Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2012, 57, 390–400

Book reviews

Edited by Lucinda Hawkins and Patricia Vesey-McGrew

MCGILCHRIST, IAIN. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Makingof the Western World. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009.Pp. 597. Pbk. £10.99

Iain McGilchrist has the unusual distinction of having been a Fellow of All Souls,Oxford, in English Literature, a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudesley Hospital,London and a neuroimaging researcher at Johns Hopkins University Hospital,Baltimore. He has now written this intelligent, stimulating book which presentsthe reader with something of a tour de force in its survey of the functioning of,and relationship between, the left and right cerebral hemispheres and the putativeconsequences of these matters for the worlds of human relatedness, feeling, perception,culture and so on. The ‘Master’ and ‘Emissary’ of the book’s title evidently derivefrom a parable due originally to Nietzsche: ‘[..] a wise spiritual master[‘s ..] cleverestand most ambitious vizier [..] began to see himself as the master, and [..] becamecontemptuous of his master. And so it came about that the master was usurped, thepeople were duped, the domain became a tyranny; and eventually it collapsed in ruins’(p. 14). The parable foreshadows a thesis then developed through the book in which the‘Master’ in the fable comes to betoken right-hemisphere modes of cerebral functioningand contingent personal experience, and the ‘Emissary’ several modes then representedas associated with the left-hemisphere. The essence of this thesis is that the Emissary isperpetrating something of a heist, a takeover. In a nutshell: ‘The Master is betrayed byhis emissary’ (p. 14).

The book comprises an introduction together with two substantial parts, each of sixchapters, and a conclusion. Part One focuses on the brain itself and what it can tell us.Here’s McGilchrist: ‘Only the right hemisphere is in touch with primary experience,with life; and the left hemisphere can only ever be a staging post, a processing house,along the route – not the final destination. The right hemisphere certainly needs theleft, but the left hemisphere depends on the right’ (p. 209). It seems that followingright-hemisphere-mediated ‘events’ or experiences, the left hemisphere may be thoughtof as subsequently receiving, from the right, ‘postcards’ about these experiences andevents, on the basis of which it subsequently plans, formulates, schemes etc, all thewhile wholeheartedly believing itself and its plans and schemes as whole truth, andall the while remaining oblivious of the secondary nature of its position. Part Twoexplores some of the human, social, cultural consequences of this situation.

The conclusion of the book then conjectures the likely roots, makeup and functioningof a world in which the left hemisphere has come to dominance. The left hemisphereis reckoned by McGilchrist to be actively committed to ‘its own purpose, themaximization of happiness’ (p. 434), in the context of which ‘the breadth and depthof one’s social connections’ (p. 435) emerge as an over-riding factor. The ascendanceof the Emissary is by this account rooted in pandemic loss of social connectedness.

0021-8774/2012/5703/390 C© 2012, 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.DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2012.01977.x

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What else might be said about McGilchrist’s thesis?From a Jungian perspective it might be observed that, as described, right-hemisphere

modes of experiencing rather resemble those that Jungians intuit when referring to thefeminine, by which is intended the whole panoply of those open, receptive, creative,moments and modes of experiencing and perception, moments and modes not spoken,in which all is inferred; and hence also, in contra-position, left hemisphere modes, asdescribed by McGilchrist, as nominally masculine. We might then similarly understandthe book as setting out what amounts to a massive and seemingly all-pervading shift inWestern collective psychology towards the left-hemispheric/masculine. (It is probablyworth mentioning that, as per the book’s title, McGilchrist does see the issue asWestern-centric; Eastern cultures, to which there are numerous comparative referencesthrough the account, fare rather better in his estimations.) Viewed from this sameJungian perspective McGilchrist’s account might now be seen to reflect not just issues todo with personal unhappiness and putative large-scale failures in social connectednessbut perhaps, in addition, moments from a drama now understood as being bothpersonal and collective in which masculine modes are rampant, in ascendance, indiastole.

In larger aspect, of course, this same, eternal, drama – the masculine in itsdiastolic/systolic struggle contingent to the feminine and to the Great Mother – islocated in the Jungian canon at the heart of individuation, and indeed proximal to thevery roots and origins of consciousness itself (see Neumann 1954, for example). Andso with regard to the why of the betrayal, a Jungian gloss might then speculate abouta dynamic of overwhelming fear underlying what is ultimately the necessary flightof, betrayal by, emergence of, Emissary i.e son, from Master i.e. from the Great (all-nurturing, all-enveloping) Mother. And hence we might find ourselves musing abouta dynamic embracing both diastole and systole, and in relation to both masculine andfeminine, i.e. rather than the somewhat one-sided betrayal of the parable. Emissary‘sstruggle for ascendance in relation to Master and its ultimate betrayal of the latter isthen, from this Jungian perspective, a drama to do with individuation and the originsand development of the domain of consciousness itself.

Finally, we might remark that while McGilchrist’s account is scrupulous throughoutin matters of left/right balance, it did nevertheless feel as if the device of Master andEmissary, introduced at the beginning of the book, and in its title, may itself contributea certain foreclosure of thought, even implicit bias, as we approach the book’s thesis.And thus we find ourselves wrestling with betrayal rather than systole/diastole. Aheist-within-a-heist, if you will. So this tale of Master and Emissary is by my readingeminently Jungian in its drama and scope and, I believe, will be very much enjoyedboth by Jungians and by the general reading public, not just for its culture, humourand neuroscience, but also for the sheer sweep and breadth of its intelligence. I thinkJung would have appreciated this book.

Reference

Neumann, E. (1954). The Origins and History of Consciousness. Princeton, NJ:Princeton.

Michael CullinanSociety of Analytical Psychology

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ASHTON, PAUL & BLOCH, STEPHEN (EDS.). Music and Psyche. Contemporary Psycho-analytic Explorations. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, 2010. Pp. xiv +304.Pbk. $26.95

Evocative, creative, disturbing, and, in places, deeply moving, this collection of essaysis remarkable in its ability to approach music in a manner that allows both the powerand the mystery of this art form to remain present and palpable while concurrentlysuggesting transcendence. It is rarely reductive and that, itself, is a notable achievement.The book is comprised of fifteen essays, two interviews and a CD, which, for me, wasa symbolic descant to the stirring material offered in the different chapters.

The editors, Paul Ashton and Stephen Bloch, present the readers/listeners with anexpansive range of topics that invites us to re-imagine the facility of music to mediatethe depths of psyche. The authors have engaged with therapeutic and analytic materialinnovatively, mingling theoretical postulates of Winnicott, Bion, Langer, Eigen, Stern,Freud, and Jung with the music of Mahler, Schumann, Tavener, Piazzolla, Part,Beethoven, and Howlin’ Wolf (citing just a few). The movement in the chapters assumesan alchemical dimension, stretching our minds and engaging our emotions. Silencecarries a valence that is comparable to sound, evoking the void, emptiness, nothing.(Bloch 2010, pp. 193–212). Like a complex musical creation, the book engaged me onmultiple levels, alternately evoking disparate emotions and multifaceted thoughts.

Even as the individual pieces offer unique, insightful, and occasionally praxis-orientated scholarship, a number of leitmotifs emerge in the opus. Wetzler identifiesone clearly: ‘Reaching to a place beyond language, music can move us in ways wordsrarely do . . . the impact of music can evoke overtones of something in us which wehave lost, perhaps even sacrificed, in the name of our so called development, somethingwhich we are continually trying to refind’ (p. 145). This idea reverberates in Anderson’schapter on Beethoven’s Passion Music, with slight variation/amplification, ‘[music] usesthe transformative abilities of the ear to provoke the deepest emotions of the heart’(p. 47). Beebe’s musings on the ‘voice of the anima’, a sound recognized by its fragilityand vulnerability (p. 27), suggest another oft-repeated motif, one of connection. ‘Theanima. . . is an archetype of connection. We don’t have a good conceptual languagefor how we hold the human objects of our affections, but the voice of the animaleads us to recognize our feelings for them as internal relations with ourselves as well’(p. 39). In her chapter on Song and Psyche, Nı Rian, also honouring voice, remarks‘The silent, written word keeps physical things at a distance, but what arrives throughthe ear penetrates to the core’ (p. 287). She awakens us to the power of song, ‘Thestrange power of song over the psyche is difficult to decipher because it is alwaysexceptional, elusive, and different for each one of us’ (p. 293). In reading her chapter,I was surprised by the ‘voice of the anima’ emotively singing in the background.

Furthering the connection motif, Skar observes, ‘The connection to vital feeling is atthe heart of the matrix of music and analysis’ (p. 88). As she explores the parallels ofstudying piano and being in an analysis, she also provides creative approaches to theintegration of music in the analytic process. Through Wildman’s lens, we are inspiredto experience music as a way to resolve conflict, both internally and interpersonally.Through Playback Theater, a musical medium in which the affiliation of people andthe healing of personal trauma merge, the person and the community transform viadramatic sound and shared story (pp. 227–42). With a resounding voice, Willefordoffers images of abandonment and hope in the Blues.

On a different note, Wetzler evokes the phenomenon of unthinkable anxiety andbrings Mahler’s Fifth into that place where language is too powerful a mode ofcommunication and music is symbolically the soothing balm (p. 184).

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The sound of connection, at a deep level, contains the reverberation of paradox.Aristotle, commenting on the Pythagoreans, notes, ‘They say that the soul is a sortof attunement (harmonia); for attunement is a synthesis and a blending of opposites,and the body is composed of opposites (De Anima 407b 28 cited in Wheelright 1960,p. 217). Insights often possess a timeless quality, and hundreds of years later Jungiantheory refines and amplifies this premise. Paradox emerges through many media. Inher chapter on Schumann, Morris brings these ideas to the realm of music and psyche:‘In the dynamics of Schumann’s music, as in those of the psyche, the agent of theconnecting of opposites or disparate elements is of central importance’ (p. 101). Ashton,in a variation on this theme suggests that music ‘is the ideal medium in which to createa “both/and” unitary reality’ (p. 126). Haas experiences the transcendent function inMahler: ‘To the extent Mahler succeeds in holding this tension of the awareness of lifeand death, he has formed a third, transcending a polarized experience of time. Throughhis action, Mahler’s Ninth becomes one of the most profound statements about humanpossibility and capability that has ever been written’ (pp. 17–18).

The intensity of this book requires a broader explication than this review allows. Afull orchestra is needed. I’ve yet to extol Ashton’s neuroscientific insights or Bloch’scontemplation on Tavener’s Prayer of the Heart and its connection to the ‘unbearable’in Eigen’s writings. Both chapters are worth savouring, though on different nights andin diverse inner spaces. And, then there is O’Connell’s missive on The Rite of Spring,a chapter that tickled me with great delight.

This is a book to relish.

Reference

Wheelwright, P. (Ed.) (1960). The Presocratics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill EducationalPublishing.

Patricia Vesey-McGrewNew England Society of Jungian Analysts

ADDENBROOKE, MARY. Survivors of Addiction, Narratives of Recovery. East Sussex:Routledge, 2011. Pp. 206. Pbk. £21.99

This is an important book, crafted with great care, which builds much neededbridges between psychoanalysts, addiction counsellors and people in recovery fromsubstance abuse. It is based on interviews and statements from fifteen men andwomen in treatment for alcohol or heroin addiction and followed over many yearsby the Substance Misuse Project at Crawley Hospital in England. Dr. Raj Rathod, apsychiatrist to whom the book is dedicated, saw many of these patients over time. Thetenor of the book is captured in the preface: ‘We were all trainees at the hands of ourpatients as well as therapists to them’. The stories told by the recovering patients arelinked together by succinct and valuable explanations of the processes of addiction andrecovery by the author, a Jungian analyst. The inclusion of both alcohol and heroinmisuse allows for a broad perspective on addictions.

This is a book about survivors. Only one of the subjects was still using drugs wheninterviewed, and his anger and defensiveness are in stark contrast to the tone of theother narratives. Some may think that the focus on long-term recovery is unrealistic,as many are unable to achieve this, but I find it a useful antidote to stereotypicassumptions that addicts are hopeless, and unsuitable candidates for therapies. With

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her experience of listening to clients and finding the vulnerability under their defences,Mary Addenbrooke reminds us not to be led astray by theories or suppositions. Thebook amplifies Jung’s statement that ‘Results may appear at almost any stage of thetreatment, quite irrespective of the severity or duration of the illness’ (Jung 1953,para. 198).

In Part 1, Lost in the Labyrinth of Addiction, the narrators describe their memoriesof the depths of their addictions, speaking of despair, degradation, and the loss of allrelationship to self and life. Several describe their experience of ‘using’ as altering theirentire constitutions. One man looked back on his experience of alcoholism as ‘beingin the grip of something unspeakably evil’ (p. 63). He feared he would die and theevil would stay with him. This theme is developed in David E. Schoen’s book, TheWay of the Gods in Addiction, where he states, ‘I believe it is this psychologicallyunintegratable aspect of addiction which I call Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil,which distinguishes and makes alcoholism and addiction in some ways fundamentallydifferent from most other mental/emotional disorders’ (Schoen 2009, p. 92). The powerof addiction is such that it interferes with all sense of relatedness. The active addict’stransference is to the object of the addiction, and it is necessary for the therapistto patiently wait for the client’s readiness to return to acknowledging the value ofrelationships with people.

Part 2 is on ‘The Turning Point’, the experience of deciding to stop using and thedifficulties of following through. The narrators agree ‘stopping is just the start’ (p. 84).They describe their extreme vulnerability, shame and suicidal feelings in early recovery,which may last as long as five to seven years. Not using may lead to feeling much worsethan before, and all one’s limited energies must be focused on the moment-to-momenteffort to stay sober. This is an experience of ego collapse at depth in which old waysof coping no longer work and it is necessary to build a new life and outlook pieceby tiny piece. Jung’s words in his 1961 letter to Bill Wilson, a founder of AlcoholicsAnonymous, resonate here: ‘I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing inthis world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition if it is not counteractedby real religious insight, or by the protective wall of human community’ (Jung 1976,p. 624). Most of the subjects turned to AA or NA in their urgent need for support andmeaning. Even those who did not do so seemed to develop their own personal versionsof a 12-step approach. I am convinced that there is an archetypal pattern underlyingrecovery.

Parts 3 and 4 describe the lifelong effort toward continued recovery, which is anindividuation journey. In a letter to Dr. Rathod, a former heroin addict, Ben, speaksof the need for recovering people to find a ‘sense of themselves that is whole andentire’ (p.164). He describes heroin as providing an unmatched sense of wholeness,but gave it up because of his fear of dying and the suffering this would cause otherpeople. Over time he started to build what he calls ‘this intense relationship with lifeitself’. He found this through building connections to nature, the arts, family and ‘thenuminous’(his word). All of the survivors of addiction spoke of the ongoing need todiscover connections to life and meaning. Often their lives were simpler and seemedexternally less successful than during the early years of addiction when their drugfuelled them. With an emphasis on authenticity, humility and spiritual connection,they were able to build lives of integrity. Several worked as drug counsellors and foundthis ‘giving back’ to be very helpful to their own ongoing recovery.

Mary Addenbrooke refers to some of the archetypal patterns underlying addictionsas being that of ‘The Lost Child’, ‘The Negative Hero’, ‘The Wounded Healer’ and ‘TheScapegoat’. Another powerful archetypal pattern described throughout this excellentbook, but not named as such, is the archetype of transformation underlying recovery.

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Whether in 12-step programmes or not, the survivors found that they had to go throughthe processes of letting go of the false self and the corrupted ego, facing the personalshadow, developing consciousness of the ego-self axis, and the return to give to othersas a contributing member of the collective. David Schoen expands on these steps inhis previously referenced book. These patterns are found in fairy tales and spiritualpractices, as well as in psychoanalysis. Whether in addictions’ treatment, analysis orboth, the recovering person will find him/herself to be guided by this powerful patternof transformation. Mary Addenbrooke shows us that the psychoanalytic attitude canplay an important role in the treatment of addictions.

References

Jung, C.G. (1953). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. CW 7.——— (1976). Letters: Vol.2, 1951–1961. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Schoen, D.E. (2009). The War of the Gods in Addiction: CG Jung, Alcoholics

Anonymous and Archetypal Evil. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Press.

Hope MurrowNew England Society of Jungian Analysts

CLARK, MARGARET. Understanding Religion and Spirituality in Clinical Practice,Society of Analytical Psychology Monograph Series. London: Karnac, 2012.Pp. xviii + 99. Pbk. £15.99

Margaret Clark has already contributed to this series of monographs on clinicalpractice with her well received book, Understanding the Self-Ego Relationship inClinical Practice: Towards Individuation (2006). Now her Understanding Religionand Spirituality in Clinical Practice for the same series is designed to help traineeson psychotherapy and psychodynamic counselling courses to make sense of the‘psychodynamic “Tower of Babel” encountered as they embark on training’ (p. ix). Bydesign, volumes in this series are kept relatively brief, with the aim of bringing together‘some major theorists and their ideas in a comprehensible way, including references tosignificant and interesting texts’ (p. ix). A key subtext of the series is to demonstrateways in which psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic ideas can be integrated. Given thisimportant but restricted brief, Clark has fulfilled her task well.

In the Introduction, Clark explains her use of terms like ‘spirituality’, ‘religion’, and‘God’. She also makes the thought-provoking point that, in most psychotherapy andcounselling training courses, no time is devoted to an exploration of these topics. Shenotes: ‘It is rare for any trainee to be asked to examine, or understand, their ownspiritual standpoint. It is even more rare for them to be required to consider that this,whatever it is, is relative and not absolute’ (p. xiii).

In a sobering passage, she recalls one ‘unfortunate participant’ in a workshop sheled, who reported that ‘her supervisor considered her patient’s material about religionas neurotic, irrelevant, or delusional, and would not discuss it in supervision’ (p. xiii).‘Presumably’, she comments, ‘the supervisor’s own training therapist had not taken hisfeelings about religion and spirituality any more seriously’ (p. xii). The point is wellmade.

The eight chapter headings give a good idea of the contents of the book: 1. ‘Thelegacy of Freud on Religion’, 2. ‘Jung: the Symbolic and the Arcane’, 3. ‘The Creationof Our Internal Image of God: Influences Personal, Developmental, and Cultural’, 4.

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‘Spirituality, and God as a Transitional Object’, 5. ‘Evaluating Spiritual and Mysticalexperiences: From Inspiration to Addiction’, 6. ‘Evaluating Spiritual and MysticalExperiences: The Importance of the Ego in Seeing Visions or Hearing Voices’, 7.‘Evaluating Spiritual and Mystical Experiences: From Identification to Possession –Myths of the Hero/Saviour and of the Devil’, 8. ‘Conclusion’. Each chapter introducesthe reader to relevant aspects of psychoanalytic or Jungian thought. The chapterscontain a generous selection of case histories drawn – given the anticipated readershipof this book – from low-intensity work. The case material fleshes out the theory, andassists us to see how we can engage with a patient’s religious material, but in wayscongruent with the therapeutic task.

Clark has been given an important but restricted brief. In the United Kingdom today –maybe more than at any time in the last hundred years – we are being made aware ofthe impact religious beliefs can have on peoples’ lives and of the very different formsthe spiritual quest may take. In a truly Jungian reversal, those who thought that thebland face of nominal Anglicanism could simply be ignored are finding more primitivefundamentalisms impacting on their lives. Deplore them we may, but they may also bethe unlovely faces of realities too long denied. Therapists should now expect to findthemselves working with patients of different faith communities, and the onus is onus to become more humble, wise, and thoughtful in the ways we understand them.Margaret Clark’s book will be even more important if it helps experienced therapiststo think more deeply about the many possible meanings of religious material presentedin therapy and the subtle ways in which it can challenge, enlarge, or destabilize ourown understandings.

True as this is, though, I do have one major reservation about the assumptionthat seems to be implicit in this book or in the theoretical basis of this series: canpsychoanalytic and Jungian analytic thinking really be integrated by way of ObjectRelations theory?

What makes Freud and Jung really seminal thinkers, for me, is that both were intenton anchoring their psychotherapeutic ideas within certain ontological assumptionsabout the nature of reality. Freud’s positivism may have had to bow low enough toaccept the reality of telepathic phenomena, but that was as far as it went. Jung, onthe other hand – and The Red Book is going to make this ever more clear – lived ina religious universe in which God/the Self is the ultimate reality, and synchronicity (Isuspect The Red Book calls it ‘magic’) is inscribed in the fabric of the universe. Bothmen were believers (I count atheism as a form of religious belief). I wish this book hadcontained a chapter on the symbolic universes of meaning, conjured by Freud, Jung andtheir followers, especially where these cast light on the epiphanic possibilities createdwhen two people sit down together and are open in their meeting. In my experience,this is where the real substance of religion and spirituality are encountered, not astopics, but in practice.

Christopher MacKennaBritish Association of Psychotherapists Guild of Health

HELL, DANIEL. Soul Hunger: The Feeling Human Being and the Life Sciences.Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 2010. Pp. viii + 361. Hbk. $23.56 / £19.13

The book’s title takes one straight into the intense conflict that the psychiatrist DanielHell (who was Director of the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Zurich, the famousBurgholzli) tries to explore and contain: the ‘Soul’ that is commonly associated with

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the spiritual and the religious versus the ‘Hunger’ that evokes primal, bodily, visceralsensations. ‘The Feeling Human Being’ refers to the subjective and the personal domainversus the Life Sciences that are striving to be objective and collective.

In his sophisticated (yet jargon free) and multilayered text Hell succeeds in whatWinnicott (1966) describes as the challenge of the psycho-somatist: ‘to ride twohorses, one foot on each of the two saddles, with both reins in his deft hands’. Iwill add this book to the survival kit that helps me to stay alive and hopefully soulfulin the phenomenological, statistical and pharmacological world of the 21st centurypsychiatrist. (In this kit I already have books by two other psychiatrists: C.G. Jung’sThe Psychogenesis of Mental Disease [CW3] and Robert F. Hobson’s Forms of Feeling[1985] – both of whom speak a very similar language to Professor Hell.)

Hell’s message is repeated in variations throughout the book but it can be found ina concise form in the concluding section:

While various forms of psychological misery are accompanied by altered cerebralfunction, this does not adequately explain the personal experience. It is not a brainthat is ill but a person . . . The meaning and importance of psychological suffering isnot found in the brain, but in the attitudes people have in evaluating their experiencesand in the verbal communication between people and their culture.

(p. 347)

This commonsense, ‘experience-near’ summary comes at the end of a ‘long journey’(dotted with quotations from philosophers, novelists, poets, psychiatrists, scientistsand many moving clinical vignettes).

The three parts of Hell’s book are obviously connected but, as he suggests, canbe read independently. In the first part, Historical Development: ‘A Short History ofthe Soul’ and ‘Diseased Soul?’, he attempts to follow the historical preconditions ofcurrently prevailing concepts of psyche and disease. In the second part, The Unfoldingof the Concept: ‘The Body of the Soul is Emotional – A Personal Concept of the Soul’and ‘Overwhelming Self-Assessment – An Attempt to Reach a New Understandingof a Feeling Person’s Illness’, he develops methods based on the latest biological andsociological views of illness for finding direct access to the soul and illness. In the thirdpart, Practical Application: ‘A Basic Therapeutic Problem’, ‘The Shamed Shame andDepression’, and ‘The Discouraged Feeling’, he tries to relate the concepts to theirimportance in everyday life. As a clinician I found the last two parts very useful andinsightful.

Focusing on what he defines as ‘Problematic Emotional Groups’ (p. 202), Hell startswith the ‘Problem-Group of Anxiety’ (p. 203), then continues with the ‘Problem-Circleof Sadness’ (p. 227) followed by the rarely studied feeling of Disgust (p. 236). Hethen explores thoroughly Shame and Depression. He makes important, sharp andsubtle differentiations between anxiety and fear, the different types of anxiety-phobias,panic and generalized anxiety, between sadness and depression, between shame andshaming and guilt, and he stresses the crucial clinical implications of understandingtheir differences as well as their positive aspects. For example: ‘Shame presupposes aninner relation to oneself’ (p. 256).

Hell’s view is that these feelings are part of our normal emotional repertoire butbecome disorders only when they are not allowed to be lived, accepted, or are fearedand therefore avoided and rejected: ‘In abnormal grief reactions it is not grief, but therefusal of sadness on which treatment must focus. Also, in phobias or compulsions thatgo hand in hand with feelings of disgust, one must not doubt the disgust’ (p.245). Thecore idea which is interwoven into all the chapters of the book is that of the importanceof being attuned to ‘the first-person perspective’ – the unique individual feeling, the

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‘soulish’ experience of the particular patient, whilst keeping in mind the ‘third-person’objective perspective of the diagnosis (an idea that echoes Martin Buber’s ‘I-Thou’ asopposed to ‘I-It’).

Hell does not deal with the unconscious in his book, he focuses on the here and nowof the feelings of his patients and on how to help them to live their feelings and havewhat he calls a ‘soulish’ experience. He reminds us that the origin of the German wordfor Soul, ‘Seele’, contains the root word ‘See’ (lake) ‘recalling the ancient Germanic ideathat the souls of the unborn and the deceased live in the water’ (p.13). Hell conveysthe feeling that the Soul is not a mystical, airy entity but rather a flowing, vibrant, real,embodied presence who can be met every day in clinical practice if one looks for her.This of course was also the approach of Jung, who defined psychiatry as ‘the art ofhealing the soul’ (Jung 1914, para. 320). I was surprised therefore that although thebook is in a way inspired by Jung’s spirit he is mentioned only twice. In the referencesection there is one mention of his Collected Works and, in the text, a patient disagreeswith Jung’s comparison of depression to a ‘woman in black’ to whom one must listen.This patient experiences depression as ‘an octopus that suddenly emerges out of thedepths and disconnects the soul from the body and spirit’ (p. 308). I think howeverthat Hell would agree with the following statement of Jung, which echoes the essenceof his book:

We have long known that we have to do with a definite organ, the brain; but onlybeyond the brain, beyond the anatomical substrate, do we reach what is important forus – the psyche, as indefinable as ever, still eluding all explanations, no matter howingenious.

(Jung 1914, para. 320)

At a conference in London in 2011 Murray Stein suggested that Jung’s cry in the LiberPrimus of The Red Book ‘My soul where are you?’ (2009, p. 232) might be relatedto Jung’s encounter with positivistic science. Professor Hell’s Soul Hunger stems fromexactly the same experience.

References

Hobson, R.F. (1985) Forms of Feeling. The Heart of Psychotherapy. London & NewYork: Routledge.

Jung, C.G. (1914). ‘The content of the psychoses’. CW 3.Jung, C.G. (2009). The Red Book. Liber Novus. Ed. S. Shamdasani. New York &

London: W. W. Norton.Winnicott, D.W (1966). ‘Psycho-somatic illness in its positive and negative aspects’.

International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 47, 510–16.

Yoram InspectorNew Israeli Jungian Society

Trainee, Society of Analytical Psychology

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HAUKE, CHRISTOPHER & HOCKLEY, LUKE (EDS.). Jung & Film II: The Return: FurtherPost-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image. London & New York: Routledge, 2011.Pp. xviii + 344. Pbk. $34.95 / £22.99

As a practising analyst, when I approach a book or a film, I am hoping to find a textthat will help me with the ethical and existential questions that emerge every day in myanalytic encounters with the other. Jung & Film II: The Return responds to this desire –but sometimes in an uneven way, given its great diversity.

This book is a ‘sequel’ to Hauke & Alister’s Jung & Film: Post-Jungian Takeson the Moving Image (2000). It consists of an introduction by the editors plus20 independently written chapters. The chapters in Part I—written by clinicians,film makers and academics—engage films through the lens of psychological themesincluding grief, loss, individuation and psyche’s relationship to world. In Part II, filmtheorists pursue new ways of imagining the ‘nascent discipline’ (p. 2) of Jungian filmstudies. Here we encounter topics ranging from the feminine gaze through cinephiliato discourse theory and the role of the individual in society. Part III is dedicated toapplying the concepts of ‘archetype’ and ‘psychological types’ to individual movies,directors, and other topics within film studies. There is a glossary of Jungian terms toorient ‘the newly initiated’ (p. 2) to definitions of alchemy, archetype, individuation,and syzygy, to name but a few. Other concepts (e.g., semiosis, sign, gaze) from filmand cultural studies are not included in the glossary. The reader must orientate tothese cross-disciplinary terms in each chapter, depending on the author’s particularunderstanding of the idea.

The introduction to the book identifies ‘the archetypal perspective’ as ‘the unique toolof Jungian cultural and psychological analysis’ (p. 2). However, the words ‘Jungian’and ‘archetypal’ have both become floating signifiers and do not point to any singularmeaning whether in analytic or academic work. As a clinician, I would have felt morewelcomed into the world of Jungian film studies if the introduction had provideda substantive discussion about the relationship between film as a material, culturalproduct and the ethos guiding the field of what might be considered a specificallyJungian reading of these texts. Also, contextualizing ‘Jungian film studies’ within thehistory of film studies would have been helpful in approaching the multiplicity andcomplexity of ideas reflected in the book.

Every chapter merits a discussion of its own, though that is impossible to providewithin the constraints of this review. Whether I felt resonant with or disturbed by theviews of the various writers, I found myself impacted by the passionate engagement ofeach author with their text. Time and again, I wanted to watch the film in questionand engage in my own lively dialogue with it. Laplanche explains that all culturaltexts including novels and films are an interpellation to the reader/viewer. As soonas I engage with the text, I am responding to the call of an enigmatic message—thesomething more beyond words and images that reverberates through the text. Thisexcess haunts me in a particular way that can never be fully signified or understood.Thus enigmatic messages provoke a process of unending translation—translations thatinvolve affective, imaginative and cognitive dimensions. If a reader/viewer can stay opento the uncanny enigma of the text—rather than translating it through old patterns andexpectations—there is a potential for psychic transformation. Reading Jung & Film II,it quickly became clear to me which authors wrote in a manner that opened up spacefor reflections and ideas that kept alive the goad of the enigma, and which wrote witha tone of authoritative certainty and foundational reductionism that left me feelingclosed off. Therefore, some chapters felt more enlivening and some more deadening. Ihope that readers of this review will be encouraged to turn to the book themselves to

400 Book reviews

discover which texts move them to reflect on the profound human dilemmas, provokeuncanny enigmas, or bring a playful new perspective to their clinical work.

Perhaps many of us would agree that in our current world, moving images, suchas film and video, are far more than entertainment—they are a primary source ofacquiring our ethical attitudes and values. This lends gravitas to the importance of theirstudy. However, Levinas, who makes the radical claim that ethics is first philosophy,has written against art and the image in ‘Reality and its shadow’ (1948/1987). Theconcept of ‘shadow’ in this essay refers to forms of representation (such as a statueor painting) and shouldn’t be confused with the Jungian concept of ‘the shadow’ asdisavowed aspects of psyche. He criticizes replacing ‘reality’ with representations ofreality, because the act of engaging with image seduces the viewer into a false sense ofmastery over the other through the power of light and vision and perspective. He seesimage and art as idolatry when compared to an encounter with the ineffable mystery ofan actual other, who defies all forms of representation. Levinas emphasizes the criticalneed for an art criticism that keeps us ‘mindful of art’s frivolity’ (Severson 2010).Although his critique of art and the image may seem severe, Levinas’ perspective is animportant reminder to film lovers and film writers that it is an ethical imperative toreflect on representations—whether in words or images—of the Other. (Levinas oftencapitalized the French word Autre (Other) in order to indicate that he was referring tothe essential otherness of each human being.) These filmic representations shape ourdiscourses regarding cultural values, normative identity categories, gender, the alienother, and so on. Although several writers use Jung’s phenomenologically rich conceptof ‘shadow’ to engage with the alterity of the other, I wish the book had included amore sustained ethical interrogation of film as a medium of representation, includingchapters that would have more specifically addressed the looming ethical issues of ourtimes.

This volume enlivens the very important dialogue between film studies and analyticpractice; it is an important undertaking, and provides a deep read that is mostrewarding.

References

Downing, L. & Saxton, L. (2010). Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters. London:Routledge.

Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge.Levinas, E. (1948/1987). ‘Reality and its shadow’. In Collected Philosophical Papers,

trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University.Severson, E. (2010). Levinas and Time. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Boston

University.

Sharon R. GreenNorth Pacific Institute for Analytical Psychology