J. B. Rhine and Carl Jung

“I quite agree with you that once we are in possession of all facts science will look very peculiar indeed.” — Carl Jung to J. B. Rhine, November 5, 1942.  Oh yeah.  I didn’t write a lot about Rhine and Jung, there’s already a lot out there about their relationship, but I enjoyed reading their letters.

They first met over lunch in New York in October, 1937.  They had the same publisher, who arranged the meeting, and it was described by their mutual editor, William Sloane.  “It was exciting to watch him [Jung] and Rhine together … Jung the cosmopolite, the man of enormous erudition,” and Rhine, “a man whom only America could have produced—quiet, low-spoken, intense, with that slow-burning fuse of humor innate in his speech, gravely deferential to Jung, putting his problems before Jung without any plea for help, any servility, any expectation of praise, with the obvious feeling that the problem of man and his nature was so sacrosanct and vital a one that Jung was obliged to help him, as he was to tell Jung what he knew.”

Before she died though, Rhea White told me that she left the lab because she was interested in Jung, and Rhine had said that when it came to parapsychology, Jung “was not helpful.”  Which seemed odd to me since Jung was very open about parapsychology, but Rhea said it was a just a difference in approach.  Rhine was more focused on lab experiments.  I found out about a video interview of Jung where he talks about Rhine, and I’m trying to get a hold of it.  In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of Jung talking about the extra-physical aspects of the psyche.

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