sreymey's review against another edition
5.0
It is a book about the subconscious mind and how is affects humans everyday life. This book is very fascinating to look at the hidden motives and meanings behind our actions and feelings. When the mind cannot fully grasp something, it seeks an explanation through symbols. This may be a myth, a religious or mythological image, or a dream. When we understand what a particular symbol means to us, we understand our inner minds better. It’s a way of exploring the unknown…
adria_mis888's review against another edition
5.0
Best and most interesting psychology book I ever read.
sauriansouls's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Incredibly suggestive of all kinds of metaphysical and psychological truths, even if the language of its presentation leans on a lot of mid-20th century hallmarks of popular political, racial, and gender understanding. A really strong foundation for starting to seek internal understanding, at the very least.
zeynepall's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
angelvt's review against another edition
3.0
Very interesting and makes you think deeper about the intersections of philosophy, psychology, and the natural sciences.
clay1st's review against another edition
3.0
This book, written jointly by Jung and his colleagues summarizes some of his key ideas about the human psyche.
He makes an effort to delineate his theories from those of Freud, nonetheless the heritage of his ideas is very clear.
Jung theorizes that dreams contain wise and important messages from the subconscious in the form of symbols and metaphors, whose universal function is to provide guidance towards some sort of psychic equilibrium. This is analogous to Freud's theory that dreams contain unconscious desires. Jung (more so than Freud) fails to account for the obvious pitfall of this theory, that waking psychic pathologies are often replicated in sleep (i.e. anxious people have anxiety dreams). Perhaps he does this better in his original works on dream symbology... however it was not for lack of space in this book that this was missed as dreams were discussed extensively.
Another serious criticism of Jung's interpretation of dreams given as examples in this book is that they appear to be needlessly complex and sometimes excessively literal, which is ironic considering the centrality of symbology in his work. In some cases miss what appears to me to be the more obvious symbolic meaning of the dream.
A critical deconstruction of an example Jung's dream interpretation:
Jung dreams about finding a new room in his childhood home containing books with symbols and untold knowledge. he interprets to be a sign from his unconscious that a book he saw recently on Alchemy contains the secret to understanding the subconscious. My interpretation would be that this dream simply reflects Jung (and Freud's) theories that there /is/ a subconscious part of the mind (the new room) and that childhood experiences are important in shaping both the conscious and unconscious mind (the childhood home), Jung and Freud are both proponents of a revolutionary theory the significance of the subconscious in understanding of the human psyche and treatment of psychopathology, so it is natural that within this new room he discovers books containing untold knowledge.
Other times Jung's interpretation is needlessly complex. He extensively analyses the dream of a young girl who dreams about a demon killing all animals and them subsequently being brought back to life. This is clearly an amalgamation of Christian biblical tales including the story of Noah's arc and the resurrection of Christ. That's it.
Jung's idea of the so-called collective unconscious is interesting but poorly explained. From what I understand, Jung is proposing that symbols are readily added to human instinctual drives, which are transmitted (?genetically or spiritually) from generation to generation. The significance of this proposition is not really explained, other than it backing up his theory about symbology within dreams carries secret messages from the subconscious.
He makes an effort to delineate his theories from those of Freud, nonetheless the heritage of his ideas is very clear.
Jung theorizes that dreams contain wise and important messages from the subconscious in the form of symbols and metaphors, whose universal function is to provide guidance towards some sort of psychic equilibrium. This is analogous to Freud's theory that dreams contain unconscious desires. Jung (more so than Freud) fails to account for the obvious pitfall of this theory, that waking psychic pathologies are often replicated in sleep (i.e. anxious people have anxiety dreams). Perhaps he does this better in his original works on dream symbology... however it was not for lack of space in this book that this was missed as dreams were discussed extensively.
Another serious criticism of Jung's interpretation of dreams given as examples in this book is that they appear to be needlessly complex and sometimes excessively literal, which is ironic considering the centrality of symbology in his work. In some cases miss what appears to me to be the more obvious symbolic meaning of the dream.
A critical deconstruction of an example Jung's dream interpretation:
Jung dreams about finding a new room in his childhood home containing books with symbols and untold knowledge. he interprets to be a sign from his unconscious that a book he saw recently on Alchemy contains the secret to understanding the subconscious. My interpretation would be that this dream simply reflects Jung (and Freud's) theories that there /is/ a subconscious part of the mind (the new room) and that childhood experiences are important in shaping both the conscious and unconscious mind (the childhood home), Jung and Freud are both proponents of a revolutionary theory the significance of the subconscious in understanding of the human psyche and treatment of psychopathology, so it is natural that within this new room he discovers books containing untold knowledge.
Other times Jung's interpretation is needlessly complex. He extensively analyses the dream of a young girl who dreams about a demon killing all animals and them subsequently being brought back to life. This is clearly an amalgamation of Christian biblical tales including the story of Noah's arc and the resurrection of Christ. That's it.
Jung's idea of the so-called collective unconscious is interesting but poorly explained. From what I understand, Jung is proposing that symbols are readily added to human instinctual drives, which are transmitted (?genetically or spiritually) from generation to generation. The significance of this proposition is not really explained, other than it backing up his theory about symbology within dreams carries secret messages from the subconscious.
smeetfrog's review against another edition
4.0
Where do you even begin with this?
Jung’s insights laid the groundwork for so much of what I believe in today. It’s a shame that his research is usually dismissed as pseudoscience (you can make that claim about a lot of psychology tbh). His work on the unconscious and the archetypes of the collective unconscious holds so much therapeutic weight for the modern day person. Bogged down by our industrial and technological advancements, we have lost much of the connection early humans had with the psychic mind. So much so that I don’t know if it’s repairable.
I particularly loved the essay on the symbolism of art. Art history embodies the collection of humanity’s symbols, and it’s crazy to think how these symbols that are incorporated into our psyches were not consciously created, but they were images that, by chance, passed through the unconscious into the conscious mind. And it’s wild how they connect nuclear physics and evolutionary biology with all of this as well.
Too tired to even begin extrapolating here.
Jung’s insights laid the groundwork for so much of what I believe in today. It’s a shame that his research is usually dismissed as pseudoscience (you can make that claim about a lot of psychology tbh). His work on the unconscious and the archetypes of the collective unconscious holds so much therapeutic weight for the modern day person. Bogged down by our industrial and technological advancements, we have lost much of the connection early humans had with the psychic mind. So much so that I don’t know if it’s repairable.
I particularly loved the essay on the symbolism of art. Art history embodies the collection of humanity’s symbols, and it’s crazy to think how these symbols that are incorporated into our psyches were not consciously created, but they were images that, by chance, passed through the unconscious into the conscious mind. And it’s wild how they connect nuclear physics and evolutionary biology with all of this as well.
Too tired to even begin extrapolating here.