Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography by Frank McLynn

Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography Reviews

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  Cat Noe

  One question kept surfacing, as I read this. Why is the author spending all this time on a biography if he has such a low opinion of Jung? Well, it was interesting, informative, and just a bit one-sided. Believe half of what you read, and none of what you hear. Overall, left me wanting to read another biography just to get a more rounded picture.
• 
  Kayla

  quite comprehensive, presents Jung with warts and all. Left me wanting to read a biography of Emma Jung.....
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  Jeanne

  Found this book boring. ;( i cut through it with scissors and did find a few enjoyable pages to read.
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  Michael Nguyen

  There was a lot of archaic language, and I found myself having to check the definition every few pages . Propably the major criticism of the book, and it is also littered with French and Latin adages which I found very distressing to read and having to look up every second. I guess this book will have improved my vocabulary somewhat, perhaps.
  
  The author seems to have understood Jung's corpus quite well which I am pretty impressed by. He has deeply studied the Jungian concepts, probably better than I have. At times he sounds like he is almost influenced by the Jungian doctrinal system. He paints a very negative picture of Jung as a misogynist, pessimist, anti-semite, racist-but-not-racist, fascist friendly, homophobe, pseudoscientific, unoriginal, literary obscurantist, and a glutton. It's a very damning biography and it intrigues me how the author could've spent so much researching the writings and life of a person a person he clearly found so deeply morally reprehensible. It's a fascinating read, but also an exhausting one, given how awful of a person Jung sounds like, he is described as this tyrannical figure who abuses women, and lives a life leaching off the money of his wife in order to fund his religio-mystical endeavours. A bourgeois elitist, who speculated on mythology and theological matters and had a contempt for group think. It's a shame, he wasn't that into the social sciences of sociology and cultural anthropology, in understanding cultures. He was merely an orientalist spectator who was massively wrong on so many levels, yet his aficionados seem to adore him. Much like a cult figure. And ethically he just sounds like an awful person who only conceded to his terrible behaviour when he was reprimanded for it. He was very selfish, self entitled and would get bored of his patients and was only attracted to analysands that had archetypal and mythological themes in their dreams. It's so funny and sad how in Jung's own writings, he never addresses his failings as a person. Yet he accused Freud of being tyrannical and dogmatic. I find Jung equally reprehensible to the projections of which he criticised.
  
  I would still recommend his works to be read by newcomers and oldcomers, but I think Freud overall was a much better writer than Jung. In conclusion though, Frank Mclynn paints a very ugly picture albeit intelligent picture of Jung. Its a very depressing read. And it gets into how the cult of psychoanalysis became mobilised and was galvanised in the early 20th Century.
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  Peter Timson

  Interesting but not riveting.
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  Seth Gibson

  A huge volume from what I recall. Almost none of the content comes to mind and what does seems of little importance. Jung had influence and still has. Even so, I do not carry his effect.
• 
  Lolly Daskal

  To dream is to be awake.
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  Диана Петрова

  Аниела Яфе - без нея автобиографията не би била достъпно четиво за хора като мен!