What Jung Really Said

Book excerpt: For Carl Gustav Jung, analysis was a spiritual quest: a deeply serious endeavour to come to terms with oneself, to accept oneself, and to become, as far as possible, the person it was intended one should be. His emphasis on the spiritual aspects of human nature, his view of the meaning of dreams and the importance of subjective experience, brought him into conflict with his mentor, Sigmund Freud. Regarded by many of his contemporaries as a visionary mystic, his contributions to psychology and psychiatry in the areas of entroversion and introversion, archetype, individuation, and collective unconscious have subsequently come to light. In this brilliantly lucid exposition, his friend and colleague E. A. Bennet introduces us to the the thought of Carl Gustav Jung in the context of his life and life's work.