift appears) would be to deprive our- selves of a powerful weapon, namely, Professor Freud’s categorical denial of the »new« path in the Jahrbuch, which I gather does not appear until July. To my mind this is an important consideration, which should outweigh much on the other side.

We cannot at all be certain that Jung would at once obey the dictum of one third of the groups, and resign his position, any more than he did at  the last Congress, when the loss-of-confidence vote against him was much stronger, though this, it is true, was latent rather than manifest. It is more likely, and to my mind most probable, that he would postpone any action until the Congress had met. We have therefore to consider the question of possible tactics at the congress, at the same time as the other. Further, if Jung resigned, I do not understand how he and his followers could resign their memberships of the association, for they hold this only in virtue of their being members of the local Zurich group. Is there any other way of their leaving the association than resigning from the Zurich group, and is this at all likely? I do not find that these necessary considerations are dealt with in your circular.

On the other side is to be remembered that unless we act by May it will be impossible to get action taken by any groups, it being the end of their year, and it would perhaps also be more difficult to get votes of individual members later on, because of their being scattered on holidays.

The three possible courses that occur to me are: (1) to petition Jung to resign. (2) to petition him to refer the question to a referendum of the members. This course might be substituted for the other, or it might fol- low the other in case Jung refused this or postponed his answer till the congress. (3) to petition him to dissolve the association, after a general vote, or to postpone the congress for a year.

I believe that we should get a stronger percentage vote by a general referendum than from one depending on separate groups. If the other mem- bers of the committee whether to deal with Jung by means of the groups, or by means of a general vote, however obtained.

In these remarks I have provided some considerations. About London, and asked some questions, and I do not feel that the evidence at present before me is clear enough to made me form a definite opinion as to which is the best course to pursue. I therefore cannot urge any one to the exclusion of others, and am very eager indeed to have the opinions of the other members on the difficulties I have pointed out. In conclusion I would throw out the suggestion that the committee arranges to meet, perhaps in Munich, before any definite steps are undertaken, for we cannot decide on one step that will surely lead to a number of other events, without being prepared to deal with these indirect consequences also.

With best greetings

from Ernest Jones