Customer Reviews

Black Ship to Hell

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While my edition of this book was published in 1962, I still found the theme of mankind's self-destructive tendencies to be relevant. Especially with the current U.S. war in progress. While the author classifies her book as fiction, this book draws on Freud's theories of Eros and Thanatos, as well as world history, mythology, art, and politics. While I don't tend to agree with Freud's over sexualization of unconcious urges, complexes, and neuroses, I do think that he was basically correct given the vocabulary available at that period to describe his ideas. Much of the book draws on Freud's writings and the Thanatos/death/hate aspect of the human psyche. Some of the better parts reveal much about the unconcious and its workings, more so than some of Jung's writings, and provides insight into many of the repressed urges and emotions that seem to thwart our attempts to eliminate them. This book is also useful in critiqueing Soren Kierkegaard's writings as the author mentions Kierkegaard in reference to the "repetition" of infantile patterns and repression of childhood experiences. The authors main theme is an attempt to "awaken" people to their unconcious drives and work toward solutions that are non-violent. I enjoyed exploring this book, but was disappointed with its inability to answer the question it asks. For that, I was rewarded by reading Jane Goldberg's, "The Dark Side of Love." I would recommend this book to anyone who is able to read with a critical eye to question the universal validity of the theories presented and still be able to understand how the Freudian theories and the author's bias have relevance as motivating beliefs and behavior in individual personalities, as well as societies and nations.