BOOK REVIEW/ GARRY LACHMAN: Jung
the Mystic: The Exoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and
Teachings.
… (Carl) Jung himself was apparently
much at odds with the characterization of his work as mysticism...
Jung “seemed to have two minds about the supernatural: a public one
that wanted to understand it ‘scientifically,’ and a private one
that acknowledged ghosts, visions, and premonitions as part of the
essential mystery of life.”
… Jung did not concisely
and consistently define his concepts and terms, preferring to use a
“multiplicity of ill-formulated definitions for the same thing.”
As one might imagine, this provides a challenge to those who expect
to see consistency and clarity in his life.
… A childhood spent
primarily alone produced an odd combination of inner direction and a
lifelong fascination with the more tangible enjoyments, such as
mountains, water, and beer.
Lachman discusses Jung’s loneliness
as a child and his creation of a “homunculus,”
or little man, which he kept in a secret place and used as a
repository for his fears and as an object of security in his insecure
world. When he was older, this came back to Jung as a realization of
his early involvement in a very common human tradition: that of
creating a symbol. Jung would later use this as evidence of his ideas
about our sharing a “collective unconscious,” things that humans
share over the ages, often without conscious recognition of that
sharing.
… A running theme throughout the book
is the image of the “Herr Doctor Professor,” which
represents Jung’s own internal identity and also the major conflict
between his desire to keep his work strictly scientific and his
attraction to the decidedly non-scientific world of the supernatural.
From PsychCentral.
