A review by tabsfchnr
Man and His Symbols by Jolande Jacobi, John Freeman, Joseph L. Henderson, Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung, Aniela Jaffé
3.0
I really wanted to enjoy this book. I had high hopes, but it never really clicked.
The intro even warned of this: "Jung explains concepts often jumping around in a Irish jig, swirling up and up until you are reborn, high in the intellectual stratosphere where these ideas were conceived and aware of your psychological infancy." (paraphrasing)
But this crystallisation of the idea never happened, and I was left full of doubt. I first started to lose faith in the concepts when these highly subjective interpretations of dreams was made:
- it seemed as though you can attach any meaning to the dream, so long as it is based on some old story
- but not even significant stories
- fairy tales and old children's stories that I'd never even heard of somehow symbolise something fundamental to my existence
It is said again and again how psychology can't be based on empirical evidence like physics. But it seems like they've tried mighty hard.
- incredibly theorised, as if they're trying to take account of every form in which this concept can be applied
I really didn't enjoy how dreaming of a friend can mean literally your friend in one case, but in another it can mean a different version of you... This is before we even get onto how modern art expresses these concepts.
The circle...
- oh how we went round and round evaluating all the different and contradictory things this can mean
- at this point I literally thought we can just make it mean whatever we need it to mean at that point in time
- perhaps I would have not become so hopeless if it was said to mean a certain thing, carried as a constant through generations. but not if it has 20 different meanings, that the modern artists express not knowingly but sometimes knowingly in accordance with our meaning we want it to have and sometimes not have....
- I almost forgot to mention it doesn't even need to be a circle at all... It can be a splodge that you can interpret as a circle and that will also work!
This combination of whirlwind logic applied across a huge time frame, with a frustrating variety of conclusions and interpretations resulted for me in an expectation-flattening sadness.
If you want to be mystical then great but this is not that. This is a highly intellectualised construction of various instruments used to balance the total concept and take account of any blind spots made. Females have an animus, males have an anima, we all have a "shadow" psyche, our process of individuation is done in four stages (trickster etc.) that is seen in one story in one way, in another story 500 years later in a different way but the same way if you want... any sort of resonance with me was quite mild. Most of the time there was none and I just felt like we had scaffolded a life's accumulation of elaborate hypotheses around something very essential but almost entirely missed.
I'm sure it is me that hasn't worked properly, not the book. I will pick it up again in 20 years.
The intro even warned of this: "Jung explains concepts often jumping around in a Irish jig, swirling up and up until you are reborn, high in the intellectual stratosphere where these ideas were conceived and aware of your psychological infancy." (paraphrasing)
But this crystallisation of the idea never happened, and I was left full of doubt. I first started to lose faith in the concepts when these highly subjective interpretations of dreams was made:
- it seemed as though you can attach any meaning to the dream, so long as it is based on some old story
- but not even significant stories
- fairy tales and old children's stories that I'd never even heard of somehow symbolise something fundamental to my existence
It is said again and again how psychology can't be based on empirical evidence like physics. But it seems like they've tried mighty hard.
- incredibly theorised, as if they're trying to take account of every form in which this concept can be applied
I really didn't enjoy how dreaming of a friend can mean literally your friend in one case, but in another it can mean a different version of you... This is before we even get onto how modern art expresses these concepts.
The circle...
- oh how we went round and round evaluating all the different and contradictory things this can mean
- at this point I literally thought we can just make it mean whatever we need it to mean at that point in time
- perhaps I would have not become so hopeless if it was said to mean a certain thing, carried as a constant through generations. but not if it has 20 different meanings, that the modern artists express not knowingly but sometimes knowingly in accordance with our meaning we want it to have and sometimes not have....
- I almost forgot to mention it doesn't even need to be a circle at all... It can be a splodge that you can interpret as a circle and that will also work!
This combination of whirlwind logic applied across a huge time frame, with a frustrating variety of conclusions and interpretations resulted for me in an expectation-flattening sadness.
If you want to be mystical then great but this is not that. This is a highly intellectualised construction of various instruments used to balance the total concept and take account of any blind spots made. Females have an animus, males have an anima, we all have a "shadow" psyche, our process of individuation is done in four stages (trickster etc.) that is seen in one story in one way, in another story 500 years later in a different way but the same way if you want... any sort of resonance with me was quite mild. Most of the time there was none and I just felt like we had scaffolded a life's accumulation of elaborate hypotheses around something very essential but almost entirely missed.
I'm sure it is me that hasn't worked properly, not the book. I will pick it up again in 20 years.