Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography [Hardcover]

F. J. McLynn (Author), Frank McLynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997

Early in Jung's career he was the admirer and protege of Sigmund Freud, the adopted 'Son' to Freud's 'Father'; then, after their famous quarrel, he became his rival and bitter enemy. Controversial for his right-wing views, his alleged anti-Semitism, and his sexual promiscuity, Jung nonetheless seemed to many a more acceptable icon than Freud, not least because he opposed Freud's atheism and stressed the necessary and overwhelming role of religion in the life of the individual. With the discovery of the universal symbols of the collective unconscious; his explorations of the role of dreams in the journey toward psychic wholeness, his speculations about the true nature of God; his passionate and profound interest in myth and in oriental religion, in alchemy and astrology; his theory of synchronicity, he has begun to emerge as this era's favorite philosopher, the hero and guru of the New Age. His theories on alternative modes of thought have already fascinated generations and continue to appeal to new audiences.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

McLynn's earlier books, a portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and considerations of the European exploration of Africa, inadvertently paved the way for this magisterial biography of Jung, a literary theoretician and explorer of the great unmapped terrain of the psyche. Complex, controversial, and profoundly influential, Jung presents the biographer with Herculean tasks, and McLynn's performance is heroic. He begins by describing Jung as "not untypical" of the Swiss, that is, conservative, xenophobic, melancholy, and obstinate. A family history follows, a litany of turbulent marriages, inherited clairvoyance, and careers in medicine and the church, all subterraneanly linked to Jung's revolutionary introduction of spirituality into psychology. As McLynn chronicles each stage of Jung's life--from his unhappy school years to his calculated marriage, close collaboration and exceedingly traumatic break with Freud, and the writing of his seminal works--he strikes a balance between deep respect for Jung's brilliant interpretations of the human experience and frank acknowledgement of his lack of compassion, a failing that made him a womanizer, an unloving father, and a Nazi sympathizer. Confounding as his darker side is, Jung was a man of awesome powers and vision, and his revelations will continue to shape our culture for many years to come. Donna Seaman

From Kirkus Reviews

A thorough and often critical biography of the second most important figure in 20th-century psychology (the first of two Jung biographies due out this fall). Veteran biographer and intellectual historian McLynn (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1994, etc.) appropriately devotes a great deal of space to the final break in 1912 between Freud and his onetime prot‚g‚ Jung. The author does an excellent job of delineating their intellectual differences: In contrast to psychology's founding father, Jung rejected the near-monocausality of sexuality for psychological disorders, downplayed the role of transference in treatment, and was highly sympathetic to religion's role in the search for meaning and psychic health. While praising his subject's ``astonishing fertility of ideas and . . . eclecticism of inspiration,'' McLynn demonstrates how disturbed many of his most important personal relationships were. The author concludes that, having had many affairs, Jung ``had destroyed both [his wife Emma's] life and that of Toni Wolff [his longest and most important mistress] as thoroughly as it was possible for a human to do by his habitual infidelities, his coldness, his ruthlessness and his rating of anima archetypes over flesh-and-blood women.'' On the most controversial aspect of the Swiss thinker's life, McLynn is restrained and fair-minded but pulls no punches in revealing how Jung was ``at best ambivalent and, at worst, openly supportive'' toward the Nazis in the 1930s. And if he was often intellectually insightful and culturally sophisticated, Jung was also prone to fatuous one-dimensional judgments of others. In addition, Jung's presentation of his ideas often was stylistically murky and sometimes even self-contradictory. While McLynn could have explained a few of Jung's more recondite ideas more fully, this very solid, well-paced biography will help readers understand both why Jung was so intensely admired and hated, and why, in terms of intellectual influence, he came to be so thoroughly overshadowed by his great nemesis, Freud. (For an even harsher view of Jung, see Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ, p. 935.) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312154917
• ISBN-13: 978-0312154912
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,675,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Jung, Carl

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A sophisticated hatchet-job, January 14, 1999

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography (Hardcover)

Ok, so the Jungians have done themselves no favors by publishing biographies of Jung that are one-sidedly laudatory. However, the solution is not, in my opinion, to compose counter-biographies that are one-sidedly negative.

After being disappointed with Noll's sensationalist books on Jung, I was hoping that McLynn's biography would be more even-handed. It had, after all, drawn very favorable reviews.

On one hand, thanks to McLynn's efforts, I learned a lot more about Jung than I knew before. However,McLynn's overwhelmingly negative, even petty, evaluation of Jung quickly became both tedious and frustrating as I forced myself to finish it.

If one wishes to know, in exhaustive detail, everything Jung ever did that could expose him to criticism, this book is useful. However, if one wishes to have a complete view of Jung, both positive and negative, this book is extremely misleading.

One source of frustration was the obvious fact that McLynn did not understand Jung's writings, and did not wish to take the time to understand them. It is not enough to dismiss his works as "impenetrable" (a word which, along with "farrago," "besotted," and "emollient," McLynn uses with excruciating frequency.) Lesser minds than McLynn's, such as my own, have managed to "penetrate" Jung's works and found them illuminating.

Another source of frustration was McLynn's penchant for taking gratuitous swipes at almost anyone or anything he finds deficient, as an adjunct to skewering Jung. Why, for example, was it necessary for McLynn to suggest that Jung resembled Physicist Richard Feynmann in having a "taste for the low life." What has Feynmann to do with the issue? What is Feynmann's unstated connection with the "low life"? Why, for another example, does McLynn feel so confident that much of Zen Buddhism is "pure nonsense"?

McLynn's dismissive attitude towards Jung's admirers, particularly his women students, is particularly unconvincing and mean-spirited. McLynn seems to sort them into two categories: mistresses, and would-be mistresses who were notable primarily for their lack of physical attractiveness. As just one example, for McLynn to ridicule Marie-Louise Von Franz as the author of mere incomprehensible gibberish goes beyond the realm of fair comment.

In short, if the reader is seeking a sarcasm-laden, repetitive expose of a famous man, look no further than this volume. However, if you wish truly to know Jung, this book will be a disappointment. An unbiased biography of Carl Jung has yet to be written.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A well-written polemic, July 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography (Hardcover)

McLynn pointed a very bright light at Jung, and *gasp* came up with an unflattering picture. Now, I have no problem with this approach, as it reveals fully the humanness of Jung and counters the usual hagiography by Jungians, but why raise the banner of Freud as you are lowering Jung's? McLynn has done a tremendous amount of research and is an excellent writer (his overuse of words, such as "adumbrated" aside), but once I got a whiff of McLynn's pro-Freud agenda, the book became just another salvo in the unending battle between the two camps. I wish McLynn had put his Freudian cards on the table at the beginning of the book.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An indispensable sour companion, December 20, 1999

By 

G. B. Talovich (Wulai, Taiwan, ROC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography (Hardcover)

Anybody interested in Jung should read this book, but read it with a grain of salt. The author is no great admirer of Jung; was this a result of learning so much about him while writing his biography? I do not know, but I am grateful to McLynn for writing a book that has taught me so much about a man who has taught me so much.

That said, let me state that this book can by no means substitute for reading Jung. The brilliance, fire, and life of his writing is almost entirely absent from this book: a great loss.

Also absent are photographs. I would like to see what Jung and Co. looked like at various stages.

So let's put out a new version with photos!