Abstract

„Controversy has always been part of the method of science” (E. Boring). This statement is certainly applicable to a young science like psychology. The controversy between Freud and Jung belongs to the well-known scientific quarrels in the history of psychology. In histories, introductions and handbooks of psychology, Jung is called a rebel, a dissident, a schismatic and a deviationist, a „former” colleague and disciple of Freud or one of his bitterest enemies. In this paper, an attempt is made to describe the relation between Jung and Freud during the years 1906-1914 in such a way that the several above-mentioned epithets become more understandable. Next, the history of this controversy can be a good example for E. Boring's suggestion that scientific progress is a dialectic process where negativism plays a decisive role. Further, the study of the short-lived co-operation and friendship between Freud and Jung can shed some light on the roots and sources of Jung's scientific work which is intimately linked to his strictly individual life-cycle. The different phases in the development of the relation between these two great psychologists and of the personal and scientific growth of C. G. Jung are described chronologically and captioned through short titles indicating each year under discussion. 1906 : going into the breach for Freud ; association-experiments and dementia praecox. 1907 : meeting with Freud ; hesitating resistance against the sexual etiology. 1908 ; „Zusammenkunft für Freudsche Psychologie” ; growing opposition to the sexual etiology. 1909 : Jung and Freud travel to the U.S.A. ; occult phenomena. 1910 : Jung, crownprince ; mythological studies. 1911 : the calm before the storm ; „Das Opfer”. 1912 : the contrasts aggravated ; at the door of the unconscious. 1913 : overt discord ; -the last meeting with Freud ; expedition into the unconscous world of images. 1914 : Jung standing alone. It is established that all the above-mentioned qualifications of C. G. Jung's relation to S. Freud are one-sided. None of the more personal explanations of the quarrel between these giants of depth-psychology is sufficient. Essentially, the basis of this controversy lies in the enthousiasm, emotion and even passion which takes possession of the great scientific research-worker and explorer, who is all eyes for one of his findings. Through such controversies and the solution given to them, science makes its progresses. For Jung, these uneasy years of collaboration and discord with Freud constituted at the same time years of dramatic exploration of the most remote areas of the unconscious psyche. In these years he laid the basis of his impressive scientific work