C.G. Jung : lord of the underworld

Overview: Carl Gustav Jung is one of the seminal figures in the history of depth psychology. An enormously influential and original thinker, Jung was for some time Freud’s principal disciple, but he became more and more critical of the Freudian emphasis on repressed sexual tendencies and after the publication of Symbols of Transformation in 1912, Jung broke away from Freud to develop his own technique of analytical psychology. Jung’s clinical work and, perhaps more importantly, his own experience of so called occult phenomena led him to formulate and describe a number of key concepts, which have now passed into general currency, including the theory of archetypes; the collective unconscious; synchronicity; and the idea of active imagination, a technique of conscious dreaming. With characteristic fluency, Colin Wilson weaves a fascinating biographical narrative with a penetrating analysis of Jung’s ideas, providing a clear, readable introduction to his life and work.