The Portable Jung [Paperback]

Joseph Campbell edits this volume and writes a nice introduction, explaining briefly Jung's major achievements. At the end, he's included an outline of Jung's complete works, which catalogs the amazing fecundity of Jung's mind. I was hoping that Campbell, hero of mythology that he is, would have included some of Jung's mythological work in this book, like a clip from "Symbols of Transformation," but he didn't. What a pity.

After Campbell's intro, the book consists of three parts: one focusing on Jung's theory, one on Jung's application of his theory, and the third part contains some curiosities that demonstrate the range of Jung's thinking.

(Part I) Introduces Jung's Big Ideas. The collective unconscious; archetypes; the psychological types (introversion/extroversion and all that jazz). Most of this section is easy and stimulating to get through, until you hit the psychological types, which get very technical. If you think about how the types apply in real life to people you know, it makes plowing through Jung's dry descriptions a little easier.

(Part II) Jung in action. Campbell gives us a healthy serving of Jung's dream analyses, which I recommend skimming, unless you're really into alchemical symbology. The two essays on contemporary life are still fresh.

(Part III) The essay on synchronicity is a mind-bending read, and it makes you suddenly aware of all those little coincidences in life. "An Answer to Job" starts off as a playful, almost Nietzschean essay where Jung performs a psychological deconstruction on the god of the Old Testament. Then it degenerates into a discussion of the psychological development of the idea of god as traced through the Bible, which turns out to be not exciting as it sounds.

Even if Jung occasionally crosses the boundary of credibility, you get the sense that he's a true scholar, dedicated first and foremost to seeking the truth. This volume is a good peep into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most daring thinkers exploring the uncharted depths of the human psyche.

Another good intro to Jung that's easier to get through is "Man and his Symbols."

Jung was a visionary, in more ways than one. In 1913 he thought he was having psychotic episodes by having dreams and visions of blood-filled rivers, endless winters and mass death. Jung's sense of the power of the collective unconscious comes partly from experiences such as this, for in 1914 the first world war began, and his visions seemed to have a prophetic ring to them.

After the war, Jung took an active interest both in developing his ideas as well as travelling and learning around the world from people in different settings -- this included people in indigenous cultures in Africa, the Americas and India. He was active in the field until the mid-1950s; he died in 1961.

Jung worked with Freudian ideas, but did not adopt Freud's framework without significant modifications (and there were parts he outright rejected). Jung saw the interior structure in a tripartite set-up -- the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is not the superego of Freudian theory, but rather a typse of psychic inheritance, a species-level knowledge that possibly even extends into the future (like his visions).

Another primary development of Jung is the idea of archetypes -- given his literary and linguistic background, this would seem to be a natural for Jung. These are mythical or primordial images -- much of religious literature is full of them; legends exemplify them. Archetypes can be easily understood (such as the mother archetype, the hero archetype) or more obscure (the anima and animus, the mana, the shadow).

This volume of Jung's work is compiled and introduced by none other than Joseph Campbell ('The Power of the Myth'), who worked so closely with the Star Wars group to turn it into a modern legend, full of Jungian-style archetypes. Jung's work spans much of spirituality, psychiatry/psychology, and even gets into political and philosophical territory. Campbell gives a good selection of Jung's works here, intending it to be both an introduction to Jung's psychological theories as well as his love for and realisation of the importance of mythology and religious lore of all people.

The first section has eight essays or selections that deal with particular psychological theory pieces -- the structure of the psyche, the stages of life, psychological types (the precursor of Myers-Briggs and other types of psychological type assessments). The second section deals with more 'spiritual' topics and dream analysis -- the relationship of psychology to poetry, the spiritual problem of the moderns, etc. The third section contains two essays -- On Synchronicity, a lecture he gave dealing with such things as deja vu and coincidence, and his 'Answer to Job', tackling the very tricky subject of the nature of God in the Hebrew scriptures in an interesting manner.

Campbell gives some additional reading suggestions in the appendix, divided by topic. Of course, one might pick up Campbell's own books as well.

Any beginning psychology student wishing to understand Jung's emphasis on symbolism & archetypes would do well to pick this up (along with Man & His Symbols). The highlight of the book is the text On Synchronicity, with Jung, himself, detailing how we ascribe meaning to events we consider "signs", and the impact on our lives.

This book can also provide an understanding of Jung's infamous split with Freud, who had been his mentor. Jung's theories show themselves to be much more adaptable to the spiritual & individual conflicts of a person rather than the primitive bestiality of Freud's "id". Jung acknowledges a person's capacity to reflect & restore, therefore empowering a patient to find guidance & direction in harmony WITH his beliefs.