C.G. Jung in the Humanities: Taking the Soul's Path

by Susan Rowland

Overview

This book, by eminent Jungian and feminist literary critic Susan Rowland, is the first comprehensive analysis of the significance of Jung's work to the humanities, and even to those complex areas where the humanities and sciences border one another. More radically, it shows that Jung was a writer of myth, alchemy, symbolism, narrative, and poetics, as well as on them. Jung's writing is, in holistic terms, a complex adaptive system that comes alive when realized (made real) in the reader's psyche.

Despite his influence on a remarkable array of artists and thinkers, Jung's ideas have often suffered neglect and misunderstanding. This book goes a long way to making up for that situation. In addition to summarizing his core concepts for the novice, it addresses Jung's sometimes questionable judgment on political and gender issues, demonstrates his past importance and ongoing relevance, and previews some contemporary extensions of the frontiers of Jungian theory.

By penetrating the secrets of the creative psyche, and by exploring the individual's connections with both the natural environment and the social and psychological collective, Jung proves a forerunner of the new holism. His work offers the promise of reconciling the sciences with the arts, humanity with nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935528029
Publisher:	Spring Journal Inc
Publication date:	02/23/2010
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Susan Rowland is Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life MA at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and was a Professor of English and Post-Jungian Studies at the University of Greenwich, UK. Her recent books include Jung as a Writer (Routledge, 2005) and Jung: A Feminist Revision (Polity, 2002), as well as editing Psyche and the Arts (Routledge, 2008) and writing a book and essays on female British mystery writers, identifying myth as the deep form of that genre.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Jung

Chapter 2: Jung the Writer on Psychotherapy and Culture

Chapter 3: Jung for Literature, Art and Film

Chapter 4: Myth and History

Chapter 5: Jung and Science, Alchemy and Religion

Chapter 6: Jung and Power: Politics and Gender

Chapter 7: Jung in the Twenty-First Century: Fishing at the Gates of Hell

Editorial Reviews

With passion and lucidity Susan Rowland surveys the diverse ways in which the recent upsurge in Jungian scholarship in the humanities sees perennial questions of meaning and value. No one is in a better position to do so, given her own distinguished contributions to this development.

DON FREDERICKSEN, PROFESSOR OF FILM, CORNELL UNIVERSITY AND CHAIRMAN, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR JUNGIAN STUDIES

Rowland has created a comprehensive tour of the vast psychic territory covered by Jung, illuminating to both specialists and lay readers. … [S]he points at what, in Jung, is still valid, and discards what belongs to the prejudices of his time and gender. … Captivating and well written, it is a major contribution to Jungian studies, a book that will become a classic for all students of depth psychology.

GINETTE PARIS, CORE FACULTY, MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES PROGRAM, PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE, AUTHOR OF WISDOM OF THE PSYCHE: DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY AFTER NEUROSCIENCE

In every chapter Rowland truly "lets the psyche breathe," writing gracefully and with economy of motion. She demonstrates how Jung's use of the rhetorical tools of metaphor and pivot create a net-like text that functions as a living symbol, a symbol that initiates the individuation process by causing the reader to "experience the creative immanence of the imagination." This insight and many more like it make this a book of great value to the practicing Jungian analyst.

JEAN KIRSCH, JUNGIAN ANALYST, SAN FRANCISCO

From the Publisher