Jung Man and Myth by
Vincent Brome (MacMillan Vincent Brome is eminently equipped to write not only a brilliant biography of the only serious rival to Freud but also an objective account of the early history of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology.
Under this careful scrutiny Jung emerges as a man of multiple personalities — an enigma to others as well as to himself. He opted for medicine, was inclined to surgery while trying to bring science to bear on spiritualism, When he read a book on psychoses, diseases of the personality, he promptly decided to choose this field common to the biological and the spiritual, "the place where the collision of nature and spirit became a reality". Everything in this life thereafter was subjected to his analyses, theories and treatment of the human psyche.
Inevitably, Jung met Freud and the extraordinary relationship between these two great men forms the heart of the book. Their friendship was deep and disturbing on several levels and when, remorseless as it was unfortunate, the break came the upheavals it caused can be gauged by the bitterness they both expressed.
Science and
Beginnings by Charles Hauriet (Christian Classics).
This book, published in 1968, is an attempt to explain the theological meaning and its relationship to science of the first. three chapters of Genesis. It is a book more for the layman than the professional theologian
Jung's ensuing breakdown brought him to the very edge of insanity, and terryfying reading it makes. His family and mistress were his sheet-anchor, but he held on to the last thread of his all but shattered sanity which enabled him to explore the labyrinth of his own powerful and complex psyche at great cost to himself and of no small advantage to others.
Apart from the chapter treating of Jung's involvement with "The Nazi Psychosis" and his alleged anti-semitism, the rest of the book describes an insatiable Jung journeying abroad, his fame, his prosperity and finally his serene, patriarchal years until his death in 1961. There arc three appendices: Jung's model of the psyche, his influence and sources, three ctitiques and essential reading.
Though perhaps not definitive, Jung Man and Myth is the most recent and authoritative statement on and evaluation of the "chameleon" analyst here analysed, the masks removed, the myth exploded. It reveals a man of genius and of incalculable infl uence — kind and cantankerous, high-minded and compulsively egocentric, who searched for God and probably just managed to find him.
Kenneth Green
Genesis
though the author asserts: "It will not be devoid of interest for the latter".
Like other writers on the subject, the author realises that he cannot be dogmatic about the meaning of these chapters except in general theological terms. This book has been superceded by much better ones.
Maurice Nassan, Si