Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2006, 51, 719–727

Book reviews

Edited by David Hewison and Linda Carter

Papadopoulos, Renos K. The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice andApplications. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xiv + 394. Hbk. £55.00;Pbk. £19.99.

Renos Papadopoulos, from the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the Universityof Essex, has edited a comprehensive, scholarly, and highly readable presentation ofthe major tenets of analytical psychology. Intended for specialists but also for thoseseeking an introduction to Jungian psychology, it may be read by graduate studentsin psychology with profit. It represents a serious successful attempt at a total pictureof Jungian thought. Other works that it parallels are: Hopcke’s A Guided Tour of theCollected Works of C. G. Jung (1989), Young-Eisendrath and Dawson’s The CambridgeCompanion to Jung (1997), and Samuels, Shorter, and Plaut’s A Critical Dictionaryof Jungian Analysis (1986). Papadopoulos’s volume updates and extends all of theaforementioned works.

This volume is a welcome addition to the Jung library and makes analyticalpsychology available to a larger reading public. It is hoped it may have a positiveimpact in the United States where depth psychology is rarely taught in the undergraduatecurriculum. Although psychology is one of the most popular American majors, Freud,Jung, and depth psychology are rarely present or are marginalized in introductorypsychology texts. As one colleague remarked to me, if Freud gets a page, Junggets a paragraph. And that paragraph probably includes a short comment aboutextrovert-introvert–case closed. This neglect exists in spite of the fact that 1.5 millionundergraduates take introductory psychology courses every year. The Division ofPsychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association has made efforts to improvethis neglect and Jungian associations might consider a similar effort. One should notcompletely despair as both Freud and Jung are taught in philosophy and literaturedepartments as applied psychoanalysis and in the case of Jung in departments ofreligion. I suspect that this neglect is less pronounced in Great Britain and the continent.

Additionally, many psychoanalytic terms have been translated (stolen?) by academic/experimental psychology. For example, ego has become central executive and para-praxis becomes retrieval error, and so on (Bornstein 2005) with this theft no doubtapplying to Jungian terms as well. The aforementioned comments are really aninvitation to start earlier in disseminating Jung’s ideas and persuading textbookpublishers to broaden their inclusion.

As to the handbook, each chapter has a brief introduction, a systematic investigationof Jung’s actual position including chronological evolution, an outline of meanings, themajor innovations, criticism, and the current state and trends for development, with

0021–8774/2006/5105/719 C© 2006, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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an excellent up-to-the-minute relevant bibliography that makes for a useful readinglist.

Papadopoulos has divided the book into three carefully chosen subdivisions:Theory, Practice, and Applications. His lengthy chapter on Jung’s epistemology andmethodology is scholarly and informative. He notes that Jung’s ambivalent stancetoward philosophy (shared with Freud) prevented him from acknowledging his ownepistemological sensitivity. In Christopher Hauke’s chapter on the unconscious, hereminds us that Freud’s and Jung’s work became well known as compared to otherswriting on the unconscious in that they had a method of treatment, thus shifting depthpsychology from philosophical thought to method.

Anthony Stevens’s clearly written chapter on archetypes is particularly valuable asthe archetype figures so prominently in Jungian thought. The archetype is Jung’s basicconcept, in that its significance for analytical psychology is comparable to that ofgravity for Newtonian physics, relativity for Einsteinian physics, or natural selectionfor Darwinian biology. It is one of the most important ideas to emerge in the twentiethcentury, possessing far-reaching implications for both the social and the natural sciences(p. 75).

Stevens further notes that both Kant and Schopenhauer are profound influences onJung’s development of the idea of archetype. Ann Casement defines the shadow asthe repository of those aspects of a person that are unacceptable or distasteful in hervaluable chapter. Verena Kast, in her chapter on the anima/animus, remarks that Jungidealized the anima and that he was greatly influenced by the gender notions of his time.She then updates ideas about this concept. John Beebe’s chapter on psychological typesis a well-constructed explanation of something even the only slightly informed knowabout through their familiarity with Myers-Briggs. Warren Colman’s chapter on theself tells us that the self is the goal toward which the process of individuation strives.Reading about Jung’s idea of the self is another reminder of how Jung’s early workhas influenced so many other theorists particularly Erich Neumann and possibly HeinzKohut.

Andrew Samuels, writing on transference/countertransference in a comprehensivepaper, reminds us that Jung’s contribution that both the therapist and client are involvedin the therapeutic process predates by many years an idea so prevalent in contemporaryFreudian thinking. This stands out as one of a number of powerful ideas for which Jungdoes not get credit. Jung’s concept of individuation is explained by Murray Stein in hischapter in which he demonstrates its parallel to Erikson’s stages of development. JoanChodorow writes a fascinating chapter on active imagination, which has particularcontemporary relevance. It calls to mind Theodor Reik’s listening with the third ear.Mary Ann Mattoon’s chapter on dreams in particular details Jung’s 1913 break withFreud and the development of his own understanding of the importance of symbols.

The final part on Applications includes Stanton Marlan’s chapter on alchemy, whichfor someone new to this idea, represented exciting reading. Roderick Main’s chapteron religion was particularly useful as Jung’s ideas are so relevant in religious circles.The final excellent chapter on the arts by Christian Gaillard completes a splendidintroduction to C. G. Jung.

I wish that more papers relevant to the Jungian corpus were published in so-called‘mainstream’ psychoanalytic journals. I was pleased to have invited Beebe, Cambray,and Kirsch (2001) in the journal that I edit to tell Freudians what they can learn fromJung. There needs to be more of this kind of exchange.

Reading Papadopoulos’s book was a valuable personal experience of new under-standing and enlightenment. My initial encounter with Jung took place years ago in agraduate course on theories of personality where analytical psychology got two lectures.

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As someone trained in a Freudian institute, this book’s total immersion in Jung’s ideaswas an intellectually inspiring journey and it made me want to know more, particularlyin our Balkanized psychoanalytic climate. This is a book that can be read by thespecialist and the uninitiated. One can dip in and return to it and I can’t imagineany Jungian analyst not having it on his/her library shelves.

References

Beebe, J., Cambray, J., & Kirsch, T. B. (2001). ‘What Freudians can learn from Jung’.Psychoanalytic Psychology, 18, 213–242.

Bornstein, R. F. (2005). ‘Reconnecting psychoanalysis to mainstream psychology:challenges and opportunities’. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 22, 323–40.

Hopcke, R. H. (1989). A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Boston &London: Shambhala.

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis.London & New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Young-Eisendrath, P. & Dawson, T. (Eds.) (1997). The Cambridge Companion to Jung.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joseph ReppenNew York University Psychoanalytic Institute

New York Medical Center

Hauke, Christopher. Human Being Human: Culture and the Soul. London & NewYork: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xviii + 217. Hbk. £40.00; Pbk. £12.99/$22.95.

In his 2003 semi-documentary The Five Obstructions, a maverick Danish director, Larsvan Trier, convinces Jorgen Leth, another Danish filmmaker of an older generation, toremake his stylized black and white avant-garde short film from the sixties, PerfectHuman, five times, under progressively more constrained conditions. In the process ofan increasingly domineering artistic dialogue, van Trier attempts to ‘humanize’ or as hecalls it to ‘banalize’ the ‘perfect human’ in both the movie and its ‘perfect’ director. Themovie becomes a highly entertaining multi-layered postmodern essay on a manifold oftopics including: the sado-masochistic dynamics of artistic dialogue and creation (asplayed out between van Trier and Leth); the integrity of art; the tension of original andcopy; the essence of representations; the experience of lived and artistically renderedtime, and the nature of being human. The viewer of the Perfect Human is pulled intoco-creating a movie experience amplified by the engaging exchange between the twoartists and punctuated by the recurring refrain spoken by the title character who says: ‘Iam doing things that I hope to understand in the future’. The absurdity of the context inwhich these words are uttered raises questions about the nature of human behaviour.This film came to mind when I read Chris Hauke’s new book which is a fresh takeon old existential themes. Hauke, one of a few Jungians writing on cinema today,utilizes a metaphoric understanding of the cinema conceived by an accomplished filmeditor, Walter Murch, whose idea is that the attention of the movie audience supplies thepowerful but unorganized energic current and that the film images provide narrative andpsychological coherence. This conjunction leads to a profound, meaningful, emergentexperience which is what you can expect from reading Human Being Human, as youprovide your interest and let the author guide you through its internal logic towardsan inspiring engagement.

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In Human Being Human, Hauke, in a highly personalized and accessible way,considers an age old question: What makes us human (beings)? He takes this subject, sotraditionally heavy and full of unending debates of the nature-nurture variety as to bepractically unmanageable, and makes it work in fresh, enjoyable and profound ways.In the process, he avoids psychological jargon and elucidates a vast territory of ourpostmodern lives. He often brings out his extensive knowledge of movies to amplifythemes and locate complicated human dilemmas in a landscape of popular culture.

In the introduction, Hauke frames the question of ‘human being’ in a livelypostmodern way amidst diverse subjects such as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott’s movie);Dolly the Sheep and cloning; twins as birds in the beliefs of Nuer nomads of Africa;speech as distinctly human behaviour; our common ancestor Lucy; and The Beatlesamong others. This seemingly eclectic and provocative selection reveals surprisinglywide and deep post-modern territory for psychological exploration where high and lowculture, central and peripheral questions are addressed. Hauke regards and deconstructsold philosophical and popular notions of ‘human being’and ‘being human’ therebyenriching and refreshing readers’ perspectives on the well-worn topic. The Blade Runnertakes Hauke to the human-android boundary where being human depends on empathicresponses. The film protagonist Deckard played by Harrison Ford ‘humanizes’ a femaleandroid through falling in love with ‘her’ and caring for ‘her’. By looking at cloningboth natural (like monozygotic twins) and artificial (like Dolly), the author is ableto frame aspects of the human-as-‘unique’ in provocative ways. Hauke’s use of theNuer nomads’ belief that twins are both human and bird reconfigures the imaginalpossibilities of the species that point beyond the simply biological human towardsa cultural being. A further anecdote tells of the paleontologist who discovered theremains of the first Australopithecus and named them ‘Lucy’ while listening to ‘Lucyin the Sky with Diamonds’ (LSD), thereby adding a psychedelic dimension to theserious task of identifying human origins. Hauke comes up with two conclusionsregarding ‘human being and human nature’: the first, that ‘it is the differences—social, collective and cultural—and not the neurological similarities that are important’(p. 8); and the second, that the whole question is really neither about human ‘nature’or ‘being-ness’, but about ‘human perspective’ (p. 12), the way we see the world andourselves in it.

In his overview of psychoanalytic approaches to therapy in the chapter ‘That thinkingfeeling’, Hauke traces the movement from more rationally oriented methods originatingin the Enlightenment, to the current dominance of the emotional bond with the motheras a preferred therapeutic metaphor which leads to the privileging of feeling overthinking. While judging that contemporary therapy is ‘too strong on translation’, i.e.,interpreting the language of the client by ‘overlaying it with the language of the therapy’(p. 81), he recommends a more balanced attitude: ‘one that places intellect, thinking,fantasy, intuition and affect on an equal footing’ (p. 81), thus leading to a pluralistictherapeutic attitude.

Not to be missed in the book is Hauke’s essay on modern consciousness, spiritualityand the construction of meaning. He structures this around the discussion of VincentWard’s 1988 movie The Navigator, A Medieval Odyssey. The movie depicts a sacredquest of several fourteenth century protagonists, who follow a twelve-year-old boy’svision which promises healing from the plague. This quest takes them across time totwentieth century England where, through confrontations with modern consciousness,they complete their ritual act of placing a smelted copper cross on a church spire, asif redeeming both their world and ours. In the process of reviewing the movie, Haukereflects on epistemology and the transition from medieval through modern to post-modern consciousness, identifying the profound sense of the ‘spiritual lack’ and ‘loss

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of the symbolic’ in contemporary experience that results in failure to sustain dialoguebetween conscious and unconscious mind (leading to splits in consciousness, alienation,fragmentation and racism) and that inspires the Jung-instigated search for the soul.

Depth psychology, through its respect and regard for the unconscious, or the margincan lead post-modern man and woman through critique of modernity towards healing.It is my impression that the margin can be seen as a complex term offering a usefulre-visioning of what’s unconconscious in the Unconcious having to do with the ego’sattitude towards non-ego images. It would be a rejuvenating breath of fresh air/spiritfor our ‘marginal’ Jungian analytic profession to adopt a new name for the negativelydefined ‘un-conscious’ as ‘the margin’. Seemingly just a linguistic turn, a voice from themargin critiques the centre (the way the unconscious critiques ego attitudes) and createspotential to hold polarities such that contradictory points may contribute somethingimportant to the overall experience of being human.

Sylvester WojtkowskiJungian Psychoanalytical Association

Mattoon, Mary Ann. Jung and the Human Psyche: An Understandable Introduction.Hove, East Sussex: Routledge, 2005. Pp. 201. Hbk. £50.00; Pbk. £15.99.

From Mary Ann Mattoon’s perspective as longstanding Zurich-trained analyst,psychologist and university level teacher, ‘there have long been excellent introductionsto Jungian thought’ but ‘still none congenial to a non-technical style, to say nothingof a truly popular style. This book is meant to fill that gap’ (p. ix). I think that such atask is paradoxically deceptively simple and it is questionable to what extent this booksucceeds in its entirety.

As becomes clear from the chapter headings, this relatively slim volume representssomething of a cross between an introduction to Jungian psychology and, intentionally,a self-help manual. In its attempts to be both comprehensive and understandable, itcovers a huge amount of ground, of necessity, succinctly. For example, Chapter 1, the‘Introduction’, in sixteen pages including the helpful ‘Recommended readings’ at theend of each chapter, has sections on the ‘Origins of Jungian psychology’, ‘Jung’s life’,‘Jung and Freud’ and ‘Analytical psychology and other psychologies’. This latter sectionis itself divided into subsections on psychoanalysis, academic psychology, Adlerianpsychology, humanistic psychology and, finally, the scope and significance of Jung’swork.

Following the introduction, the early chapters describe the make-up and developmentof the psyche. Chapters 2 and 3, ‘The visible psyche’ and ‘The hidden psyche’,go from the surface to the more interior, from persona to collective unconscious,including the contents and nature of the collective unconscious, with subsections onarchetypes, instincts and alchemy. Chapter 4, ‘Becoming who we are’, takes both adevelopmental and, less familiar to this reviewer, archetypal perspective, with relativelylong sections devoted to both female and male psychology, the former encompassingthe contributions of Emma Jung and a paper by Toni Wolff on structural forms ofthe female psyche, together with Guggenbuhl-Craig’s variations on these forms—heenumerates nine, all mentioned by the author.

In ‘Challenges to self-understanding’, Chapter 5, the focus is on complexes and it ishere that the book takes on the mantle of a self-help manual with a section entitled‘Identifying a complex’. This poses a series of questions and answers helping the readerto identify complexes within him or herself, together with a checklist of how to recognize

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when a complex is touched. This section quite naturally leads on to the phenomenon ofprojection and thenceforth on to a further section entitled ‘Complexes and projectionsas helps to growth’, before returning to Jung and what he had to say, with sections onpsychopathology, neurosis, psychosis and psychosomatic disorders.

Chapters 6 to 9 are entitled ‘Relationships to others’, ‘How can we change?’, ‘Howour dreams can help us’ and ‘Helps from the psyche’ respectively. Some of the statementsin these chapters struck an essentialist note which may not be to everyone’s taste and Iwas interested that the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich is referred to by the author as ‘theMecca of Jungian psychology with its emphasis on the non-rational’ in the preface (p.ix). For example, Mattoon describes ‘the uniqueness of Jungian therapy’ as ‘less a setof techniques than an attitude toward the psyche, which is partly conscious and partlyunconscious. The client brings conscious concerns. The therapist helps to find what isin the unconscious, both problems and resources. The therapist is more knowledgeablethan the client, but the wisdom is in the psyches of both. Hence, they are companionson the Way’ (p.101).

She goes on to describe the process (p. 102) as beginning with

a discussion of the client’s problems, symptoms and complexes. Then the two principalsseek to discover the purposes of the phenomena, and what they may contributeto wholeness. Implicit in all these concerns is attention to ‘transference/counter-transference’: the relationship between therapist and client. Together they seek theinner dimension to the client’s expectations of the therapist, and the therapist examineshis or her attitude toward the client. A major resource used by most Jungian therapistsis the client’s dream life. The client brings dream texts, usually written.

In addition, statements such as ‘Most Jungian therapy is with clients suffering fromneurosis’, ‘Therapy with children is relatively infrequent among Jungians’ (p. 111) and‘The reluctance of Jungian analysts to engage in couple and family therapy arises, inpart, from unfamiliarity with those methods and with their possibilities for enhancingthe individuation process’ (p.113) may well be true of the milieu in which Mattoonworks, but misleading elsewhere. Although other ways of working are mentioned, Ifelt that such statements contribute unhelpfully to a view of therapy as self-indulgentwhen many practitioners work with very damaged patients of all ages in both privateand public sectors, such as the National Health Service (UK).

The last three chapters discuss the aims of psychic change and these I found amongstthe most emotionally engaging in the book. Chapter 10, ‘Finding our way in the outerworld’ addresses ‘Mass-mindedness’, ‘Jung and the Nazis’, ‘Politics’, ‘Race, war andthe crisis of our time’ and ‘The feminist movement’. Chapter 11 is entitled ‘Religionin the psyche’ and Chapter 12 ‘Individuation - a life-long process’. There is muchthat is thought-provoking in all three such as the author’s argument for Jungians tobe politically active. These chapters felt as though they raised questions, for exampleabout religion and the religious attitude, in an exploratory rather than a prescriptiveway.

In short, the breadth of the author’s undertaking is quite staggering and I admirewhat she has managed to pack into this volume but I think that it occasionallysacrifices depth and complexity in its overriding attempts to be popular, whichwould make me hesitate to recommend it other than as a book to be dipped into.

Madeleine MorrisseySociety of Analytical Psychology

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Agnel, Aime, with Cazenave, Michel; Dorly, Claire; Krakowiak, Suzanne;Leterrier, Monique; Thibaudier, Viviane. Le Vocabulaire de Jung. Paris: EditionsEllipses, 2005. Pp. 106. Pbk. €6, 50.

When a new dictionary appears, my first question is: for whom is it written? Thisshort dictionary of Jung’s terminology, written and published in French, is claimed byits publishers to address three levels of enquiry. The first section within each entry isaimed at the complete newcomer to Jung’s thought and the second to readers alreadyfamiliar with his ideas. A third part of the entry aims to be discursive rather thandefining, offering links between different Jungian concepts. This dictionary is one in aseries which treats in a similar fashion about a hundred (mainly continental) Europeanphilosophers. Freud and Lacan are included. I assume that its main target readershipwill be the educated general reader of Jung in French, who will currently have access toa part, though not yet the whole, of the Collected Works in French translation. I imaginethat some of these readers will be interested in Jung’s ideas from a mainly intellectual orphilosophical point of view. Others will have had some contact with Jungian analysis,and so may approach Jung from a more experiential or clinical interest.

If this is the book’s aim, to what extent have the authors succeeded? Anyone comingnewly to Jung’s work would need a working definition of ‘archetype’, and the two-pageentry under this heading does exactly what the publishers say they set out to do, offeringa concise and clear definition, followed by a longer section referring to the evolutionof the concept in Jung’s thought. A third section concentrates, rather oddly, on refutingthe misapprehension ‘that archetypes would be transmitted through heredity’. There is,however, no discussion of the clinical application of the concept—what the archetypalmight look like in an analysis or how it might feature clinically. Nor is there within thisentry a list of the main archetypes identified, named and discussed by Jung. Under theheading ‘Transference’, following a concise one-sentence definition, the more detailedentries include a brief account of the development of Jung’s use of the concept and anadequate summary of its clinical application. But apart from a single passing reference,no mention is made of post-Jungian changes in the approach to the transference. Inthis and other entries, I felt that the authors had been uncertain as to whether theirremit was, as the title of the book suggests, simply to elucidate Jung’s own thought,or whether they aimed to draw on the work of other analytical psychologists to showhow Jung’s ideas have been applied and developed in clinical practice. This uncertaintymay limit the usefulness of the book to those seeking to elucidate Jung’s ideas withina clinical context. For example, I could not find cross-references to neuroscience or tocontemporary quantum physics, both of which provide contexts within which Jung’sideas are currently being discussed. The absence of a more extensive clinical frame ofreference is notable, as the contributors are all practising analytical psychologists.

Many of Jung’s terms have seeped into common speech, in French as in English, andthis short dictionary will help to clarify the exact meaning which Jung intended fromthe more general sense in which terms such as ‘introversion’, ‘complex’, ‘individuation’,‘persona’ and ‘archetypal’ are used. Jung also shares a vocabulary with Freudianpsychology, and entries on such shared terms as ‘incest’, ‘sacrifice’ or ‘regression’ alltake care to explain in what respects Jung’s use of these terms differs from Freud’s.Furthermore, Jung has spawned a number of neologisms (or at least, used terms whichwere very uncommonly used until he employed them), and the authors offer clearexplanation of, for example, ‘enantiodromia’, ‘synchronicity’, ‘puer and senex’, termsover which a new reader of Jung might stumble for want of a working understandingof what are in effect highly compressed ideas which often confront and confound theconscious mind. Jung is, after all, supremely the psychologist of the unconscious and of

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the self, and the conscious ego is sometimes left reeling as it tries to grasp the main linesof his thought. It is often said in English-speaking circles that Jung is far harder to readthan Freud. I myself doubt whether this is true; but I do believe that much of Jung’swork is challenging in its originality and in the scope of his knowledge the breadth ofwhich he does not hesitate to display. This slim dictionary may help many readers toelucidate a technical term, or an unfamiliar use by Jung of a now-common or Freudianword which might otherwise impede the flow of their reading. It will, however, be ofrather less use to those who would like to tune in to the current discourse of Jungiansin the French language, as this now draws on fifty years post-Jungian development ofpractice, writing and thought which are only sporadically addressed in this volume.

George BrightSociety of Analytical Psychology

Marlan, Stanton. The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness. College Station,Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 266. Hbk. $29.95.

Stanton Marlan’s self-expressed ‘reflective turn towards death’ (p. 3) prepared the wayfor his ‘engagement with the black sun, a dark and burning ball of fire, an intensity ofdarkness and light that became like a Zen koan to me’ (p. 4). His continued reflectiontakes the form of his new book, The Black Sun, the Alchemy and Art of Darkness, thetenth volume in the Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology, publishedby Texas A & M University Press. A Jungian analyst in private practice in Pittsburgh,Marlan has authored or edited numerous articles on the subject of the black sun.Bridging the gap created by what he believes was the ‘relatively marginal role the SolNiger played in Jung’s reflections’ (p. 4), he conceives his book as ‘an experiment inalchemical psychology’ moving thematically and enigmatically from ‘the nigredo oflight to the mystery of an illuminated darkness’ (p. 211).

Structured in five chapters, the book encompasses a great deal in 214 pages, includingthe epilogue. In the first two chapters Marlan reviews the archetypal principles of sunand king as emblems of consciousness, and alchemy’s embracing of the ‘black blackerthan black’ that mortifies the king, eclipses the sun and deconstructs the patriarchalprivileging of the diurnal light. The third chapter is devoted to the subject of trauma.Marlan challenges the notion of the black sun articulated by Donald Kalsched andJulia Kristeva, as a pathological, primitive expression of defence against unthinkablenarcissistic woundings. Consistent with alchemy’s ‘death is the conception of the stone’Marlan argues that the black sun intimates a symbolic death, a dissolution of defences ofego or self that might serve to break down the defensive stasis. Through the lens of subtlebody disciplines like Kabbala, Taoist Alchemy and Tantrism as well as contemporaryart, Chapter Four amplifies the image of the Sol Niger as alchemy’s darkly luminescentlight of nature, full of ambiguity and paradox. A patient’s drawings bring togetherwounding, death and creativity as a flowering in the darkness. Marlan concludes thebook by exploring the affinity between the image of the black sun and negative theology,the mystery of unknowing and, following Derrida, the notion of the Self under erasure,‘an invisible presence. . . both light and dark and yet neither’ (p. 185).

Anyone who has been mystified by alchemy’s black sun will find this book auseful introduction to its symbolism and psychological implications. For those morefamiliar with the image, the book’s primary value is in its extensive review ofliterature, art and spirituality related to the field of Sol Niger—Hillman, Edinger, Lacan,Giegerich, Kalsched, Derrida, Kristeva, Kiefer, Reinhart, Drob, Pseudo-Dionysius,

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Swami Vivekananda, to name a few. There are many case vignettes that suggest possibleclinical application.

Personally, however, despite the book’s impressive breadth, for its subject I found itnot the most compelling read. We do not have time to ‘drop’ into the darkness of thissun or penetrate its depths before the author is on to the next thing. This may be inpart due to The Black Sun being a compilation of scholarly talks which were given notonly to professionals but also to a general public interested in the Jungian educationalopportunities provided by The Fay Lectures in Analytical Psychology. Nevertheless,though Marlan encourages us, with the artist Ad Reinhardt, to ‘hold fast’ (p. 27) tothe darkness, the book is so chock full of material, intellectually grasped, that I felt thedarkness was once again being evaded. Even the clinical examples, though dramatic,tend to be summaries of the major shifts rather than evocations of the process that gavebirth to the shifts.

Did the Sol Niger actually play a relatively marginal role in Jung’s reflections? Iwould disagree. In a literal and systematic form, perhaps. But implicitly, and sometimesinitially emerging out of his unconscious shadow (Jung’s dissociated enthusiasm forNational Socialism in the Visions Seminars of the early thirties, for example), theSol Niger, in my opinion, burns and shines throughout the Collected Works. Jung’slifelong preoccupation with Faust and Wotan. The light and darkness within thecomplexities of incest in the transference/counter transference field phenomena to whichhe alludes in his Psychology of the Transference. The collective atrocities he foresaw. Thedevelopment of his ideas around the sulphurous, spermatic nature of the motive forcethat drives our interests, compulsions, desires and projections. I have no disagreementwith Marlan’s premise that ‘blackness is not just a stage to be bypassed once and for all,but a necessary component of psychological life’. What is missing for me in his book isa sense of the unspeakable tension, at a deep, intrapsychic level, between the garneringof the Sol Niger’s unique illumination and the potential for simply getting mutilatedand trapped.

This is not to deny the genuine value of the book as a contribution to the unpackingof a dense and intriguing symbol. Marlan will surely continue to write about thesubject and we can look forward to his next work. In the meantime, The Black Sun isan invitation and a challenge to other clinicians, as well as artists, writers and spiritualseekers to make their own ‘reflective turn’ toward the Sol Niger and share their findings.

Kathleen MartinJungian Psychoanalytical Association