 "You will find this book interesting even if you're a Freudian..." | 2009-11-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A101BVV4DR3G81 |
This "mythical" (Jung's word) book on Jung's life is certainly a beloved "bible" of many Jungian analysts and devoted fans, many claimed to have re-read this book once every year or so (so as to have a closer touch with the psyche of the guru). Fair to say the book is rich in metaphysical speculations, Jung's web-of-dreams as demonstration of his mythical (alchemical?) life goal in understanding human psyche (his own individuation), his famous or infamous encounter with his own unconscious (the raw data as recorded in the Red Book has been an embarrassment of his descendants for many years), near-death experience (rich speculative materials for New Age mediators), and his life-after-death speculation has given rationalization for some current Jungian shrinks to treat patients based on the belief of a trauma happened in one's previous life....not to mention his UFO mention.
Yet, Jung had categorically maintained that his analytical psychology belonged to the realm of natural science and that he himself was a scientist. As such, he never proclaimed the physical existence of metaphysical entities, though he didn't deny the possibility of such physical existence. This position is quite different from some current Jungian psychologists and new age fans of Jung. And Jung made this (him being a scientist) quite clear in the book. For example, concerning the "loud report in the bookcase" (p. 155) that Jung described as having meaning (i.e."synchronized" with or even caused by his psyche), Jung gave the readers a fair view of Freud's scientific argument in Freud own words. I shall quote as length here because it shows the true character of Jung (p 361): "At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we heard so frequently when you were here were never heard again after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add by way of challenge). The phenomenon was soon deprived of all significance for me by something else." Jung didn't refute Freud's argument in his book.
In summary, a book with excellent materials to study Jung from different perspectives. Highly recommended. |
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| "Jung: The Ultimate Psychopomp" | 2009-10-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: AAYFDO8VD3MGJ |
I read this book twice, but years ago. It is the best introduction to Jung and his World. Jung is a spiritual Bridge from modern mans consciousness to ancient and premodern spiritual world views. Having recently gone back to read his work, I believe I am closer to grasping the archetypes that he describes, and what they represent. In a preliterate time, mans approach to explaining himself in the world was much more visual and more purely symbolic. We still have no end of the essential urge to place ourselves into the great mysteries. Jung provides the guiding hand through these dangerous waters.
The idea of the collective unconscious is one that is hard for modern minds to grasp. It revolts against our reductive scientific perspective and does not (yet) allow of verifiable measurement. Something implicate in our symbolic cultural inheritance comes and jars our secure sense of daily self. We have become experts at ignoring these signs, or we drown them out with electronic media and its own symbol creating machines. And yet these themes or archetypes have a persistent life of their own, as they come as a direct psychic inheritance.
Man has always sought a method for spiritual and moral ascendency, and has always struggled with the great dichotomies of life which make that a perennial challenge. Jung teaches us that it is an everpresent and meaningful challenge. As individuals we are subjects of and representatives of a great psychic web streching from the past to the future. It is our goal and challenge to negotiate this adventure and to survive as spiritually evolving beings.
Jung's own adventure is here. |
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| "Validation of the unknown!" | 2009-08-16 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2G726M0RAE0FQ |
| I love this book because it goes beyond just personality catagorizations and static psychology formulas to show Jung's understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon that is the human being and how much larger our existence is than just the material or mental worlds. Although he was a true empirical scientist of his time, he also was quite aware and affected by spiritual and psychic experiences and mysterious energetic forces that, to me, validates a universal intelligence that is not well acknowledged in Western philosophy. In fact his empirical process led him to not be able to dismiss his experiences because he could not disprove them, and he seemed singularly self-possessed and courageous in this way. He was prepared to delve into the greater forces at work that affect the psyche, beyond just what has been experienced and suppressed. It is a fascinating and deeply thoughtful and insightful book, but it will take a flexible and open mind to appreciate it. |
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 "A professional biography of Jung" | 2009-03-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: AG3DQ1WVN4GP9 |
If you are new to Jung and perhaps looking for somekind of a short and accessible introduction to his teachings, then, instead of this one, you could take a look at "A Primer of Jungian Psychology" by Calvin S. Hall and Vernon J. Nordby. It's the one introduction which I can personally recommend. The "essentials" of this book are summarized in it, as well.
This is for the most part a professional biography of Jung. Huge chunks of text are devoted to his most detailed inner experiences, but nothing is really mentioned about his relationship to his wife, children, or mistresses. But I guess this is an essential read if one is seriously interested in his works. I know Jung was involved in writing the text himself, but there may be reason to suspect that others have critically edited it later...
Also, be aware that Jung's mythical "Seven Sermons to the Dead", or "Septem Sermones ad Mortuos", is not included in all editions of this book (as an extra appendix). My ISBN 0006540279 sure doesn't have it. |
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| "Incomparable" | 2009-02-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1214VIOSAB1NN |
Recently, I had an inexplicable craving for this book, which I first read when it was assigned by a high-school Teacher Who Changed My Life. In the name of time famine, I opted for the abridged audiobook version, read by Michael York---a fateful decision, as it turned out, since the contrast between York's plummy, uppercrust English accent and Jung's retelling of his "personal myth" (not his life, but his inner life) is as uproarious as it is surreal. Shove one of these tapes into your car stereo and let the man who channeled the Collective Unconscious, psychology's answer to Lemuria---a consoling fiction that laid the cornerstone of the New Age (and obliterated beyond repair the notion that psychology was even remotely scientific)---provide a wonderfully incongruous voiceover to the geography of nowhere (Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Wal-Mart, Target, Costco...) as it flashes past.
Thrill to Jung's formative childhood dream of a giant, one-eyed phallus sitting erect on a king's throne---a monstrous thing "made of skin and flesh, and on top there was something like a rounded head with no face and no hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing motionlessly upwards." Gird up your loins for a week of fear-crazed bedwetting: "The thing did not move, yet I had the feeling that it might at any moment crawl off the throne like a worm and creep towards me." The one-eyed trouser snake of locker-room lore, as reimagined by H.R. Giger! Pure terror! Listen, in rapt fascination, to the account of the female patient who believes she travels to and from the moon, where the moonpeople are threatened by a hypnotically beautiful vampire, who turns out to be a buried memory of sexual abuse, risen from her childhood nightmares. Laff until the tears run down your cheeks as Jung recounts the Battle of the Titans, in which he and Freud struggle for control of the historical narrative of psychoanalysis, each interpreting the other's dreams as maliciously as possible---as evidence of sublimated sexual pathologies, death wishes toward the father figure, or worse! (Profoundly unsettled by Jung's interest in the then-recently discovered mummies of pre-Christian "bog people," Freud is convinced that the Swiss analyst's obsession with "these corpses" masks a death wish toward him, and faints dead away at the dinner table.)
Jung's account of his childhood crisis of faith is worth the price of admission, all by itself. In it, we accompany the author on his way to school. Rejoicing in the chirping birds and exquisitely blue sky, he offers a silent prayer of thanks to the Creator God: "The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful and God made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and...and...and..." Suddenly, our narrator is struck with A THOUGHT TOO MONSTROUS TO THINK! Tormented for days by this soul-shriveling blasphemy, he finally decides, after much agony of mind, that God must have intended him to think this scaldingly sacreligious thought. This revelation "liberated me instantly from my worst torment, since I knew that God himself had placed me in this situation." Abandoning himself to divine will, Li'l Jung allows himself to think the unthinkable: "I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hellfire, and let the thought come." (Pregnant pause by York.) "God sits on His golden throne, high above the world and under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder." (That, Virginia, is why they call it a throne.) "I felt an enormous and indescribable relief; instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me, and with it an unutterable bliss." (Where are the Farrelly brothers when we need them? Do not go in there!)
Let that be a lesson to the morbidly religious among you---not to mention those bibliocentrists who turn up their noses at the obscure pleasures of the audiobook. |
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| "The Wizard's Journey, but No Mention of His Rape..." | 2008-12-14 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1SRMTM54D1S4I |
It begins with his first memories, and ends with his near-death experience, weeks before his actual death. Precious few are the books that one returns to time and again, and this is one of those. The language is simple, magical, and, to use Jung's own term, numinous.
What is most interesting: there is absolutely no mention of Jung's rape by an older man whom he regarded as a father figure, an incident which Jung confessed to Freud in correlation with his "religious crush" on his mentor. There are those that speculate it was this Amfortas-like wound that, after his break with Freud, deepened his crisis. But, it was also this crisis that propelled Jung into an explosion of creativity, the result of which was his groundbreaking Psychological Types. |
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