The Essential Jung - by C G Jung (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this compact volume, British psychiatrist and writer Anthony Storr has selected extracts from Jung's writings that pinpoint his many original contributions and relate the development of his thought to his biography. Storr's explanatory notes and introduction show the progress and coherence of Jung's ideas. These notes link the extracts, and with Dr. Storr's introduction, they show the progress and coherence of Jung's ideas, including such concepts as the collective unconscious, the archetypes, introversion and extroversion, individuation, and Jung's view of integration as the goal of the development of the personality.Jung maintained that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves and that our most pressing task is to deflect our gaze away from the external world and toward the study of our own nature. In a world torn by conflict and threatened by annihilation, his message has an urgent relevance for every thoughtful person.

Review Quotes

"A commentary that is admirably clear and unfailingly level in its tone."-- "The Sunday Times"

"Storr has boiled down Jung's prolific thoughts on man's mental state to this generous and stimulating anthology."-- "Sunday Standard"

"Storr has undertaken the formidable task of selecting essential extracts from the huge outpouring of Jung, whose collected works fill 18 volumes. He starts well with a lively and succinct introduction. . . . The book is then neatly compartmentalized into the main stages of Jung's thought, with elucidatory prefaces by Dr Storr to each stage."-- "Economist"

"This is by far the best introduction to the work and thought of Carl Gustav Jung now available [1983]. I wish it were possible to require that every teacher and critic, cleric and cocktail-party magus who takes the name of Jung upon his tongue should have read Anthony Storr's admirable compilation at least once, for untold misunderstanding and unwarranted assumption would be saved thereby. . . . Once again, thanks and praise to Anthony Storr, clinical lecturer in psychiatry in the University of Oxford, for a masterly achievement."---Robertson Davies, The Globe and Mail

"This is the best introductory book for the serious reader. Add it to the autobiography and The Freud/Jung Letters and one has the beginning of a lifetime's serious entertainment."---J. D. O'Hara, Virginia Quarterly Review

About the Author

Anthony Storr (1920-2001) was a consultant psychotherapist, journalist, broadcaster, and popular writer. He is the author of Solitude: A Return to the Self. John Beebe is a past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is the editor of Jung's Aspects of the Masculine and the coeditor of The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916 (Princeton).