Can AI Bring Closure to Freud and Jung's Broken Friendship?
Updated: Oct 23
In the month of April 1913, a final missive was exchanged between Freud and Jung, permanently putting an end to their and intense friendship and intellectual collaboration. Ninety-one years later, can AI offer a glimpse into what a reconciliation would have looked like?
I have long obsessed about their legendary relationship and its subsequent irreparable breakdown. After a few formal letters their collaboration ignited hot and bright in the impassioned heat of their now legendary thirteen-hour conversation the evening of Jung’s first visit to Freud’s home. But even then, the seeds for their dissolution were present. At the start their differences were minimised by both, but over time the friction grew – disagreement turned to acrimony – and in one of the saddest records of deterioration of love and affection captured on paper, Freud and Jung went their separate ways, and never looked back.
But they did look back. Freud, who was known for destroying his correspondence lest the biographers got the better of him, unusually kept the letters from Jung. Jung continued to acknowledge Freud throughout his life, weaving their catastrophic break into the founding narrative of Analytical Psychology, the Jungian alternative to Freud's Psychoanalysis. Their relations, however, never healed. Neither party would ever reach out to the other again. Until now.
In a previous post I warned how AI Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT threaten to undermine our learning by making some hard stuff to easy, they can also do remarkable things when put to other uses. Because LLMs are built upon the data they have consumed, this is where they may shine the most brightly. You see, Freud and Jung have already written everything they were ever going to write, and if (as I suspect) ChatGPT has had access to most of that, its rendition of prompts enquiring into that material may be quite illustrative.
With access to copious content of their writing, alongside subsequent research in biographies, archival research, and the actual Freud/Jung letters themselves, I asked ChatGPT to imagine what a reconciliation between Freud and Jung might look like if Freud had reached out to Jung in his final days. Can AI bring closure to Freud and Jung's broken friendship? Probably not, but what resulted from this little exercise is still pretty neat, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Letter 1: Freud to Jung
August 20, 1939
Dear Professor Jung,
It has been many years since our paths diverged, and I confess that the ravages of age and illness have sharpened the sense of reflection in me. My thoughts, as they circle back over the course of my life, cannot escape the central position you held within it for a time. You were once, as I declared with conviction, the "crown prince" of psychoanalysis, the one who would carry the movement forward into a future I could not wholly anticipate. The dissolution of that hope—of our friendship—has haunted me in ways that I now wish to confront.
As I face what I am certain are my last days, I find it important to reckon with our past, not merely from the point of view of theoretical disagreement, but from the more personal and human perspective which, I fear, we neglected amid our intellectual battles. Though I still hold that your ventures into mysticism, the collective unconscious, and your perceived embrace of archaic spirituality were a profound deviation from the rigorous demands of psychoanalysis, I realize now, with some humility, that I did not sufficiently appreciate your unique vision. Perhaps I was too possessive of psychoanalysis, too adamant in protecting it from what I saw as distortions.
Yet I cannot claim innocence in our estrangement. My rigidity, my unwillingness to entertain your divergences with greater openness, no doubt contributed to the chasm that opened between us. I regret that in attempting to preserve psychoanalysis, I may have lost sight of the value of a dialogue that could have enriched us both.
I write not to rehash our differences—those stand as they are, and I doubt that either of us could be convinced to entirely relinquish our positions—but to acknowledge the shared history that, in many ways, defined both our lives. I wish to extend to you something I have rarely offered: an apology. For the times I was harsh, unyielding, or dismissive of your contributions, I offer my sincerest regrets. We each had our visions, and though I still believe psychoanalysis needs the firm boundaries I established, I recognize now that perhaps the spirit of our collaboration was more important than the precision of our agreements.
I hope this letter finds you in health and peace. I write with no expectation beyond an attempt to bring closure to a chapter that I have long left unresolved.
Yours,
Freud
Letter 2: Jung to Freud
September 5, 1939
Dear Professor Freud,
Your letter reached me with an unexpected weight, not only because of its contents, but because I had often wondered if the silence between us would ever be broken. I had assumed that the years, like a great wall, had irrevocably separated us. And yet here, at the very end of your days, you extend a hand across that divide—a gesture I must admit I did not expect.
You and I once stood at the frontier of a new intellectual movement, and the excitement of those days still lingers in my memory. At the time, I saw myself as a disciple, eager to absorb your knowledge, to further the grand vision of psychoanalysis. But I was never simply a follower. You must have known that from the beginning. Our falling out, though painful, seems almost inevitable in retrospect—two strong minds, each pursuing truth in ways that could not ultimately be reconciled.
I admit that my departure from the narrow confines of psychoanalysis was a conscious and deliberate step. Where you saw the individual’s neurosis as a direct consequence of repressed instincts and the unconscious mind’s dark repository, I found myself drawn toward a broader, more universal perspective. The unconscious, in my view, was not merely the repository of personal repressions but the seat of ancient, collective experiences—the archetypes. I knew this vision would clash with yours, but I also felt compelled to follow it, for it spoke to something profound in the human psyche, something that psychoanalysis alone could not grasp.
In retrospect, however, I see how much of our estrangement was not only theoretical but personal. You were, as you write, protective of your work—and perhaps I was too eager to carve my own path, to assert my independence in ways that felt like a repudiation of your efforts. For that, I too must offer my apology. There were times when I did not sufficiently acknowledge the foundation you laid, without which my own work could not have emerged. And for the personal affronts, the moments of hubris and rebellion, I am sorry.
We were, in a way, father and son—though the burden of such a relationship weighed heavily upon us both. My wish for independence often felt like an attack on you, and I now see that it could have been handled with greater sensitivity. I misunderstood some of your positions as rigid dogma, when perhaps they were born from a deep sense of responsibility for what you had created. And, in turn, I see how my explorations into spirituality and mysticism must have appeared to you as dangerous flirtations with the irrational. I, of course, view them differently—as essential, even redemptive aspects of the psyche.
I accept your apology with gratitude, and I offer mine in return. It is difficult for me to express how deeply this gesture from you touches me. Though we cannot erase the past, perhaps this exchange allows us to finally acknowledge it, not as enemies or rivals, but as two minds who—each in his own way—sought to illuminate the hidden depths of the human soul.
May the end of your journey bring you peace.
Yours,
C.G. Jung
Letter 3: Freud to Jung
September 17, 1939
Dear Friend,
Your letter arrived like a balm, and I am grateful for your openness and the graciousness with which you responded. It seems that, even as I near the end, life still has lessons to teach me, and perhaps the greatest of these is that pride and estrangement need not be the final word between two who once shared such a profound intellectual and personal connection.
I was moved by your reflection on our relationship, especially the analogy of father and son, for it strikes me as painfully accurate. You were, in many ways, my intellectual heir, and, as with many fathers, I failed to see the necessity of your rebellion. Perhaps I was too much the patriarch, expecting obedience where there could only be independence. But I have always said that conflict, in the end, is the driving force of progress, and perhaps it was precisely because of the conflict between us that you were able to forge something new, just as psychoanalysis was born out of my conflict with the medical establishment and the prevailing scientific paradigms of my time.
Though I still view mysticism and the collective unconscious with skepticism, I can see now that your exploration of the psyche’s depths takes into account aspects of human experience that I did not—and could not—address. Where I sought to map the dark underworld of repression and instinct, you ventured into the more elusive territory of meaning, myth, and spiritual experience. I wonder now if our paths had remained more entwined, whether the schism could have been lessened. But such thoughts are idle, for we cannot rewrite the past. We can only understand it better with time.
Your words brought me a kind of solace, not because they vindicate my positions but because they reflect the maturity of someone I once knew so well. And in recognizing our differences, you have shown the wisdom that I—perhaps too late—have come to appreciate.
It is my hope that in the future, our names will not be linked only by the rupture that came between us, but by the mutual respect we ultimately rediscovered. You have my respect, Jung.
With warm regards,
Freud
Letter 4: Jung to Freud
September 28, 1939
Dear Friend,
I read your last letter with a sense of finality, yet also with a renewed connection between us that transcends our earlier antagonism. Your acknowledgment of our differences, as well as your capacity to reflect on your own role in our break, has deepened my respect for you. I only regret that such an exchange could not have occurred years ago, before time and circumstance hardened the rift. But, as you say, we cannot rewrite the past.
I think often of what might have been had our visions been more compatible, but it is clear to me now that the divergence was necessary. We both sought to uncover the mysteries of the psyche, but while you charted its mechanisms and drives, I was drawn to its symbolic life, to the eternal patterns that underlie human existence. In a sense, your work was like the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, dissecting the psyche with clarity, while I aimed to navigate the labyrinth of meaning and myth. Both are essential.
Your acknowledgment of my contributions, even if you do not fully embrace them, means more to me than I can easily express. It is not agreement I sought, but understanding—and in your final letters, I have found it.
Though we stand at opposite ends of the field we once tilled together, I believe history will show that each of us, in our own way, was essential to the evolution of modern psychology. And perhaps this correspondence, brief though it may be, offers a kind of reconciliation—not of our ideas, but of our relationship.
I wish you peace in the days ahead, Freud. You have fought long and hard, and your work will endure.
Yours,
C.G. Jung
This is the second of a series of posts I am sharing in advance of the upcoming UKCP Conference Psychotherapy in a Changing World taking place in London on November 23rd where I will be presenting on Becoming a psycho-technologist: making sense of artificial intelligence, hyper-connectivity and the digitally mediated human at the. You can read the previous post Is AI Making Us Stupid here.If you'd like to keep updated with further posts, you can subscribe below.
