carl jung

Here is a video with a live interview with Jung. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4156341151105688636&q=carl+jung&hl=en
We will also study the work of Carl Jung. I have always had a negative reaction to Jung and anything Jungian, but in fairness I had not actually read any actual Jung for about twenty years. I decided to do a brief "analysis" of why I was so negative about his work, and then try to tackle it again with fresh eyes.
I quickly remembered why I did not like the guy. Here is a brief passage from Philip Rieff(The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 1966) that I had read quite a few times before reading Jung .

The personal myths of Jungian psychology have little enough in common with the classical language of faith, and nothing whatever to do with the language of modern science. Because it offers no criteria of validity other than the therapeutic experience of conviction, Jungian theory amounts to a private religion and an anti-science....Jung developed a fresh rhetoric of spirituality , without the bother of churches or the imposition of consequential ethics. His therapy was a theogonic process: the gods remade to populate a charming cosmos full of interesting people(e.g. the Anima) in which no ego need feel lonely. God-making nowadays is no small miracle.

Well it is no surprise I did not warm to his writing. But I know many smart and thoughtful people who have found Jungian therapy compelling, and I have read in my neuroscience books that Jung may not have been so off the mark with his collective unconscious as people once that. It is definitely time to have another look.

Some intriguing quotations from his autobiography("automythology")Memories, Dreams and Reflections:

Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and therefore is equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable--perhaps everything. No science will ever replace myth. and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that God is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. (MDR,340)

A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some image of it--even if he has to confess his failure.(MDR, 302)

It is important and salutory to speak of incomprehensible things.(MDR,300)

The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself (MDR, 358)