Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harvest Book) | C. G. Jung

Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harvest Book) | C. G. Jung | Still Timely and Timeless

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Modern Man in Sear...

	Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harvest Book) C. G. Jung Harvest/HBJ Book, 1955 - 252 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Insightful Analytical Psychology

A very insightful and meaningful book, 11 intriguing essays in 244 pages. Jung is a deeper thinker, and I think not reductive like Freud and Adler tended to be. He makes no claim to dogmatism or absolutes. Jung really hits on the psyche and transcends the borders of rational intelligence into areas of the unconscious expressions in symbolism and images.

I am going to argue against another reviewer here that gave this book 4 stars as being outdated. When I look at the present collective societal structure and current cultural pattern apart from the minority of advanced individuals, I can see the postmodern man has regressed far from the modern man of the 1930's in search of a soul. Of course there as been advances individually, but on a collective level; fundamentalism, religious literalism, nationalism, patriotism and one-sided thinking This has grown in major proportions as opposed to the other way around and it is far more serious than most even realize and patterns after historical events of very similiar nature.

The first essay on dream-analysis hits on the idea that dreams are very hard to interpret and suggests that understanding the circumstances and conditions of the conscious life is significant in relation to the dreams of the unconscious life.

On the problems of psychotherapy, Jung relates four stages of analytical psychology, the confessional, explanation, education and transformation

"The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form - an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other." p. 61

The essay on the personality types is short, non-exhaustive and briefly relates Jung's ideas of the introvert, the extrovert and the 4 basic types consisting of those persons who are thinkers, feelers, sensory and intuitive.

In his essay on the stages of life, Jung ventures beyond childhood into early adulthood and the expansion of the self into sexual desires and masculine and feminine traits and how after somewhere in the 40's there begins a contraction of the self where men may acquire more feminine traits and women more masculine. In the second half of life less is needed to educate his conscious will but more aim towards the inner being, until old age where one leaves the rational self and retreats into the psyche as children yet in a different sense.

Jung acknowledges the validity of Freud and Adler and their valuable contributions, yet Jung sees Freud's sexual reduction to all neurosis as limiting, as well as Adler's will to power over inferiority as the sole cause. Both views have proven themselves as valid in many cases, yet Jung finds there is far much more levels in what he calls "value intensities," which underlie many complexes.

Jung also briefly goes into the archaic man's interpretation of all chance events having external meanings and causes, or as causal occurrences and the contrast of the modern man's ability to see the majority of chance and unexplainable events as the human imagination, as the perception of the human. Also the same ability of assumptions in the archaic man, can be seen in the modern who uses science as the foundation over the supernatural.

Jung's essay on psychology and literature is my favorite essay. It hits on something I both think of and am affected by almost every day. I found this entirely meaningful and very much profound. In this he writes of two types of writers; those that explain all they write of and those that have visions where their writing is obscure and needs the psychologist to read into. It is those visionaries that are the most inspiring. Here there exists those as in The Shepherd of Hermas, in Dante, in the second part of Faust, in Nietzsche's Dionysian exuberance, in Wagner's Nihelungenriing, in Spitteler's Olympischer Fruhling, in the poetry of William Blake, in the lpnerotomachia of the monk Francesco Colonna, and in Jacob Boehme's philosophic and poetic stammerings.

Jung speaks of the human intuition that points to things that are unknown and hidden, and by our very nature are secret and that throughout human history this unfathomable primordial source of creative experience been expressed in images, as in the sun-wheel, in attempting to point to this. The artist and poet will resort to mythology and images which only appear to occur in dreams, cases of insanity, narcotic states and eclipses of consciousness.

"A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal. A dream never says; "you ought," or "this is the truth." It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions." p. 171

I really can't even begin to touch on all the vital, significant and soul inspiring information that is loaded in the pages of this book and I think as I try I am taking away from what's written far better than what I'll ever write. I recommend this book.

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Still Timely and Timeless

Someone said in a review that this book isn't applicable for people alive today, that it was only relevant back when it was written a little over 60 years ago.

I can't disagree more. The book is just as relevant now, if not more so.

In one of the essays from this book, Jung accurately predicted today's raging "cultural battles" between proponents of so called "ID" theory and those who espouse Evolution, when he said, correctly, that natural science has for all practical purposes shot down the whole notion of anything "magical" or "supernatural" about the psyche. It's puzzling that in light of the overwhelming mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, a vast majority of people in the U.S. still believe in "eternal life", and "heaven" and "hell".

Maybe if those who believe in whatever religion they think is the only true religion could loosen up a little, and realize that all religions are organized, but slightly different interpretations of our collective conscious handed down to us through the ages, we might not have problems like 9/11 and ongoing wars, not to mention the ugly politics in this country, all driven by the sentiment "My God is the only right God".

While indirectly discounting the ideas of "heaven" and "hell", as those terms, or their endless variations are commonly defined in most of the world's religions, Jung does point out that there is still a mysterious quality about thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. separate and apart from "reason". Maybe that "spot" is where the "soul" or "spirit" truly resides.

If there were a way for people to find this within themselves, they might just find "God" at last. And if this type of personal, inward looking belief system could be more widely developed, we, as humans, might find better ways to get along.

Not to rain on anyone's religious parade, but the religions "du jour" (or of the current times), will be no more relevant millenia from now (or sooner?) than the religions espoused by the Greeks, the Romans, the Zoroastrians, Druids, or the Pagans before us.

Having said that, we're damned if we have religion and damned if we don't (no pun intended), because one argument that Jung makes for religion being beneficial for society is that if we didn't have religion, God only knows whether we'd all kill each other or not (once again, no pun intended).

Jung's bottom line argument is that you're not going to find God in your local synagogue, church, temple, or mosque, in spite of our collective conscious efforts being channeled toward those places.

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Wonderful Insight

Carl G. Jung is perhaps psychology's most free and original thinker. Perhaps not...However, it is books like this that demonstrate Jung's ability to think outside of the box and examine critically those things that his contemporaries failed to critically examine. I truly believe that Jung has not gained the acceptance he deserves in psychology as a result of his telic thinking/conceptualizing, which appears to many psychologists, who rely on a Newtonian scientific framework (failing to realize that advances have been made in scientific perspectives), as unscientific. In this book, Jung takes aim at and provides justification for seeing difficulties in many of the more cherished "scientific" perspectives and providers counterarguments to forward a more positive direction. Unfortunately, enough people have not read this gem. I highly recommend it.

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An excellent work, but one problem

This is an excellent introduction to Jungian psychology - it's well presented, clear, concise, and full of information. It proved in my case to be very stimulating, and I found myself pondering the ideas presented for some time.

Why then, do I award only four stars? Because the title is no longer appropriate. It is not a book exclusively about modern man, but rather, about man as he was seventy years ago. Some of the concepts seem to describe very accurately the state of mind that mankind was experiencing in Jung's time, but today they won't be observed with any great consistency - they are no longer appropriate. That being said, the book outlines the general principles in such a logical way that one may apply them to the world around them, seeing the similarities and differences between Jung's world and their own for themselves.

Worthwhile reading for anyone interested in psychology, or simply expanding their view of life - puts a wide range of life's issues in perspective.

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Problem of the soul

This book contains eleven lectures given to the general public on various occasions on a variety of topics. Taken together they sum up much of Jung's analytical psychology, covering the subjects:

dream analysis,
problems of psychotherapy,
aims of psychotherapy,
theory of types,
stages of life,
contrasts between Freud and Jung,
archaic man,
psychology and literature,
basic postulates (i.e. philosophic notions) of analytical psychology,
spiritual problem of modern man, and,
psychotherapists or the clergy.

Jung's professional writings can be a hard read being long and difficult to follow. There is none of that problem in this work. Here Jung is clear as a bell. The book is highly recommended for those beginning their inquiry into Jung.

Although was first published in 1933 it still holds relevance to a contemporary audience. One major theme running through several speeches is that many people seem to inherently want to believe in something spiritual, though this certainly does not necessarily imply mainstream religion such as Christianity. We only have to visit a new age bookshop packed with Buddhist and other Asian philosophic texts, not to mention esoteric volumes on spirits, magic and psychic phenomena, to realize that many people are 'looking for something in their lives.' Of course not all of us have spirituality as an issue or problem and Jung at one point goes to some trouble to point this out. Some are hung up on sex, other on power, etc. In these cases a psychology other than Jung's analytical psychology is recommended.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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