Sophie Jung

"Sophie Ziegler Jung suffered from mental illness whose nature is uncertain. In later life her famous great-grandson analysed her handwriting and found no trace of schizophrenia, detecting instead a 'psychogenic melancholia'; he also speculated that she had an over-intense relationship with her son, which exacerbated the rift with Franz. Partly as a result of Franz's marital discord with Sophie, the rumour sprang up that Sophie had had an illegitimate son by Goethe. The canard was circumstantially plausible, as Sophie and her sister were lively artistic personalities who knew Goethe and did a great deal for the Mannheim theatre (Franz Ignaz transferred the family seat from Mainz to Mannheim), especially at the time of the memorable premiere of Schiller's Die Rauberin in 1782. In his early career Jung was inclined to credit the rumour, and Freud, whether ironically or not, refers to Goethe as 'your ancestor' in correspondence with Jung. The idea of Goethe as Jung's great-grandfather looks like a classic instance of the common fantasy of having celebrated forebears famously analysed by Freud as the 'family Romance'. At the end of his life Jung advanced a more sober explanation for the role of Goethe in the history of his family in terms of a possible 'transference' to Goethe."

Source: Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung at NYTimes.com, visited May 17, 2014.