jUNG BIO

[Guest guest]

Forw by Deb Conner......

tempests and teacups. people will simply vilify and not read...

http://www.authorsguild.org/news/biographer_stands_firm.htm

This past summer, heirs of Carl Jung pressed Knaus Verlag, a German imprint of Random House, to insert two pages of the family's "corrections" to the text of the German language edition of a biography of the founder of analytical psychology (published as "Jung: A Biography" by Little, Brown in the U.S.). At least one account, published in the New York Times on September 29, erroneously reported that the heirs had succeeded in their attack on the book's text. They hadn't.

Authors Guild attorney Anita Fore helped guide Ms. Bair to successfully persuade Knaus Verlag to publish the text without amendment by Jung's heirs. The book was published last week. Read all about it in the International Herald Tribune. Here's the Herald Tribune's story from August 3rd about the family's attempt to alter the book.

The Authors Guild is the nation's largest and oldest society of published authors and the leading writers' advocate for fair compensation, effective copyright protection, and free expression.

In biography of Jung, family gets its say

By Doreen Carvajal International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2005PARIS For the Swiss heirs of Carl Gustav Jung, the problems with an acclaimed new American biography begin with the first sentence: "The child who became the world-renowned psychologist C.G. Jung was christened Karl Gustav II Jung." Incorrect, insists a family representative of the fiercely protective Jung estate; the Roman numeral came later. Correct, counters Deirdre Bair, the award-winning author of "Jung: A Biography," which has ignited a ferocious tug-of-title with Jung's family in advance of its publication in Germany. "Scholarly documents I consulted support what I wrote," she said. But that's the least of it. The family's list of disputed facts spans almost 12 pages, from the red sail of a boat to the architectural style of a bridge over the Rhine. More substantively, some of Jung's relatives question the reliability of patient diaries that hint at sexual liaisons with Jung. They also scoff at a description of Jung's wife, Emma, that says her children "believed that she had warm feelings, but never showed them." But most of all they resent Bair for not seeking their approval for statements they made during interviews with her. Now, in a compromise that is extremely rare in publishing, the German subsidiary of Random House has agreed to insert two pages of the Jung family's version of descriptions and facts into a translation being published this autumn by one of its imprints, Knaus Verlag. The family originally approached Little, Brown & Company, the publisher of the original English language version in 2003, to seek changes in new editions and translations. But so far only the German publisher has agreed to the family's request. "We're between two dangers," said Rainer Dresen, the general counsel for Random House in Germany. "If we hadn't done anything, we could have been sued by the heirs. If we do anything, we can be sued by the author because she doesn't want to change it. It's just a question of who will attack us. So we thought we would make a compromise." Aiken, the president of the Authors Guild in New York, which represents writers on copyright and free speech issues, said the inserted material, even if tucked back in the notes section, presented a serious problem. "We've never heard of anything like this," he said in a telephone interview. "It really undermines the author's credibility and authority even if it's mostly inconsequential details. It's like putting a negative book review on the cover." As for Bair, she said, "I feel like someone broke into my house and tried to rearrange my furniture." In a telephone interview from a lecture tour in Canada, she called the compromise a dangerous precedent. "Anyone could say an author didn't get it right and then demand to include their own version. This is damaging to every concept of the freedom to write. It's just a terrible thing that this family succeeded in doing. But I'm also worried about the larger issue of censorship. If they can get away with this with such a large publisher, think what they can do to any other scholar." Throughout Europe, and particularly in Germany, invasion-of-privacy lawsuits from celebrities like Princess Caroline of Monaco have forced book publishers and newspapers to adopt defensive measures, from self-censorship to scorning certain biographies. As a result, a title sold in the United States without legal pressures faces new risks when it crosses borders to countries with tougher privacy restrictions. The ties between family and writer began cordially enough when Bair began her research eight years ago. The author of biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin, Bair won a National Book Award in 1981 for her study of Beckett. To explore Jung's life, she plumbed the archives of his professional papers, although she said she could not get access to some personal material, including diaries and letters between Jung and his wife. However, she did arrange interviews with at least 10 Jung relatives, including Ulrich Hoerni, a grandson who heads the family committee of Jung's estate in Switzerland. Hoerni objected in particular to the passage that accused his grandmother of not showing her feelings, and he included that objection among those compiled by the family and sent to the original publisher, Little, Brown: "People who knew her, myself (U. Hoerni) included, experienced without any doubt that Emma did show her feelings. Furthermore, D. Bair interviewed at the most three of five 'children.' She can hardly have a clear idea of the situation." The Jung relatives were even more incensed that Bair decided not to let them see their quotations before they were published. Bair said she agreed to show them their quotes only if she used them. To avoid delays, she said she chose to quote only statements they had repeated elsewhere in other interviews or in other writings. "She refrained from obtaining approvals for the publication of statements by some of the heirs, which resulted in a false and misleading presentation of some of these statements," Hoerni wrote in response to a reporter's questions. "We feel obliged to draw the publisher's attention to the shortcomings of the book without commenting on the author's interpretations." After the book was published in English, the Jung family remained largely silent, according to Bair, who said she sent them copies. Critics praised the book for a thorough and balanced portrait of Jung's ambition, arrogance and original thinking. The Jungs did not express their qualms until nearly seven months later, Bair said, when Little, Brown received a letter from Hoerni demanding withdrawal of the book. A series of exchanges followed for months between Little, Brown's attorney and a Swiss lawyer for the Jungs before the publisher finally said that "we do not see any specific, substantiated factual errors or any other basis" to halt the book. But in June, Bair said she was contacted by her agent and told that Knaus Verlag in Germany had agreed to insert some information from the Jung family. Her first reaction was to block the book, even though Little, Brown owned the foreign rights. She then sought to add her own response to the family's claims in the book, but was rebuffed by the publisher because of concerns that her blunt protest about the "forced intrusion" could ignite a lawsuit. "I was going to disown it," she said, but backed down when she realized she might face legal consequences. When the biography comes out in the autumn in Germany, about two pages of information from the Jung family will be incorporated with about 40 annotations, according to Vidoni, the publisher of Knaus Verlag, who stressed that Bair's text will not be changed. Bair said she had not yet seen the proposed annotations and Vidoni said the edition was unfinished. In the last few months, the debate has spread to Jung Society meetings and online Jungian forums. s, a specialist in Jungian studies and a professor of analytical psychology at the University of Essex in Britain, said the disputes raised concerns about potential censorship. "The true issue," he said, "is not anymore about the biography, but the manner in which Jung as a cultural icon is handled by the heirs."

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/08/02/opinion/jung.php

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