Customer Reviews

The Undiscovered Self

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_In this book Jung correctly predicted that Communism had to collapse from within. No one else saw that coming. Why should they? For, as he points out, the mass state had all the force of the big battalions on their side- politics, science, and technology were their natural allies. And yet they collapsed.

_Should we rejoice in this? Why? Jung points out that the West is every bit as materialistic as our former Communist opponents. Our spiritual base is gone- in the place of true religion we have aging cults that serve the status quo. There is no inner power there. Every place Jung uses the term Communist, you can substitute Corporate and you have the same animal. That is because both are hierarchical structures where the individual counts for nothing. Indeed, the self-knowledge or individualization that would produce true men and women capable of standing up to the hierarchy is actively discouraged. They are trapped in the illusion of statistical man and of the organization- neither of which really exist. Only a few at the top can exercise the power of a true individual, and even they are usually no more than mouthpieces for the undeveloped masses and their unconscious drives.

_The hope for Jung lies in true religion. The freedom and autonomy of the individual depends on deep inner experience of a metaphysical nature. This is not "faith"; it is direct knowing. Even the deepest faith may melt away with time and circumstances- but not direct experience. It is only this that gives the individual the power to stand up to mass tyranny- and to the World itself. When you haven't made this breakthrough (which requires deep introspection, effort, and, yes, suffering) then other things get deified and charged with demonic energy- money, work, political influence...

_The shallow, rootless mass-man and his organizations are always going to lose, eventually, to the man with deep religious connection to the Macrocosm. Jung the Gnostic, Jung the Christian, Jung the Alchemist, Jung the Magician saw this. The individuated man has the cosmic correspondence within himself.

I read this volume while preparing to teach a summer General Psychology course and was absolutely blown away by how relevant Jung's thinking is to today's world.

This powerful book is so far removed from the Gen Psy textbook blather about Jung, (basically blowing him off in a paragraph or two as "a former disciple of Freud who focused on dreams and Christianity and had a falling out with the great master..."),that I found myself marvelling over it and reading passages out loud to my long-suffering family.

Jung's thinking is fresh and powerful and remains on target in this strange new world where the East is erupting on a daily basis, and East is meeting West in sometimes uncomfortable new ways.

"Gegenwart und Zukunft," was written in 1956, in Switzerland, in German. It could have been written last week, in America, in any language, and kept its original German title which means "Present and Future."

I will use this book, not in Psychology as I had planned, but in History 112/Political Science, where we discuss not only WW1 & WW2 but also 9/11 and current events. It is an awesome, and universal, read.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware