The Lost Prince (17 page)

How could the exuberant Jung not love the American grandeur of
scale? It was closer to his own personality. He must have relished the whole scene. In fact, the whole adventure to the American Northeast carried for Jung delightful overtones of the Wild West fantasies of his youth. When they arrived at the camp, Freud, again in keeping with his character, was reserved and cautious, and the younger doctor was effusive in describing the vastness of American scenery and potential he had just absorbed in the long carriage ride.

The camp was like nothing the two Europeans had ever seen before. The participants, most all relatives of the founders, dressed in Alpine costume, the men in lederhosen and the women in dirndls. Upon the two European guests’ arrival, one extroverted and self-possessed Putnam child challenged them to a game of tetherball. Both men were delighted with what they described later as “the distinctly American scene.”

The first night at dinner in the communal lodge, Eleanor had allowed herself to be introduced, and she was not certain that Dr. Freud recalled their encounter ten years earlier. She made no mention of it, and he did not seem to take any special notice. During the evening she noticed the young Swiss professor’s attentions to her. After dinner, after her two young daughters had been taken off to bed by an older cousin as was camp custom, it was Jung who approached with the proposal. “You are the authority on the wilderness trails in this region, I have heard, Mrs. Burden.”

“I don’t know about being an authority, but I have been coming here since I was a little girl.” Putnam Camp and the Adirondack wilderness had been the solace of her childhood after her mother died and she was left alone with her severe aunt Prudence and her grieving father Joshua Putnam. Invited to the camp where her overly serious father and aunt never came, she could hike and romp about with cousins of all ages. Long walks on the trails with their many stream crossings were part of her cherished summer routine.

“Perhaps you will serve as our guide tomorrow. Dr. Freud is an avid hiker, as am I. We would relish being escorted by one who knows the way.” It was the young doctor at his most charming.

“There are others who know the terrain better than I,” Eleanor said. “But I would be honored to serve as your guide.”

The next morning, Eleanor sat at a breakfast table some distance from the two visiting doctors, and she took great delight in seeing them dive into the rich offerings of eggs, bacon, biscuits, and the pancakes that were
a camp specialty. Afterward, when they met outside the dining hall, ready to depart, Jung caught Eleanor with a surprise.

“I’m afraid Dr. Freud has been stricken with a stomach ailment and will not be able to join us.”

The announcement came suddenly, at a time when Eleanor could not modify the day’s plan, no matter how uneasy she felt. The tall, confident Dr. Jung allowed his robust enthusiasm to carry the decision. “I do not think that the good doctor’s incapacity will dampen our appreciation of a day in the mountains. What do you think?”

“I think we should carry on,” she said, perhaps too hastily and against what would have been thought at home as better judgment. And so that is how the two of them ended up spending the afternoon alone together in the Adirondacks wilderness.

Dr. Freud had indeed missed some of the strenuous parts of the Putnam Camp visit, having been famously indisposed, some stomach ailment he blamed on American food. Since she was the one quite familiar with the mountainscape, Eleanor chose the more strenuous course, but also the one that left the two hikers quite alone, which, considering the young doctor’s demeanor and their obvious attraction to each other, Eleanor recognized only afterward as potentially dangerous. It was, as expected, on that long arduous walk in the New York wilds, far away from the other guests, that the attraction became manifest, and the potential danger heightened.

A ROMANTIC IDYLL

N
ot giving much thought to the fact that now the two hikers would be alone together and how that might be perceived, Eleanor and her guest charged off, following the course of the brook bordering one side of camp up a hill, straight into what Jung called “a northern primeval forest.” It didn’t take long for the guest to realize he had entered a whole new way of hiking, with a whole new way of leading and being led, the Putnam way. Again, without much thought, Eleanor was simply modeling what uncles and aunts and cousins had modeled before, entering the expansive wilderness of their family camp with gusto and total commitment of personal energy. From earliest girlhood, she remembered one lederhosen-clad elder or another bursting forth with, “Follow me,” and striding up some steep path to a waterfall or a meadow she had not seen before. “Look at this beauty,” she would hear from earliest age, and look around in wonder at what family heritage had caused to be her own.

Carl Jung seemed overcome with the joy of being out in the American vastness, and at such a pace, with such a vibrant woman. He had been effusive ever since stepping off the train at the Lake Placid railway station, the scale of the country’s wilderness having been in his imagination from childhood, this “Wild West.” Now actually finding himself in the center of it made him explode with appreciation, even while finding himself catching his breath.

“Look at this,” he would say, waving his arms out at the magnificent pines and shrubs he saw all around. At one point they startled a pair of
deer from a small meadow, and at another they saw a bald eagle off in the distance. “This is everything one would hope for,” he said. Eleanor found herself absorbing his enthusiasm with a vicarious delight.

Rain had been falling intermittently for days, with wind still lightly gusting as they scrambled along narrow trails, over tree roots and black mire, and scaled a series of rude wooden ladders propped against boulders.

“I love showing all this off,” Eleanor said at one of their infrequent pauses along the familiar trail.

“It is a unique opportunity,” the energetic Jung said, catching his breath. “A unique opportunity of becoming acquainted with the utter wildness of this formidable landscape.”

Always ahead of him the vision of Eleanor, spry and cheerful, skipping forward in her long hiking skirt, expounding on the natural histories of their surroundings without a pause for breath, filled him with energy of his own.

“I used to come here as a girl,” she said. “It was my salvation.” She rattled off the names of flora and fauna and the mountain peaks as if she had been an Adirondack mountain tour guide all her life. They struggled up one last slope to reach finally a cliff edge where Eleanor announced, “Here it is, the view I wanted so much for you to see.”

And the Swiss doctor looked out at nothing but further layers of thick foliage, huge moss-covered boulders, and tall trees with endless other chains of remote, seemingly uninhabited mountains beyond mountains, stretching off to infinity, or at least to Canada.

“A wild glacial landscape,” he exclaimed. “Virgin forest as far as the eye can see.” And he took in also the image of the woman beside him, one that stayed with him indelibly for the next fifty years. “A breathtaking life force,” he concluded later on, giving the captivation of this first impression considerable thought.

The skies cleared and the wind stopped as if by command as they sat beside a stream and watched small trout darting about in a clear pool. Eleanor could not remember feeling so free or so animated. And further along, on a grassy flat beside another pool, she signaled that they would stop and sit again.

“I am sorry that your friend Dr. Freud is not seeing this,” Eleanor said, wondering how it might affect his dour nature. “I gather that he is something of a city dweller.”

“Actually, Dr. Freud loves his vacations in the mountains around Vienna,” Jung said. “His children find him hard to keep up with.”

“He seems not terribly fond of our mountains.”

“Oh, he finds much to like here. He is not feeling at his best—stomach ailments, you know. It is just that he is by nature a little cautious in his expression.”

“A caution that you do not seem to share,” Eleanor said with a smile.

“Dr. Freud finds me a bit unrestrained.”

“A little less restraint would be good for all of us,” Eleanor said, noticing her own comfort with this conversation. “I think Dr. James finds Dr. Freud a bit rigid and serious.”

“He seemed very pleased at meeting him.”

“Oh, yes. He believes Dr. Freud’s influence very significant and his lectures historic. He came to the conference especially to hear Dr. Freud’s ideas, and still—” She paused.

“He was not as impressed as he wanted to be?”

“Perhaps not as much as he expected to be. Dr. James found the lectures a little dry and mechanical. But he has said many times that he has no doubt that they will become the cornerstone of the new movement in psychology, here and in Europe, and that Dr. Freud will be thought of as one of the great innovators of the twentieth century.”

“Is that a prophecy?”

Eleanor laughed. “Oh my, I have been presumptuous in speaking for Dr. James.”

“And of my lectures?”

“You too will have your appeal, but perhaps after—” She stopped herself.

“After?” he said without taking any form of offense.

Eleanor looked down. “I didn’t mean to be judgmental.”

“No, no,” Jung interrupted. “I understand, and it has been said before. After I separate my ideas from Dr. Freud’s influence?”

Eleanor looked uncomfortable for just a moment, as if she had said too much. “Oh, I hope I have not been too forward. I did not mean to imply—”

He cut her off again. “You seem to have a very authoritative perspective on Dr. James, Mrs. Burden. And on the future.”

“Oh goodness,” she said. “I don’t mean to be all that. I am certainly sorry if I have been inappropriate.”

“Oh, no, it is quite appropriate. I enjoy the frankness. Dr. Freud and I have been very close. On this trip alone we will spend seven weeks together. And yet we do indeed have our differences. Ones that Dr. Freud feels uncomfortable with, I fear. We agree on most matters, you realize. It is just that there exist some fundamental disagreements, ones we have not entirely worked out.”

“And what are those?”

“One superficial matter. In his treatment, for instance, Dr. Freud’s patients lie on a couch while he sits behind them silently, out of sight. I prefer a face-to-face method on chairs placed close together, more a dialogue between two interesting people.”

“And how is that so different?” Eleanor said.

“Dr. Freud believes the physician should intrude in no way on his patients’ free flow of thoughts. That distance is very important to him.”

“And you?”

“I do not wish to lose any facial expressions or physical manifestations.” Jung laughed. “I suppose you could say I cannot help myself.”

Even now in their conversation beside an Adirondack stream Eleanor could see that more passionate style at work, the doctor’s eyes studying her face, observing inflections in her voice, drawing her into the conversation with the intensity of those eyes. Dr. Freud she knew to be far more detached and objective.

“And there is a problem with that personal approach?” she asked.

“Dr. Freud would tell you that I contaminate the process,” Jung said, then laughed again.

“I think Dr. James would have more sympathy with your methods.”

“I am gratified to hear you say that. You seem to know well the man’s mind.”

“Dr. James and I have become very close over the years, perhaps you know.”

“I envy you that.”

“He served as something of a godfather to me as I was growing up. He was a friend of my mother, who died when I was eight, and I think he saw
himself as one of my protectors, a bit formal and distant perhaps, but one I very much needed. He gave away my hand at my wedding, you know.”

“So I understand. And now?”

“Now we are very close, and he is more a confidant. Upon my return from Vienna in 1898, I told him of my encounter with Dr. Freud and his ideas, and I made sure that he received
The Interpretation of Dreams
the following year. I knew they would find much of value in each other.”

“Dr. James must have been deeply impressed, seeing you no longer as a bright-eyed college girl.”

“Yes, I think he found that I had grown more worldly, for better or worse. He has taken me in more as a colleague in thought, and I have greatly appreciated the changing role.”

“And his impression of me?”

“Dr. James was very impressed with your ideas. I think you and he have a greater interest in the less formal aspects of the human mind,” Eleanor said. “He is at heart, as are you, I believe, a pantheist.”

Jung looked surprised. “You find me a pantheist?”

“Perhaps I exaggerate—”

“Oh, no,” Jung interrupted. “Please finish.”

“Have you read Dr. James’s Edinburgh lectures?”

“
The Varieties of Religious Experience,
” he said, “yes, I have read them and have found them very much to my liking.”

“That is his very broad definition of the religious experience, one which you would find very similar to your views, it would seem.” She looked to see that he was following and took heart. “It is just that you and Dr. James, like the ancient Greeks, seem to see the spiritual in many forms and in all things, in a broad spectrum of humanity and in nature all around you.”