Customer Reviews

Jung and the Post-Jungians

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I return again and again to this very useful and well-written map of the Jungian terrain. Jungian psychology is again coming into its own as a powerful and affirmative therapeutic approach. Samuels' volume helps the reader orient to the whole spectrum of this work.

This is a well written and very useful map of the many branches of contemporary Jungian psychology. It will be of great interest to anyone wishing to understand some of its links to other schools of depth psychology and to appreciate way in which Jungian psychology has developed in several different countries.

This book contains a (presumably) accurate historical review of post-Freudian depth psychology based on C. G. Jung's fascinating and provocative explorations into his own psyche, and others'. Regrettably, the book is almost utterly hagiographic: It contains little critical discernment and substitutes summary for scholarship. All in all, typical of the Jungian approach to historical enquiry: full of names, self-justifying, occasionally interesting, but more like cotton candy (vanishing upon consumption) than like true intellectual or psychological nourishment. A major disappointment.

If this book is any evidence, Jungian psychology is a silly little movement run by people without much depth. The author parades for us a group of minor thinkers, most of them working in pop psychology (the genre to which this book really belongs). Some of these people may have something to say, but they are always on the fringe of the respected psychological traditions. You get the sense that they can never quite break in and yet are sadly desperate to be taken seriously. This would be an interesting story, yet the author manages completely (I would guess deliberately) to ignore the 'hot' issues in Jungian psychology: its heritage of affiliation with the Nazis; its abuse of clients ('analysands'); its founder's self-designated messianic status; his assault on women in his care; the cult-like structure that his modern disciples have designed to keep it going and themselves flush. In short, whether you're looking for depth or honesty, you're going to be disappointed. A minor book about a minor trend.