| | |  | Biographies & Memoirs | Home » » » Memories, Dreams, Reflections | | | | | | | Description: | | An autobiography put together from conversations, writings and lectures with Jung's cooperation, at the end of his life. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780679723950
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| C.G. Jung | | Paperback:
| 448 pages | | Publisher:
| Vintage | | Publication Date:
| April 23, 1989 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0679723951 | | Package Length:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.1 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.9 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.75 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 55 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 CG Jung: "I invented a psychology to prove myself sane!".Feb 21, 2010
At one point in the largely fascinating hodgepodge of his remiscences, musings, and summings-up of his life and work, aka "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," Jung makes a startling admission, the implications of which, if he notices at all, go unremarked upon. That is, Jung describes the development of his psychoanalytic system as driven by his desire to fit his own experiences--many of them unconventional, inexplicable, if not downright paranormal--into some order of normality. "I may be insane," he might well be saying, "but if I can fit my experiences into a coherent template and demonstrate that a lot of other people's experiences can also be explained thereby, then I am perfectly sane."
This attitude doesn't invalidate Jung at all; it merely honestly affirms the solipsistic basis of all our so-called rational thought. We use reason to rationalize how we intrinsically are the way a lawyer uses argument to defend a murderer. Nothing wrong with that...especially when someone is brilliant enough to come up with an explanation that rationalizes--and thereby normalizes--a good deal of the rest of us in the process.
This celebrated book is not so much an autobiography, it's not even completely written by Jung, but sort of cobbled together from a variety of source material, some of it by Jung, some of it transcriptions of what Jung said, all of it, we're assured, overseen by Jung and given his imprimatur of approval. Jung himself makes it clear that this book isnt to be taken as strictly biographical inasmuch as he believed, quite rightly, that autobiography inevitably becomes either hagiography or apologia.
By way of contrast, what Jung does here is give an account of the major events of his life, (including his psychic life--the dreams, visions, etc) that shaped his work. As a result, "Memories, Deams, Reflections" is a curious blend of intimacy and impersonality. Jung divulges the content of some of his most harrowing dreams, but at the same time he manages to give away almost nothing of his personal life with family, friends, lovers, etc.
I find it puzzling that where psychoanalysis is still considered seriously at all, it's dealt with in almost strictly Freudian terms, as if Freud's bacon hasnt already been fried and refried, his water carried and carried back, enough times already. Jung is saying something entirely different than Freud, something, it would seem, far more cogent to our times than Freud's reductionist psychological materialism, which seems now so much a product of the late 19th century. Is the relative marginalization of Jung a judgment passed by the academic elite that Jung, always abundantly more popular, especially among New Age types, is considered a bit of a crackpot, a pseudo-scientific fabulist akin to a Tolkein or a C.S. Lewis, a mystico-literary curiosity suited more for artists and occultists, and not for serious-minded medical men?
Jung is often derided as a god-obsessed, would-be prophet of the New Aeon (as opposed to Freud's scientific atheism), but a careful reading of Jung's reflections in this book shows the matter to be quite different. What Jung tried to point out is that the "god-need" in our psyche is real, even if god, per se, is not. Human beings have a need for "religion" almost as desperate as their need for air. And if it isnt Judaism or Islam or Christianity that satisfies this need it'll be something else, like Marxism, Fascism, Scientology, Environmentalism, Statism, Satanism or any one of the ten-thousand-and-one "self-evident truths" that people will cook up in order to provide a transcendent meaning to their lives. One look at the rabidity of some radical green activists, for instance, is enough to convince you that worship of God has been replaced in their minds by worship of Mother Earth, and the violent fanaticism that led to Inquisitions and Crusades in the one instance is never far from the surface in the other. Our age has its sacred cows just like any other and those who dont worship them are subject to ridicule and ostracism just like they've always been.
Wherever one god is overturned, another rushes in to claim his place. The throne is never left empty for long. Our psyche, it seems, abhors a god-vacuum.
This is an important insight into liberating ourselves from the notion that we now stand liberated from the need for god. That notion, perhaps more than any other, has led to some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
What Jung points out more than anything else is the limits of reason, boundary beyond which science cannot go. The psyche, he argues, has its own reality and its own needs and they cannot always be squared with what is reasonable or scientific. During a period of intellectual history in which we've been led to believe that science could provide us with verifiable answers to all our questions if only we were clever enough to understand them, Jung's insistence that there exists a class of "truth" that cannot be categorically proven-- except, perhaps, by gathering evidence of its traces in what is common in our dreams, histories, and cultural artifacts--must almost by the definition of "science" be regarded as a form of mystification.
Thus, Jung's rather ill-deserved reputation as a "mystic," "prophet," and "sage." If he were any of those things, it was only incidentally. As "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" amply points out, Jung approached his project with intellectual and scientific rigor, even to the point beyond which science, and to some extent, intellect itself, could not go. At that point, he rather courageously refused to dismiss what could only be limned darkly and sought instead "proof" that it might well exist in the abiding need we have for it to exist. Jung is something of an archaelogist of the psyche. He searches for traces at the bottoms of consciousness, he reconstructs the bones of giants (the Archetypes), and he identifies their evolutionary descendants in our own shifting times.
If god were a brontosaurus long extinct, he's left his tracks in the ossified mud of the lower layers of our brain. No one may ever have seen a brontosaurus in the flesh, but something left those tracks, something left those bones, something Big.
If Jung is a "Christian" as he's often maligned to be, than he's the sort of Christian who would have been burned at the stake. Jung's idea of "Christianity" is one of perpetual heresy, of a "god" in a constant state of development--an idea that he took a lot of heat for in his book "Answer to Job." Jung's notion of religion was always, first-and-foremost, one that demanded an on-going personal relationship between the individual and whatever he might conceive as "god." In the absence of such a relationship, man's connection with god withers; when god stops growing and religion stops developing than Christianity (in this case) ossifies and dies, just like any other mythology
Well, Im in Florida at the moment, in a hotel room, lying next to my boyfriend--its nearly 6pm and we've been out all day. I think I'll give him a massage; altho he might have drifted off to sleep, in which case, I'll let him nap for a while. Anyway, while I'm off taking care of that, I really think you should begin reading "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"--its gotten me back into Jung and reminded me of why I used to love him so much. I've started drawing mandalas; I'm whistling a happy tune; even my coffee tastes fresher. Thank you Carl Gustav Jung!
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Better than the Red BookNov 17, 2009
Memories, Dreams, Reflections will no doubt stand as one of the most influential books I've ever read (and I've been reading a long time). I read an article in the New York Times about Jung's Red Book, which said he used much of the material that came forth during the time of its writing and illustration to co-author his autobiography (Dreams...). So since the Red Book wasn't yet published, and since it was $200 compared to $10 something for Dreams..., I purchased Dreams...Each day of reading this magnificent book was a splendid journey, a meditative circumambulation around one of Jung's (and our collective) mandalas.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
You will find this book interesting even if you're a Freudian...Nov 02, 2009
This "mythical" (Jung's word) book on Jung's life is certainly a beloved "bible" of many Jungian analysts and devoted fans, many claimed to have re-read this book once every year or so (so as to have a closer touch with the psyche of the guru). Fair to say the book is rich in metaphysical speculations, Jung's web-of-dreams as demonstration of his mythical (alchemical?) life goal in understanding human psyche (his own individuation), his famous or infamous encounter with his own unconscious (the raw data as recorded in the Red Book has been an embarrassment of his descendants for many years), near-death experience (rich speculative materials for New Age mediators), and his life-after-death speculation has given rationalization for some current Jungian shrinks to treat patients based on the belief of a trauma happened in one's previous life....not to mention his UFO mention.
Yet, Jung had categorically maintained that his analytical psychology belonged to the realm of natural science and that he himself was a scientist. As such, he never proclaimed the physical existence of metaphysical entities, though he didn't deny the possibility of such physical existence. This position is quite different from some current Jungian psychologists and new age fans of Jung. And Jung made this (him being a scientist) quite clear in the book. For example, concerning the "loud report in the bookcase" (p. 155) that Jung described as having meaning (i.e."synchronized" with or even caused by his psyche), Jung gave the readers a fair view of Freud's scientific argument in Freud own words. I shall quote as length here because it shows the true character of Jung (p 361): "At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we heard so frequently when you were here were never heard again after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add by way of challenge). The phenomenon was soon deprived of all significance for me by something else." Jung didn't refute Freud's argument in his book.
In summary, a book with excellent materials to study Jung from different perspectives. Highly recommended.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Jung: The Ultimate PsychopompOct 30, 2009
I read this book twice, but years ago. It is the best introduction to Jung and his World. Jung is a spiritual Bridge from modern mans consciousness to ancient and premodern spiritual world views. Having recently gone back to read his work, I believe I am closer to grasping the archetypes that he describes, and what they represent. In a preliterate time, mans approach to explaining himself in the world was much more visual and more purely symbolic. We still have no end of the essential urge to place ourselves into the great mysteries. Jung provides the guiding hand through these dangerous waters.
The idea of the collective unconscious is one that is hard for modern minds to grasp. It revolts against our reductive scientific perspective and does not (yet) allow of verifiable measurement. Something implicate in our symbolic cultural inheritance comes and jars our secure sense of daily self. We have become experts at ignoring these signs, or we drown them out with electronic media and its own symbol creating machines. And yet these themes or archetypes have a persistent life of their own, as they come as a direct psychic inheritance.
Man has always sought a method for spiritual and moral ascendency, and has always struggled with the great dichotomies of life which make that a perennial challenge. Jung teaches us that it is an everpresent and meaningful challenge. As individuals we are subjects of and representatives of a great psychic web streching from the past to the future. It is our goal and challenge to negotiate this adventure and to survive as spiritually evolving beings.
Jung's own adventure is here.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Validation of the unknown!Aug 16, 2009
I love this book because it goes beyond just personality catagorizations and static psychology formulas to show Jung's understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon that is the human being and how much larger our existence is than just the material or mental worlds. Although he was a true empirical scientist of his time, he also was quite aware and affected by spiritual and psychic experiences and mysterious energetic forces that, to me, validates a universal intelligence that is not well acknowledged in Western philosophy. In fact his empirical process led him to not be able to dismiss his experiences because he could not disprove them, and he seemed singularly self-possessed and courageous in this way. He was prepared to delve into the greater forces at work that affect the psyche, beyond just what has been experienced and suppressed. It is a fascinating and deeply thoughtful and insightful book, but it will take a flexible and open mind to appreciate it.
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