The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. (Abridged edition) Book

I really enjoyed reading this important book. Although the content of many letters is rather dry [especially the discussions about editions of books and contributions to magazines and participation in conferences], the interesting thing to read about was the unfolding of the relationship itself between the two great men. The repressed emotions, the exaggerated courtesies at the beginning of the correspondence, the complicated and tortuous expressions and sentences, the silly excuses, the slips of the pen, all these things show a lot about the deeper conflicts.
My impression about the two as shown in the letters : Freud appears to be more relaxed and authentic in what he expresses about himself, Jung appears more tense and artificial at times and was always stressing how "busy" he was to answer Freud's letters in time, etc.
The relation between the two from father-son or mentor-apprentice changes gradually in front of us as Jung acquires more experience and confidence, until he has the audacity to declare his own independent ideas and even to call on Freud to embrace them ! Freud has ironically called this "your declaration of independence"!
The funny thing I found in the letters is the two men's opinions about their close colleagues, especially about Stekel, Bleuler and Adler. It seems strange to me that after the very lengthy and tedious negotiations to convince both Jung and Freud's families to publish these letters and after Jung's initial reluctance to do that for fear of offending surviving persons mentioned in the letters or their families, after all that the letters appear with all these negative and funny descriptions of eminent figures of twentieth century psychology.
Finally, the letters are a reminder to us that persons who are geniuses in their own work or field are no less human than any one of us, that they have their prejudices, defects, jealousies and grudges, and that they can behave in a silly or childish or immature way at times.