Book Reviews
Review of Jung by Anthony Storr. London, Fontana/Collins, 1973
British Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 1973, p. 364-5
According to Ellenberger, both Freud and jung underwent 'a creative neurosis'. In the long journey he took through his unconscious jung made very different discoveries from those of Freud. Freud's ideas focused on the lone individual, his relationship with the parents, and the development of sexuality. Jung's psychology is concerned with wider and deeper, more metaphysical issues, with the individual's relationships with his evolutionary racial past, with mankind, with gods and with God, with mystical experience, with his own shadow side, and his continuing character development in years of maturity. For those to whom these themes are important jung is one of the major prophets of the twentieth century. It was a mistake, then, for Dr. Storr to undertake the task of exposition, as he explains on his first page, by 'frequently' contrasting Jung's analytical psychology with Freud's psychoanalysis. In fact there is nearly as much Freud as jung in what follows. There is also a deal too much of the psychologies of Adler, Klein and Storr, not to speak of irrelevant intrusions by Laing, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Jaques.
Dr. Storr has read a great mass of the sacred writings. He does a good job of simplifying, and he expounds with lucidity. But, alas, there is no love. Indeed he finds it necessary to mention discouragement, frustration and impatience. If to the matter‑of-fact mind the teachings of the prophet seem illdefined; if many‑faceted meanings appear contradictory; if no urge is aroused to penetrate into age‑old and perennial mysteries, no excitement, no echo of wonder or reverence ‑ then the message has been lost and cannot be passed on.