Customer Reviews

Psychic Energy: Its Source and Its Transformation [Bollingen Series X]

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Given today's New Age flavor, Esther Harding's title, Psychic Energy, could easily be misleading. Psychic Energy is not a New Age book, but a serious consideration of very deep human psychological and psyche conditions and conditioning. Esther Harding was a leading psychoanalyst in the 1920s. Her knowledge, experience and perceptions rank with Marion Woodman and Eric Erickson. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to probe more deeply into the human psyche for fresh explanations of who we are and how we come to be.

I read Harding's work in the late 70s after an intense spiritual awakening which was first expressed in Christian fundamentalism in the early 70s. During a time of study at the C.G. Jung Foundation and the New School (New York City) I began to discover the spiritual meaning and personal potential of the Christian myth. The work continues to this day, and I am thankful to Harding and others (Edinger, Neumann, Jacobi, Von Franz, Whitmont) who extended the insights of Jung for pioneers along the path of individuation.

As with most Jungian scholars the requirements for an understanding of the concepts being presented are formidable. Certainly Jung's "Two Essay's On Analytical Psychology", Collected Works vol. 7, "The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious", Collected Works vol. 8 and "Psychology And Alchemy" Collected Works vol. 12 are a bare minimum for approaching "Psychic Energy: Its Source and Its Transformation". I would also suggest Marie-Louise von Franz' "Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology", "Alchemical Active Imagination" and "Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales". William James' "Varieties Of Religious Experience" is also highly recommended. Having said that, this is an excellent presentation of the analytic experience and the demands it makes on the individual.

I enjoyed Harding's insightful and profound and yet readable style and her excursions into the Jungian perspective; her historical sense was also enjoyable. However, speaking theoretically, the Jungian tendency which came ultimately from Freud and which she shares, namely to reduce psyche to a rarefied, neutralized, "psychized" form of instinct, troubles me.

Perhaps we should see through this to the heroic fantasy below: the pioneer and missionary out to colonize the wild natives. Where there was instinct, there shall consciousness be.