Reprinted with permission of Jeremy
Taylor.
Originally prepared for a manual for students at the Marin Institute
for Projective Dream Work.
I have just finished reading the new biography of Carl Gustav Jung by
Deirdre Bair, JUNG
- a Biography, (Little Brown, New York, 2003), all 880 pages of
it. I also
read Troy Jollimore's review from the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle of
December 7th, in which he
praises the book (with faint damns), and reluctantly admits it, "...is
a must-read for anyone with a
serious interest in Jung, or in any of the fields and disciplines in
which he played an important role."
I agree completely, but rather than trashing the book for its
voluminous detail, (the way Jollimore and others have done), I would
say it another way: Bair's book is just NOT the biography to read first.
If you are not already familiar with the broad outlines of Jung's life
and work, or of the seminal importance of his ideas in a startlingly
wide range of academic disciplines and popular arts, then I would
suggest starting off reading Claire Dunne's brief biography, Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul - An
Illustrated Biography, with a (charming) introduction by Jean
Houston, (Parabola Books, New York, 2000), and/or Laurens van der
Post's wonderful work, JUNG and the
Story of Our Time, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1975.)
Prior to reading Bair's book, the van der Post biography was my pick as
"best full-length biography of Jung", and it's still the best one to
read first. Gehard Wehr's, An
Illustrated Biography of Jung, (Shambala, Boston &
Shaftsbury, 1989), is also worth your attention.
202 of the book's 880 pages, (that's 23%!), of Bair's book are devoted
to footnotes, (in tiny print.) Most of them are elaborate references to
the multiple sources that she uses to verify the details of Jung's life
that she provides in the text. I wish I could tell you all to just
ignore them, but for me, some of the most important information in the
book appears in the occasional substantive footnotes that are scattered
among the references.
The index is excellent, but alas, given the fascinating and important
information that is hidden away in many of the footnotes, the index
does not cover people or events that appear only in the notes and not
in the text. For example, it is only in the notes that I discovered
that Jung "...said he read seven volumes of Swedenborg's writings." (p.
665) Emmanuel Swedenborg was a scientist in the dawning age of modern
science whose researches took him past thephysical/phenomenal world
into the realms of psychological and spiritual experience with a
totally fresh and compelling perspective. Swedenborg was a contemporary
of, and a tremendous influence on William Blake, and Swedenborg's
influence on Jung is very important, in my view. Had I
ignored the footnotes, I wouldhave missed this indication of the depth
and breadth of Jung's spiritual research, and his kinship not only with
the Gnostics, but also with the Romantics and the roots of liberal,
non-credal religion.
It was also only in the footnotes that I discovered that another of my
great intellectual and artistic heroes, the American poet Charles
Olson, had an extended public conversation with Jung at the close of a
lecture Jung gave at Harvard in 1936, in which Olson "...questioned
Jung on the mandala figure
in Moby Dick." This information is as important to me in my pursuit of
influences on Olson's life and work, as the Swedenborg connection is to
my interest in the influences on the life and work of Jung himself.
Alas, neither Swedenborg nor Olson appear in the index.
Bair also offers many of her most important opinions and conclusions in
the footnotes. After giving Richard Noll, (perhaps Jung's most vocal
and determined detractor at the beginning of the 21st century),
extensive credit for his scholarship and research, Bair finally rejects
the implications and conclusions of Noll's work, in a footnote :
"Noll's thesis is so submerged in bile and damnation-by-analogy that
his considerable scholarship (for which I
have great respect, and from which I have benefited) must be called
into question." (p, 741)
Perhaps the greatest service that Bair's biography provides is that she
gathers the verifiable data that answers so many of the distressing
accusations and rumors that still swirl around and surround Jung's life
and work, as they have for more than 70 years.
Was he a compulsive womanizer? He most certainly was, as documented in
many journals and interviews with the descendants of many woman who
were in analysis with him. Was he a Nazi sympathizer and/or an
anti-Semite? Clearly not, as demonstrated by his indefatigable
struggles with the Nazi psychiatric and mental health establishment,
his continuous efforts on behalf of Jewish refugees, and his work with
Alan Dulles, the prime American OSS agent stationed in Switzerland. At
Dulles' request, Jung prepared regular and extensive analyses of Nazi
propaganda and German culture for Churchill and Eisenhower, and even
recruited secret agents to work for Dulles from among his friends and
analytic clients.
Were his formulations of the archetypes associated with masculine and
feminine a reflection of the unquestioned institutional sexism of his
time? Very clearly they were, as evidenced by the ways in which he
treated the men who wanted to become analysts differently from the way
he treated the women, demanding that the men all acquire medical
degrees and training, when he made no such demands on the women, whom
he discouraged from medical careers. He also actively prevented his own
daughters from attending university, or receiving any higher education,
while at the same time urging many of his closest women clients and
associates to devote themselves to scholarly research on obscure
topics, research that he then made extensive use of in his own
writings, most often without giving them any public credit for their
scholarly work.
Bair also clarifies a situation that has distressed me personally since
I first read Jung's "so-called autobiography" (his own words), Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, many decades ago - namely that Jung's actions
and opinions during World War II are all but totally ignored in that
work. It turns out that Jung did write an extended chapter on his
experience in that era, but since Jung died before that book made it
into print, his family heirs all insisted that his revelations about
that period of his life be stricken from the text.
The final chapters of Bair's book make it very clear that the struggles
between Jung's heirs, who wish to keep the details of their family
history completely private, and the needs of a larger world who require
the best information we can get about the life and times of this
important shaper of world culture, continue with undiminished vigor,
partisanship, and venom, even today. There is also an indication, (also
hidden away in a foot note), that the heirs are "in negotiation" to
allow Jung's famous and stunningly beautiful Red Book, filled with his
psycho-spiritual explorations and his exquisitely beautiful paintings,
to be published in their "entirety". Once again, what constitutes
"entirety" is apparently being hotly contested...
Jung's "feet of clay" throughout his life are made abundantly clear in
Bair's research, along with constant indications and intimations of his
genius. She concludes, correctly in my estimation, with a sentiment
given shape by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Notebooks more than 100
years earlier:
"He looked at his own Soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular,
he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the
Consciousness worlds within worlds."
The Rev. Dr. Jeremy Taylor is the
founder/director of the 'Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work', a
co-founder and a past president of International Association for the
Study of Dreams. More information about his training and certification
program for dream workers can be found at: http://www.jeremytaylor.com
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