A Life of Jung
- Book Review,
by Ronald Hayman
From Publishers Weekly
"The S.S. men are being transformed into a caste of knights ruling sixty million natives. [T]here is no more ideal form of government than a decent form of oligarchy," wrote Carl Jung of the German Nazis in the mid-1930s. One of the many strengths of this candid and discerning biography is that Hayman (Nietzsche: A Critical Life) enlists such provocative, alarming material to build a careful, nuanced portrait of his subject that neither excuses nor excoriates his actions and words. After studying psychiatry in Paris at the turn of the century (while also investigating the supernatural via s‚ances), Jung became an ardent admirer of Freud, with whom he agreed on many things (though Freud's emphasis on sexuality was a notable exception). Meanwhile, Jung pursued his own theories of the unconscious, using myth and archetype as models. His break with Freud before WWI was a defining moment in the development of his theory and his career. Without losing sight of Jung's total oeuvre, Hayman examines the enormous advantages Jung gained by maintaining ambiguous views of National Socialist policies. Indeed, Hayman shows how Hitler's attack on Jews gave Jung a chance to promote his own psychological theories (e.g., the defamation of Freud and other Jewish psychoanalysts led to the possibility for the ascendance of Jung's analytical psychology). Placing Jung's anti-Semitism in a broad cultural and professional context as well as exploring his other influences, including his complicated relationships with patients and disciples Hayman has produced a vital and moving portrait of the man and his time. While not detailed enough for scholars, this is a fine work for the general reader. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Swiss psychiatrist Jung (1875-1961) lived creatively, grandly, and sometimes irresponsibly. Spiritual, mystical, and at times schizoid, he brought us archetypes, the collective unconscious, introversion and extraversion, and anima and shadow, but his reputation suffers from affairs with patients, cultism, and apologies for Nazism. A biographer of Nietzsche, Sartre, Proust, Sylvia Plath, and Thomas Mann, Hayman knows German and retranslated parts of Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections for this book, first published in England in 1999. But Jung's complicated story lurches and tumbles in his hands. Research and life events are overpacked into paragraphs laced with orphan pronouns and non-sequiturs. Hayman mixes bit players with protagonists, the vapid with the gravid, and when he ventures an opinion, it is often silly, e.g., that patients benefit more from unstable than from stable therapists. Intrepid specialists may find some new material, but the great bulk is shamelessly derivative. Not recommended; libraries are much better off with Anthony Stevens's On Jung (Princeton Univ., 1999. rev. ed.) or Frank McLynn's Carl Gustav Jung (Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin's, 1997). E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The Independent on Sunday
Engrossing.... Hayman's masterful life of this awesome megalomaniac pivots on a chilling paradox.
From Booklist
The man who boldly proclaimed a new understanding of how the collective unconscious preserves humanity's archetypal memories, Jung shrank from the truth about his own convoluted psyche. Long hidden behind a shield of falsification and self-apotheosis, that deeply disturbing truth has at last yielded to Hayman's painstaking scholarship. From Jung's lonely boyhood of secretive rituals to his old age of grandiose delusions, Hayman limns the pioneering psychologist's solitary and erratic life. Deep in an intellect of rare capacity, Jung's private ambitions bubbled over with perilous desires. To illuminate the darker impulses in Jung's life, Hayman ferrets out the childhood beginnings of schizophrenic tendencies, chronicles his descent into near insanity, documents his flirtation with fascism, and details his abusive treatment of women. And although only specialists will comprehend the technical issues at stake, Hayman fully captures the human drama in Jung's rupture with his acclaimed mentor, Freud. Deflating a self-anointed god, Hayman gives us--once again--the ineluctable mystery of man. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Book News, Inc.
In this examination of the life of Carl Jung, biographer Hayman neither ignores his faults nor exaggerates them in investigating the most crucial questions surrounding him. Drawing upon a substantial amount of unpublished material not used by previous biographers, he explores the many facets of this enigmatic, charismatic figure who initiated groundbreaking ideas yet trusted only his impulses, who had a cultivated mind but was, in the words of Thomas Mann, always a half-Nazi. The book contains a detailed chronology and a section of b&w photographs.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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