137 - Arthur I. Miller [79]
Pauli and Franca married in London on Sunday, April 4, 1934. Most likely Pauli chose London because he had never been there. Franca’s hooded eyes and half smile make her look uncannily like a female version of Pauli.
A couple of weeks later Jung sent Pauli his “best congratulations.” Jung had predicted that Pauli’s marriage “would constellate the ‘dark side of the collective’,” meaning that it would bring the good side of otherwise potentially dark archetypes into his consciousness. Pauli, elated, declared Jung was “perfectly correct.” To Jung, Pauli described Franca as someone who had “a similar problem of opposites, but the reverse of mine…. She fell in love with my shadow side because it secretly made a great impression on her.”
Shortly afterward the couple found themselves seated across the table from Jung at yet another of Guggenbühl’s dinner parties. Strangely, Jung totally ignored Franca. To make matters worse, Pauli had only just told her that he had previously been married, to Käthe. How could Jung not speak to her when he “was aware that the new marriage could lead to a devastating catastrophe,” she later demanded. Pauli reassured her that “Jung knew [from Pauli’s dreams] that the binding would be good.”
Franca’s conclusion was that Jung had ignored her because of “Pauli’s decision to marry” in other words, that Jung had lost Pauli to her. “Pauli, the extremely rational thinker, subjected himself to total dependence on Jung’s magical personality,” she remembered bitterly. Her distrust of Jung was augmented by her anger that he had sent Pauli to be analyzed by a mere student, Erna Rosenbaum. She insisted that Pauli end his sessions with Jung. Perhaps, in fact, it was she who was jealous of Jung.
Nevertheless, Pauli acquiesced. He ceased dream analysis with Jung. Colleagues at the ETH such as Hermann Weyl thought that Franca had done him a favor.
Nevertheless, Pauli remained somewhat disturbed and insecure. On a skiing trip with Franca that December he panicked that the “earth was shaking under his feet” and screamed that he wanted to “thrash someone.” Weisskopf and his wife were skiing nearby and dropped in to see them. Pauli was angry with Weisskopf because he had made an error in a physics paper and was not speaking to him. Weisskopf was eager to get back on speaking terms but Pauli refused to see him. Weisskopf asked Franca to intervene but Pauli had stopped speaking to her too because she had dented their car.
Back in Zürich, Pauli tried to make it up with Weisskopf. “Don’t take it too seriously,” he said grandly. “Many people have published wrong papers.” Then he ruined everything by adding, “But I never did!”
The following year, Erich Hecke wrote to Weyl that he was concerned about Pauli’s mental health. He seemed too preoccupied with “dreaming and waking fantasies.” Hecke felt sympathetic toward Franca and referred to the “huge piece of work” she had to contend with in her marriage.
In fact Franca contended well. She took care of day-to-day tasks, put up with his cynicism and, all in all, provided a secure home for him. She gave Pauli what he sorely needed—an ordered life in which he could get on with his work. Theirs was an affectionate relationship. The two of them always appeared comfortable with one another.
Over breakfast, Pauli regularly told Franca his dreams and then wrote them down. She recalled that this routine became increasingly important to him as he grew older. To her his dreams were useless exaggerations. After his death, she destroyed all the records of them she could find.
Though Pauli had stopped going to Jung for analysis, the two never ceased corresponding. Franca could