Psychology of the Unconscious

Good read

The description above correctly states that sometimes Jung trades readability for erudition. He was an astonishingly well read man, a polyglot, and seemingly an etymologist as well. He moves quickly from the myths of one society to another, sometimes assuming a familiarity which I do not have. Still, I was able to understand the myths that he referenced from context, for the most part. Jung believes, in contrast to Freud, that the libido (that is, what he calls the genetic libido) is broader than the merely sexual libido. He "proves" this assertion through an analysis of the disinvestment of the world by the libido in psychosis. This disinvestment, Jung argues, is so complete in psychosis that it cannot possibly be merely the disinvestment of the sexual libido. That is, the subtraction of the sexual libido's energy from the individual's engagement with the world could not explain the completeness of the individual's disengagement with the world in psychosis. This seems to me to be a strong argument, if one accepts the premise that neurosis and psychosis can be explained by degrees of investment of the libido. I was less convinced by his contention that as one becomes disengaged with the world, one regresses into oneself such that one's thought processes come to reflect the thought processes of earlier societies. For one, this is problematic because it assumes that some societies are more "primitive" than other societies. Secondly, it seems a bit outlandish to claim that, somehow, antique Greek myths are lying beneath the conscious mind of, for example, your average uneducated Middle American. Nonetheless, Jung marshals a huge amount of anecdotal evidence—from his practice and from mythology and literature—in support of this claim. It is enough, at least, to assume the claim is correct in order to follow his analysis of Ms. Miller through the rest of the book. I won't go over his discussions of the importance of the symbols of fire, trees, the sun's going up and down, dragons, sea monsters, treasures obtained at difficulty, etc. All of his arguments are, again, supported by a frankly unbelievable array of examples in literature, mythology, and Jung's clinical practice. In the end, I both was seriously challenged by and really enjoyed this book. I feel like it has given me another vocabulary with which to engage with literature, film, and art. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject.

I bought this with The Red Book by Carl Yung. If you're on the path to understanding consciousness, this is one to buy!

What I expected.

well written and detailed book however as stated in the introduction, the book will be most useful to those who are interested in thoroughly studying Jung's ideas as it might be quite a challenging read for the layman. A prior understanding of Faust as well as some Greek, Christian and Mithraic mythology and theology would come in handy to anyone interested in this book. Nevertheless the book offers great insight into Jung's early thought processes and I would definitely recommend it

Good brain material

Love how it starts off with the one myth I truly wanted insight on which is the Oedipus complex. And thats only three pages in cant wait to lea4n more from this great sage of his time!

I enjoyed this translation version.