A Life of Jung [Paperback]

Ronald Hayman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2002

"[M]eticulously researched...judicious....intelligently illuminates the private life Jung deliberately veiled in shadow."—New York Times Book Review

Carl Jung was one of the world's most influential psychoanalysts. With the exception of Freud, who chose him as the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, no psychologist has achieved more. Previous biographers have either made Jung an idol or condemned him for his failings. Ronald Hayman neither ignores Jung's faults nor exaggerates them in investigating the most crucial paradoxes surrounding this enigmatic figure. Hailed by Anthony Storr as "the best biography of Jung," Hayman's work is "all the more effective for its detached tone that perfectly puts in proportion Jung's cruel, brilliant and crazy schemes" (The Times [London]). Impeccably researched and written with notable objectivity, A Life of Jung offers a rare insight into how Jung's revolutionary ideas grew out of his own extraordinary experiences. "Compelling....Hayman captures...the extraordinary charisma of his subject."—Newsday "Likely to become the standard biography of the revolutionary psychoanalyst."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review 16 pages of illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The S.S. men are being transformed into a caste of knights ruling sixty million natives. [T]here is no more ideal form of government than a decent form of oligarchy," wrote Carl Jung of the German Nazis in the mid-1930s. One of the many strengths of this candid and discerning biography is that Hayman (Nietzsche: A Critical Life) enlists such provocative, alarming material to build a careful, nuanced portrait of his subject that neither excuses nor excoriates his actions and words. After studying psychiatry in Paris at the turn of the century (while also investigating the supernatural via s‚ances), Jung became an ardent admirer of Freud, with whom he agreed on many things (though Freud's emphasis on sexuality was a notable exception). Meanwhile, Jung pursued his own theories of the unconscious, using myth and archetype as models. His break with Freud before WWI was a defining moment in the development of his theory and his career. Without losing sight of Jung's total oeuvre, Hayman examines the enormous advantages Jung gained by maintaining ambiguous views of National Socialist policies. Indeed, Hayman shows how Hitler's attack on Jews gave Jung a chance to promote his own psychological theories (e.g., the defamation of Freud and other Jewish psychoanalysts led to the possibility for the ascendance of Jung's analytical psychology). Placing Jung's anti-Semitism in a broad cultural and professional context as well as exploring his other influences, including his complicated relationships with patients and disciples Hayman has produced a vital and moving portrait of the man and his time. While not detailed enough for scholars, this is a fine work for the general reader. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Swiss psychiatrist Jung (1875-1961) lived creatively, grandly, and sometimes irresponsibly. Spiritual, mystical, and at times schizoid, he brought us archetypes, the collective unconscious, introversion and extraversion, and anima and shadow, but his reputation suffers from affairs with patients, cultism, and apologies for Nazism. A biographer of Nietzsche, Sartre, Proust, Sylvia Plath, and Thomas Mann, Hayman knows German and retranslated parts of Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections for this book, first published in England in 1999. But Jung's complicated story lurches and tumbles in his hands. Research and life events are overpacked into paragraphs laced with orphan pronouns and non-sequiturs. Hayman mixes bit players with protagonists, the vapid with the gravid, and when he ventures an opinion, it is often silly, e.g., that patients benefit more from unstable than from stable therapists. Intrepid specialists may find some new material, but the great bulk is shamelessly derivative. Not recommended; libraries are much better off with Anthony Stevens's On Jung (Princeton Univ., 1999. rev. ed.) or Frank McLynn's Carl Gustav Jung (Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin's, 1997). E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (June 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323226
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323221
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #977,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Freudian Reading Of Jung, November 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Life of Jung (Hardcover)

Other reviews have pointed out some serious problems with this book: the scattered telling of the story, the sometimes unclear writing, the fact that one does not come away with a very clear picture of Jung's thought even after 450 pages of summarizing his theories. But there is another reason I was disappointed in this book: namely, that Hayman is a Freudian who criticizes Jung through Freud's eyes (Read Louis Breger's "Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision" for an example of how bad an idea that is). While Hayman assumes as common sense that we accept the theories of the typically modern, sex-crazed, materialistic Freud, he criticizes Jung precisely for presuming to break with Freud, thereby assuring (in Hayman's mind) that Jung and Jungians will remain in the arena of madness, rather than mental health. Hayman quotes a psychoanylist, with marked approval, who says: "If [Jung's] main life's work was in the end to be founded on a personal and scientific incompatibility with Freud, there are those who believe, like myself, that this was a disaster, and in part an illusion, from which we suffer and will continue to do so until we have repaired the damage." (p. 213) In short, the only way to be an acceptable Jungian is to be a Freudian. As many of us have found the modern ethos of sex and materialism to be a dead end, and trying to re-think spirituality in an age of the dessicated fanaticism of fundamentalist religions hard enough in itself, a dependence on Freud is surely no help. If one need not acept Jung as if he were a god -- always the problem of Freudians in relation to their master -- at least Jung has pointed the way for many people to a view of life that is compatible with a regenerative spirituality, not just Freudian myths about repressed childhood trauma and the primacy of sexuality in self-understanding. Hayman's biography has the very desirable effect of presenting Jung as a man whose life was troubled by psychosis and full of the turn-of-the-century Spiritualism that tends no longer to be accepted as factual among thinking people. Worshippers of Jung doubtless don't like this aspect of the book. For myself, I found the manner of Jung's break with Freud -- his experiences of internal dialogue and vivid fantasy, his belief that sexuality is only one factor among many in human life, his refusal to submit to the enervating Freudian materialism as a final arbiter in all judgements, his wide-ranging interest in creation myths as opposed to Freud's reductive readings of Oepipus et al, his belief that we should explore the fantasies and delusions we encounter in life in relation to the world of archetypes rather than trying to extirpate them by analysis and replace them with Freud's own truncated little fantasies -- to be more creative and productive than if he had remained a Freudian true believer. But let's not worship Jung, either: reading Hayman may not make Jung quite clear, or an acceptable object of worship, but the former (along with the implicit Freudianism) is the real problem I had with his book, not the latter.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars hodgepodge, July 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Life of Jung (Paperback)

Hayman's biography, though well researched, is a grave disappointment. First, the author fails to offer a balanced picture of the varied and complex person of Jung. Instead, Hayman engages in a reductive enterprise and reduces Jung to little more than a caricature. Second, Hayman continues his reductionist approach when arguing that Jung's work amounted to little more than scouting out archetypes in the dreams of his patients and in world mythology. In this, Hayman misses the deeper aspects of Jung's work and ignores the epistemological significance of the manner in which Jung presaged post-modern and post-structuralist thought. Third, the biography is badly focused and organized because it leaps from scene to scene and person to person without logical reasons for doing so. Fourth, the style of the biography is troublesome; not only is the prose in need of vigor, but the grammatical structures are often troubling: i.e., the books is rife with sentences that contain pronouns that have no clear antecedents. Fifth, the biography fails to discuss a key aspect of Jung's life: his relationship with his children. Sixth, many of Hayman's assertions and conclusions about Jung are unfounded, unsupported, and misguided.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars From Hagiography to Denigration, August 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Life of Jung (Hardcover)

MR. HAYMAN'S BOOK ON JUNG IS INDEED "A" LIFE OF JUNG, BUT WHEREAS MANY OF THE VERSIONS OF JUNG'S LIFE BY HIS DISCIPLES WERE SWARMY WITH DEVOTION, HIS IS MOSTLY AIMED AT PULLING DOWN JUNG. EARLY ON IN THE BOOK, ONE SEES MR. HAYMAN'S BASIC TAKE ON JUNG: A EGOTISTICAL MAN WHOSE INTELLIGENCE AND ABILITY TO CHARM AND BULLY OTHERS PREVENTED THEM FROM SEEING THAT HE WAS MOSTLY FULL OF HUMBUG AND SOMETIMES MERELY PSYCHOTIC. THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF THIS LONG BOOK WHICH COVERS A LONG LIFE (86 YRS!) MR. HAYMAN NEVER REALLY SAYS ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE MAN. IT IS A BORING ACCOUNT IN THE END WHICH IN THE END ONLY PRESENTS ONE A FLAT PICTURE OF THE MAN. THIS IS A SHAME ESPECIALLY SINCE MR. HAYMAN'S RESEARCH WAS MORE EXTENSIVE AND MINUTELY FOCUSED THAN ANY OTHER BIOGRAPHER'S OF JUNG. (HE EVEN TRACKED DOWN HOW MUCH JUNG WOULD HAVE MADE IN SALARY AT HIS FIRST HOSPITAL JOB AND HOW THAT WOULD HAVE COMPARED TO WHAT HE WOULD HAVE MADE IN THREE MONTHS OF STIPENDS RECEIVED FROM STUDENTS TO WHOM HE GAVE A PRIVATE LECTURE SERIES!) ALTHOUGH HAYMAN PRESENTS MANY OF JUNG'S CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN HOW HE APPEARS TO OTHERS AND WHAT HE DID AND SAID IN PRIVATE, HIS VIEWS ON JUNG ARE SO UNSYMPATHETIC THAT THE PICTURE WE ARE LEFT WITH IS SIMPLY BORING, FLAT, AND ONE SIDED. THERE IS MUCH INTERESTING GOSSIP AND DETAIL ABOUT JUNG BUT MR. HAYMAN'S VIEW DIDN'T AMOUNT TO MUCH MORE THAN A NARROW SECTARIAN TRACT AGAINST ITS SUBJECT.

HOWEVER, I WOULD STILL RECOMMEND THAT ONE BUY THIS BOOK. ITS GOSSIP IS JUST TOO RICHLY DETAILED TO PASS UP, EVEN IF THE PROSE IS REPETITIVE AND SOMETIMES OVERSTUFFED WITH FACTS THAT ARE NOT RELATED TO A CHAPTER'S THEME OR EVEN TO THE LIFE OF JUNG (THOUGH THIS CAN GET FUNNY IN A SILLY WAY, AS WHEN HAYMANTAKES ON AN EARLY AMERICAN TRANSLATOR OF FREUD.)