Customer Reviews

Analytical Psychology

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Deconstructing Jung.
This book derives from a written transcript of a seminar held about the time Jung broke with Freud and had a psychotic episode ("nervous breakdown" is how you usually hear about it). I came to this book after years of reading many of Jung's published works (beginning with his "Autobiography" & "Man and His Symbols" and later several of his Collected Works: "Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious," "Psychology and Alchemy," "Alchemical Studies," "Aion;" as well as the essays collected in "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" and Vincent Brome's fine biography, "Jung: Man and Myth").

What I like about the present book is this: Jung's books are not easy to understand (he's an alchemist, remember). And many of his followers hollowly parrot what they understood the Master to have said. And his god-like status as a Western shaman is an awesome subcultural projection to overcome-yet one must do so to go beyond the myth and encounter one's own destiny, above and beyond merely imitating Jung's life or blindly following his erstwhile "system." (You know, I have seldom had a dream in four parts, making it a quadraplicity, yet my dreams are not incomplete.) This book reveals Jung the man working on himself and dealing with his own problems: the break with Freud, his psychotic episode, women/anima problems. The most notable aspect of this seminar is the time dwelt on anima problems, specifically Rider Haggard's novel, "She," the prototypical story of the anima or inner-woman-as-soul that every man must somehow wrestle (whether via Jung's understanding or some other). Jung only alludes to this novel in his published books; here, it is discussed in considerable detail, revealing insights as well as shortcomings in Jung's thought. In many ways, much of the material here was familiar from other books. Yet it is the personal, intimate quality of Jung-the-man's seminar that breathed life into otherwise dusty, grey concepts that appealed to me here. I was led to this book via Brome's biography (above), who also recommended Jung's earlier book, "Psychology of the Unconsious" as the version of these researches published by Jung himself in his lifetime.

This compilation of Jung's lectures is conversational and personal which allowed this reader to feel as though I were sitting with him, just talking. His stories are interesting as always, and I highly recommend this book as a path to getting to know Jung and his thoughts.

Many analytic concepts presented and illustrated here, including a brief history of Jung's own development from his own perspective. This, the Zarathustra, and the Dream seminars work well together.