“I keep being drawn towards Jung,” sighs Etty Hillesum in May 1941. Two months earlier, she took paper and pen to try to organize her thoughts while writing. Thoughts that are also nourished by reading books, her greatest passion. Often she quotes sentences, often long passages from books she is reading. We especially encounter the work of Rilke many, many times, but the writings of Carl Gustav Jung also seem to affect her. What fascinates her about the work of this Swiss psychiatrist?

Let us start at the beginning. It is the 8th of March 1941. Etty Hillesum hesitatingly begins to write in her diary. Her incentive to write does not necessarily have to do with the war, which is making life very difficult for her as an Amsterdam Jew. She is motivated to write by the German palm-reading expert and psychologist Julius Spier with whom she is in therapy. Etty Hillesum has decided to go into therapy because she frequently has dark moods. Sometimes she feels she cannot cope with life anymore. Etty Hillesum also struggles with physical problems. She feels this has to do with what she calls her “spiritual constipation,” which, according to her, is rooted in the family she comes from. Sometimes, Etty Hillesum fears that she has mental illness, like her brothers, and that she cannot overcome her moods.

Julius Spier must help her end this “spiritual constipation.” Before Etty Hillesum knew him, Spier (Frankfurt am Main 1887 – Amsterdam 1942), who soon has an enormous influence on her, was a successful businessman, publisher, and active within artistic circles.