Book Description

The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned, and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule — in peacetime.

Customer Reviews:

a very detailed account.......2007-10-20

This is a VERY detailed account of Mao's life and I give credit to the author for the research that went into this book. Anyone would be hard pressed to match that in a book in comparison. The 'outing' of Mao's atrocities are ghastly revealing and the power of mind control over his people is the worst revelation. The first 100 pages of this book are hard to get thru. I felt it lumbered a bit but after Mao is in charge, the flow is smoother and the description of Mao's relationships with Stalin and other world leaders is priceless.

Evil Mao.......2007-09-24

Very well researched book. Gives you an overlook on the real Mao and how the rest of the world misinterpreted him. Shows how America was superficial in assessing how the real Mao would be and how it applied pressure on Chiang Kai Shek to enforce cease fire on Mao's critical turning point of the civil war thus making it possible for Mao to conquer China. Mao killed his colleagues and his enemies alike for the sole purpose of gaining and retaining power. All means were legitimate in his eyes to achieve that goal. It looks like we never learn from these mistakes. This attitude makes us helping the Taliban to be a prominent force and Al Qaeda flourish in Iraq, a place they have never been before the invasion. Easy reading with simple language with tons of new info reflecting our lack of knowledge about someone so important.

what a joke!.......2007-09-22

The newest tome of bathroom entertainment. "Entertainment" is what this is. you know when movies are "based on true events"? this book is like that. I don't blame the authors for trying to make a couple of dollars by sensationalize and distort history to their liking. no one can really say their version of history is 100% accurate, but this is almost cartoonish in nature. I just hope some poor person don't actually believes any of this non-sense.

So read this book for fun, but please don't take it seriously, and god forbid please do not bring anything up from this in a discussion with your friends or family who are knowledgeable in Chinese history. You will be laughed right out of the room.

The Black Book...and the Red one... .......2007-09-14

Amidst all the controversy over this book, I can't fault the authors for their claim of Mao's responsibility for 70 million domestic peacetime deaths. That figure is indeed confirmed by the Black Book of Communism, which was written by avowed leftists.

It seems such a short time since it was oh so trendy to be seen carrying around campus a copy of the Chairman's Little Red Book.

Caveats, but well worth the price of admission.......2007-09-13

If nothing else, this book is deeply fascinating. The questions of historical precision are raised in even a rudimentary Google search for reviews, yet this is still a book very much worth your time to read. The authors make it eminently obvious they hold no love for Mao, but partisanship or bias are not synonyms for dishonesty - they simply require the reader to attach qualifications to the conclusions. We would not discard out of hand a biography of Hitler written by an Auschwitz Jew.

Concerns for the precision of her statistics and conclusions are justified, but only to a point. Discrepancies, such as whether or not the Great Leap Forward killed 30 million or 38 million, do potentially indicate scholarly sloppiness, but myopic focus on C&H's precision only validates Stalin's notation that once you kill enough people, they're only numbers. I'm willing to accept they exaggerated their numbers, but frankly, I don't care. I'm more concerned about a lot of people getting killed than about exactly how many it was.

Ultimately, this book asks you to weigh the benefits of Mao's life by exposing his awesome sins. Exaggerated though some numbers might be, and partisan though the arguments are, to dismiss this portrait of Mao on those grounds only encourages history to repeat itself. I don't disagree with the other reviews that this books neglects the "benefits" of Mao's reign, but starting down that road is extremely dangerous. By turning analysis of Mao's reign into a cost-benefit analysis between the lives he killed and the lives he raised from poverty or the advances in issues like women's rights, we only make it easier to repeat these mistakes. I am far more comfortable using Mao's biography as a morality tale that damns him unconditionally than I am with utilitarian calculations, however correct or honest those calculations might be. I appreciate the loss in nuance, historical accuracy, and objectivity, but are we really comfortable with the idea that presiding over the deaths of tens of millions of people is ultimately justified if future generations are lifted from poverty?

This is a book with caveats, no doubt, but also a book that makes one think that if you were given one chance to change the course of history, there might be few better choices than wishing Mao was never born.

Average customer rating: riveting! Entertaining and educational Amazing insight into 20th century China and Mao inparticular Wild China Wild Swans

Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China Jung Chang Manufacturer: Touchstone ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | China | Asia | History | Subjects | Books Similar Items: Mao: The Unknown Story River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.) Life and Death in Shanghai Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel A Thousand Splendid Suns ASIN: 0743246985

Amazon.com

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

Book Description

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.

Jung Chang describes the life of her grandmother, a warlord's concubine; her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents' experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving -- and ultimately uplifting -- detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

Customer Reviews:

riveting!.......2007-10-19

I just finished reading this book which is the riveting story of three-generations of women in one Chinese family. This book opened my eyes to a time in history that (embarassingly enough) I really knew nothing about. While the story of these women's lives are heart-wrenching, it is also a story of three very couragious women. I doubt many women of today would be able to put up with the mental, physical, and emotional pain that these women, and really all people in China at that time, had to. Wild Swans should be required reading in high school and college because there is so much to be learned about not only history, but human nature, from this book.

Entertaining and educational.......2007-10-08

I read this book in preparation for a trip to China. The book follows the lives of 3 women (daughter, mother, grandmother) in China. Chang does an outstanding job teaching the reader about China's history and politics while at the same time giving us the women's stories. You will learn a lot about China during WWII, Japanese occupation, Communist revolution, Mao's great leap forward and the cultural revolution.

On the downside, the author does not do a particularly nice job in helping the reader understand the characters. You don't get into their brains. This is a minor criticism and I still highly recommend this book if you are at all interested in learning about China in the last 100 years. You will learn a lot without having to read a boring textbook.

Amazing insight into 20th century China and Mao inparticular.......2007-09-19

It is incredible to read this true story about 20th century China. So little is really known about China to those of us in the West. It is hard to believe that so many "intellectuals" here in the West used to, and even still, have so much admiration for Mao when there is truly only evil behind this man. There is a lot of history in this book but really it is the personal story of the author and her family. A must read for us all!

Wild China.......2007-09-15

"Mrs Shau slapped my father hard. The crowd barked at him indignantly, although a few tried to hide their giggles. Then they pulled out his books and threw them into huge jute sacks they had brought with them.

"When all the bags were full, they carried them downstairs, telling my father they were going to burn them... the next day after a denunciation meetings against him. They ordered him to watch the bonfire 'to be taught a lesson.' In the meantime, they said, he must burn the rest of his collection.

"When I came home that afternoon, I found my father in the kitchen. He had lit a fire in the big cement sink, and was hurling his books into the flames.

"This was the first time in my life I had seen him weeping. It was agonized, broken, and wild, the weeping of a man who was not used to shedding tears. Every now and then, in fits of violent sobs, he stamped his feet on the floor and banged his head against the wall.

"My father had spent every spare penny on his books. They were his life. After the bonfire, I could tell that something had happened to his mind."

(Wild Swans, Jung Chang, p.439)

Me, I might've lost mine completely.

After being near-perfectly obedient to a Party whose values you put above your family, to be accused of anti-Party-ism, judged for the very tasks you were instructed to unquestioningly and unconditionally, publicly humiliated and beaten (even made to kneel on glass) and forced to burn the very items you've spent a lifetime collecting and loving...why, I would've been long-gone crazy.

But then these Chinese Communists are dedicated to their work and politics (independently of the cash factor, which wasn't much in Mao's China in the 1950s' to 60s') in a manner quite unheard of today.

I mean, how many of us believe our local politicians are in it primarily because of their "commitment to the unity, harmony and welfare of the country" (to ask is to scoff). Not for Jung Chang's dad, one of the many victims of the Cultural Revolution.

Chang is kinda like Josephus, who escaped a burning Jerusalem (whilst she a 'burning' China) to become a historical-political writer.

Josephus' authorial intentions were of course far more motivated by their allegiance to his benefactor, Vesapian. His was a history of the Jews, but also a thinly veiled exaltation of Rome. Chang's agenda, on the other hand, is an outright expose of the delusions, the cruelty, the very insanity of life and government in China from the start of the 20th century.

From foot-binding to scheming mistresses to escaping third-wives(!); from miscarriages due to long treks (because wives are discouraged to ride in their husbands' vehicles lest 'bourgeosie privilege' is suspected) to the terror of city sieges; from communal self-delusion about a glut (which was really a famine!) to hungry peasants kidnapping babies for food; from profiting from the black-market in banned books (supposedly to be burnt but conveniently set aside for secret trade, especially the erotic ones like Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir) to the Little Red Book 'loyalty dance' (how? Gyrate, wave the book, sing Mao's quotes) - Chang spills everything one would want (and maybe not want) to know about life before and under Mao, structured and timelined by the lives of her grandmother, mother and her own.

The language is simple and clear and not at all 'profound', twisty or avant-garde-ish. Not unlike something you might read in an exercise book from a good Asian secondary school.

Therefore, you sorta know it's the content alone that won Wild Swans the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award. The book is proof you don't need kewl-sounding language to make a serious impact on the literary stage.

Read 'em and (you will) weep.

Wild Swans.......2007-09-01

Well written memoir that reviews the history of China immediately before, during and after the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, and also the early days of the Communist government. The good and the bad of Mao's rule is vividly portrayed.

Average customer rating: Intensity-his mind was flooded with profound ideas Reflections Read and Reread The correct understanding of Jung's compensation theory An incredible chronicle of an amazing inner journey!

Memories, Dreams, Reflections C.G. Jung Manufacturer: Vintage ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Social Scientists & Psychologists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Jung, Carl | ( J ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Jungian | Movements | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books General | Mental Health | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Similar Items: Man and His Symbols The Portable Jung (Viking Portable Library) Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Harvest Book) The Undiscovered Self The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1) ASIN: 0679723951 Release Date: 1989-04-23

Book Description

An autobiography put together from conversations, writings and lectures with Jung's cooperation, at the end of his life.

Customer Reviews:

Intensity-his mind was flooded with profound ideas.......2007-09-14

This book is sublime, a GEM. In his subjective view of the world -"with half closed eyes and somewhat closed ears, to see and hear the form and voice of being" he arrived at an inspiring insight about life: supreme meaning of being can consist only in the fact that is,not that it is not or is no longer; nature, the mystery of love, the psyche, life, human beings, a state of lively contemplation of images is divinity unfolded (the greatest of miracles)-being conscious of this can come to you not through emptiness, imagelessneess or wanting to be freed from nature or yourself.
Here's a passage of the book that reflects the quintessence of his wisdom:
No language is adequate for this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words reflect the whole; for only the whole is meaningful...love "bears all things" and "endures all things". These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic "love"- a unified and undivided whole. Being a part man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it; but he is always caught by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. "Love ceases not"-whether he speaks with the "tongue of angels", or with scientific exactitude traces the life cell down to its uttermost source. Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown- ignotum per ignotius-that is, by God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error.
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.

Reflections.......2007-07-08

Jung's work is often difficult to read. This is an excellent introduction to his thinking, and a fine outline of his life. Man and his Symbols is also a good intro to Jungian thought.

However, over long, somewhat pompous comments are really not appropriate. Jungians would call this inflation.

Read and Reread.......2007-05-18

This is a book that I read with intense interest, I walked around the house , this book in hand.

C.G. Jung is caught here , his childhood, his quirks. He remains a very fascinating man. This is the only book about C.G. Jung I've read.

I particularly liked the chapter 'Late Thoughts", though the book in whole is very curiosity inspiring.

Loved it.

The correct understanding of Jung's compensation theory.......2007-05-17

According to Jung, the unconscious tries to "compensate" the "lopsidedness" in the conscious attitude, and dreams are part of this process. He says: "The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is the best proven rule of dream interpretation" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). The examination of Jung's dream interpretations reveals that what he calls "lopsidedness" is a harmful mistake, or a harmful mental/behavioral failure, and "compensation" means the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the mental/behavioral failure.

As I explained elsewhere, the compensation of the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude by the unconscious is only a particular manifestation of the general truth that all functions of the mind, or all of its "topographical parts" in Freud's words, complement each other and constitute an integrated system, in contradiction with Freud's theory of conflict. In fact, Jung's theory was produced as a reaction to Freud's conflict theory. Consequently, we can equally say that consciousness sometimes compensates the lopsidedness in the unconscious attitude. Besides, it is most natural to expect such cooperation to work even when it is not possible to talk about any lopsidedness in the conscious or unconscious attitude. I described this cooperation in much detail elsewhere in my chapter on cerebral lateralization.

Again as I explained elsewhere, Jung's conception of the function of dreams is basically correct and constitutes a very fruitful idea. But he did not apply this idea adequately to dream interpretation, apparently because he did not express it clearly and used instead obscure ideas like lopsidedness and compensation. His major mistake was to assume that every dream presented the compensated state of the lopsidedness, or the corrected state of the mistake.

Jung could be able to produce a correct theory of dreams if he tried to answer the following questions: (a) What is the content of lopsidedness in general but clear terms? (b) How does the conscious attitude become lopsided and why it cannot correct its lopsidedness itself? (c) What makes the unconscious fit to compensate the lopsidedness of the conscious attitude? (d) In what measure the unconscious succeeds or fails in doing the compensation work, and why? (e) Most importantly, how does the unconscious do the job of compensation, or the correction of the harmful mistake? It is evident that in the absence of especially the answer to the last question, it is not possible to discover all the thoughts expressed by a dream.

As I explained elsewhere, a complete dream contains three types of thought: (a) the presentation of the lopsidedeness, or the mistake, which is treated by the dream; (b) the explanation of the cause of the mistake, or failure, which is often in the form of the external attribution of the failure; and (c) the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the failure. A complete dream begins either with thought (a) or (b) and ends with thought (c). Thoughts (b) and/or (c) may be missing in a dream or may be implicit in another part of the dream, but thought (a) is always present in explicit or implicit form because it is the reason why the dream is produced. In reality, this understanding of dreams is implied by Jung's compensation idea, because the fact that the unconscious can compensate the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude means that the unconscious is rational enough to do that, and the above three types of thought are the ones produced consciously and rationally when dealing with failures in the waking state.

Jung was not able to see these facts, because he could not free himself sufficiently from Freud's influence. Just as Freud interpreted everything in a dream as meaning wish fulfillment, Jung interpreted every dream as presenting the compensated state of the lopsided that it treated. In reality, a dream may present the lopsidedness instead of its compensated state, as exemplified below.

Jung's dream about his patient (p. 133): In his dream, Jung looks up at his female patient who is "sitting on a kind of balustrade," "on the highest tower" of a castle "at the top of a steep hill;" he bends his head back too far to see her properly and wakes up with a crick in the back of his neck.

Jung's interpretation based on the compensation hypothesis was this: "If in the dream I had to look up at the patient in this fashion, in reality I had probably been looking down on her." So, he assumed that the dream was telling him not to look down on her. This interpretation was based on the assumption that the dream scene represented what Jung had to do in real life, which means the solution of his problem, or the compensation of the lopsidedness in his conscious attitude. This interpretation contradicts the fact that Jung hurt himself in the dream by looking up at his patient and also by the fact that he considered his patient in real life "a highly intelligent woman." These contradictions can be eliminated by assuming that the dream scene represented the mistake that Jung was making in real life, or his problem, not its solution as he assumed. So, the correct message of the dream appears to be this: "You are making a mistake and hurting your interests by overestimating your patient." The implied advise was to stop overestimating her, which is the exact opposite of what Jung thought the dream was advising him. This interpretation is supported not only by the pain that Jung felt in the back of his neck at the end of the dream and his waking state evaluation of his patient as a highly intelligent woman but also by the fact that he was unable to realize progress in the therapy of his patient, evidently because he considered her a highly intelligent woman. This dream shows that the compensation hypothesis can cause a wrong interpretation even when the subject matter of a dream is approximately recognized, which is not always the case, and that therefore this hypothesis may also say nothing about the meaning of a dream. In such cases, Jung introduced obscure ideas in the interpretations, such as mandala, archetype, and collective unconscious, without explaining why these appear in the dream and what they precisely mean in relation to the dreamer's life. In fact, many of Jung's ideas are found "mystical." In opposition to this, Freud's interpretations are always clear and detailed but always wrong basically. But despite this fact, Freud's dream theory is more popular than Jung's, because it is found plausible due to the fact that it is produced by likening dreams to daydreams which mean wish fulfillment as everyone knows.

Jung's understanding of dreams needs to be corrected, or completed, also concerning the language of dreams. He criticized Freud's idea of dream symbolism saying that what Freud meant when he said "symbol" was "sign," and that a symbol was something more complex than a sign. Today the widely accepted view is that dream language is concrete-analogic, or concrete-metaphoric. In reality, most of Freud's dream symbols involved analogies, but many other writers abused the concept of dream symbolism and produced largely invalid dictionaries of dream symbols. Not only dream language but also dream cognition is concrete-analogic and therefore cannot use abstractions and logic. This is a consequence of the accepted view that dream thoughts are produced by the right brain which operates using concrete analogies instead of abstractions, speech, and logic. The verbal metaphors that are used in the waking state are also used in dreams in concrete pictorial form, because the source of both the waking state analogies, or metaphors, and dream analogies appear to be the right brain. Because of this, dictionaries of dream symbols can contain correct entries, but even the most common analogies can carry special meanings when used in dreams in relation to the dreamer's life experiences. Many otherwise correct dream interpretations by Jung and his followers are somewhat flawed because of they twisted the meanings of dream analogies in various ways. An example is below.

A man dreamed that as he came out of a meeting he put on somebody else's hat. Jung could say nothing about the relation of this dream to the dreamer's life experiences and claimed only that the hat represented the Mandela, which, according to him, is a concept present in every human mind. The analogic interpretation of this dream can be that the dreamer had easily accepted, or was in the habit of easily accepting, other people's ideas and views. This would be the presentation of a lopsidedness in his conscious attitude.

Jung was aware of the insufficiency of his theory and said: "There are still boundless opportunities for pioneer work in this field" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). Nevertheless, he and his followers produced many correct and nearly correct dream interpretations. Jung's readers can use his compensation theory better then he did by keeping in view the facts mentioned above and reading my books.

Jung's compensation theory can be seen as the solution of the problem of dream interpretation, and thereby of the problem of dream function, if the process by which compensation is realized and the analogic cognition and language of dreams are taken into consideration, both as explained above.

Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy

Theory Construction and Testing in Physics and Psychology

An incredible chronicle of an amazing inner journey!.......2007-02-24

I think Carl Jung was very ahead of his time and he was in sense an explorer like Columbus, except that his territory was the vast space of his own interior. My understanding of Jung is that he took his own explorations to the brink of psychosis in the service of understanding himself and the psyche. Whether you are a Jung fan or not, it has certainly been my experience that he has a lot of insight and wisdom to share with respect to the nature of the psyche.

This book is basically an autobiography and it is very dense reading. Jung was highly educated in a variety of fields and without some basic understanding of philosophy, major literary figures and mythology, it may be a difficult reading. However, if taken slowly, it is truly manageable and you will discover many gems.

I agree with some of the other excellent reviews that suggest that this volume presents Jung the legend more than being an objective account of his life. However, it offers a lot of insight into his thinking, major influences, etc. It is a fascinating story in itself.

I think this book is most useful and interesting to people who already know a lot about Jung. It is not the best introduction to Jung. If you want a good introduction, I would suggest Murray Stein's "Jung's Map of the Soul." Another concise introduction in Jung's own words is Aion. I would read one or both of these first before tackling this volume.

Average customer rating: An inside view of two brilliant minds Archetypal splitting A fight of Titans for primacy in the field of Psychanalisys.

The Freud/Jung Letters Sigmund Freud , and C. G. Jung Manufacturer: Princeton University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Social Scientists & Psychologists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Freud, Sigmund | ( F ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Jung, Carl | ( J ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Psychoanalysis | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books General | Psychiatry | Specialties | Medicine | Subjects | Books Letters & Correspondence | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books Similar Items: C.G. Jung Psychological Reflections : An Anthology of His Writings, 1905-1961 Discovery Of Unconscious Memories, Dreams, Reflections The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939 The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham 1907-1925 ASIN: 0691036438

Book Description

This abridged edition makes the Freud/Jung correspondence accessible to a general readership at a time of renewed critical and historical reevaluation of the documentary roots of modern psychoanalysis. This edition reproduces William McGuire's definitive introduction, but does not contain the critical apparatus of the original edition.

Customer Reviews:

An inside view of two brilliant minds.......2007-05-12

I loved this book mostly because I have been fascinated by Freud for many years and now I am studying Jung. To have the privilege of reading their letter back and forth is a treat. Also there are insights into current problems that Psychology still grapples over.

Archetypal splitting.......2006-06-06

This is an amazing collection of letters which depict the relationship of two of the greatest psychologists of all time. Naturally, there are people who interpret this relationship in different ways, especially as a very specific situation, peculiar to the development of psychology or otherwise. I think otherwise. Life is rarely linear--it's usually Normally Distributed. Things tend to go in cycles, not straight lines. The relationship between Freud the mentor & Jung the mentee is just not that unusual. In fact, it parallels that of every child (especially males stereotypically seeking independence). There comes a time to leave the nest & for the mentee to strike out on his own--just as there is a time for a new paradigm (per Thomas Kuhn's classic, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"). This is precisely what occurred between Freud & Jung. It's almost archetypal. There's even something of a parallel between Jung & Father Victor White in Jung's "Letters." This book has some interesting quotes from each of the two psychologists:

By Freud:
p. 119 Take my urgent advice, arm yourself with ill temper against all unreasonable demands.
p. 121 One must try to learn something from every experience.
p. 169 I have long known that one can't change people. Everyone has something worthwhile in him. We must content ourselves with getting it out of him.

By Jung:
p. 84 What people don't know surpasses the imagination, and what they don't want to know is simply unbelievable.
p. 157 one likes human beings around one and not complex-masks.

And, very apropos: p. 462 Emma Jung: it is always the nearest thing that one sees worst.

A fight of Titans for primacy in the field of Psychanalisys........2003-04-23

This is a sad book to read. In fact, one would not expect that such a type of bad development would occur between the two most important figures of psychoanalisys. It is as if Marx and Engels had broken their friendship for life and began to fight for fame and glory in front of everybody. The spoil was huge: nothing more than the primacy for fame and glory in the first steps of psychanalisys.

Sure, the letters span a pretty much limited space of time of no more than 8 years (1906-1914) but the reader has to keep in mind that what was at stake was the establishing of the foundations of psychoanalisys all over Europe and also in the whole World.
What began as a cordial friendship and evolved into an almost father (Freud) to son (Jung) relationship, deteriorated into the most depressive fighting of personal primacy on many subjects. In this regard, it seems that the feud was initiated by Freud who considered Jung a type of his personal assistant to market the developments of his findings
THe fact that this is a abridged edition does not mean nothing except that here the common reader will find the most important material exchanged by the two great men and will be saved from some meaningless material of more burocratical tone.
Also of value is the introduction that ilustrates all the effort made by the two family sides to publish the letters, in spite the view by Jung that the ideal time for them to be published would be 20 to 30 years after his death.

THis is a must reading for anyone interested in the history of psychanalisys.

Average customer rating: Entertaining, informative yet highly biased . Good Documentation Richard Noll in the Right Dosage the tune of those not in harmony Jung's Public Shadow

The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung Richard Noll Manufacturer: Random House ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Scientists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Jung, Carl | ( J ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Switzerland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Jungian | Movements | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Similar Items: The Jung Cult : Origins of a Charismatic Movement Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman--Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine The Portable Jung (Viking Portable Library) Memories, Dreams, Reflections Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) ASIN: 0679449450 Release Date: 1997-08-26

Book Description

Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, stands as one of the two most famous and influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped our perception of the world; his theories of myths and archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial and impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as the all-too-human man he really was, a genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age.

The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jung's life--a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930s. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life and the lives of his most intimate followers--details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jung's family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America.

Richard Noll traces the influence on Jung's ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jung's idealization of "primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick--whose story is fully told here for the first time--the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement.

As Richard Noll writes, "Jung is more interesting . . . because of his humanity, not his semidivinity."  In giving a complete portrait of this twentieth-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with implications for all of our lives.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining, informative yet highly biased ........2007-08-10

I loved reading the book (thus the 3 stars) yet the authors politically correct bias and penchant for sensationalism made the book somewhat irritating at times. The Author doesn't even try to "just present the facts" and write a biography in which Jung's life and works speak for themselves. I have nothing against Noll pointing out the possible implications of Jungs views mind you I didn't like the PC moralizing. Anything remotely "volkish" or that takes into consideration the importance of race ( especially Jung's view that race plays a part in the psychological make up of a person ) is blasted by Noll as "unscientific", "unenlightened" , "Dangerous. He also seems to have a lurid fascination with Jung's sex life.

Good Documentation.......2007-06-17

To some of us who have read widely and been around a long time, the "revelations" in this book consist less in its main theses than in the detailed evidence provided by the author. Jung's affections for the Nazis have been extensively documented elsewhere, so this is perhaps the least surprising of the major points Noll describes. In fact, the Jung Institute itself issued a book--Jung's Shadow--in an attempt to defuse at least some of the dismay arising from information dribbling out from behind the Archetypal wall.





For some, the fact that Jung was more pagan than not in his spiritual leanings, will be hot stuff; to me, it's old hat; the interest, as I said, is in the specifics provided by Noll. The fact that Jung was not monogamous may similarly upset--or titillate--some people coming for the first time to know the man behind the mask, but once again, it's no great excitement to those who have read widely in psycho-spiritual literature.





That Jung regarded himself as having been initiated and elevated to the rank of a god, depends on how 'god' is understood...and Noll does a good job of showing that this was intended in a pagan sense, and not a Judeo-Christian one.





All in all, this is an informative book, one that provided documentation and detail--both things the Jung Archives try to prevent by keeping The Great One's original works and personal correspondence controlled and under seal.

Richard Noll in the Right Dosage.......2006-10-11

As might be expected this book, The Aryan Christ, has caused considerable controvery in the US and in Europe. The argument is convincingly presented that Carl Jung's scientific description of the psyche and pyschoanalysis are based more on volkish notions prevalent in the late 19th century, coupled with assumptions from the likes of Max Muller about the truth of a deep "sun religion" behind the plethora of world religions, and all ginned up with allusions to Wagner's Parsifal and the Knights of the Holy Grail. Noll does well to present a plausible explanation of how Jung's theories were generated in the context of Jung's rather voracious reading in a range of fields including, not just comparative religion as it was construed in his day, but also the altogether wacky "fields" such as Theosophy, alchemy, and astrology.
Naturally, this is just the problem for those who would like to keep Jung on his pedestal: it seems to be the case that Jung was VERY MUCH a man of his times and to read Jung and take away the sense that he represents a universally valid account of human subjectivity is to be nothing but silly. Put otherwise, Noll has significant evidence that Jung "found" in the unconscious a wide variety of things that were also found in his library (see p. 133 where Noll writes: "If so, the collective unconscious may still be said to exist, but only on the shelves of Jung's personal library"). And this seems to me to be critical for the 21st century to understand: Jung read a lot of half-baked accounts of religions around the world and then claimed, in good faith or otherwise, that he was finding just these same elements, themes, and symbols in his patients. Beside the audacity/arrogance to interpret and explain the Other, for all time, and in all traditions, there are two pressing problems: first, no credible figure in Religious Studies would hold up the 19th century works of Max Muller et al as reliable information; so, the specific elements that Jung is discovering to be universally relevatory of the deep truth of humanity are based on "scholarly" information that has long been discredited: in effect, Jung appears to have read a lot of books on religions, "found" these same symbols in his patients (many of whom were reading the same books), and then wrote a lot of books about just these symbols claiming, adamantly, that they didn't come from their reading. Thus, just like the joke that communism is the fastest way between capitalism and capitalism, Jung's writings are the fastest way between shoddy scholarship on religion and shoddy scholarship on religion. Second, if reading books is how this kind of religious symbolism is getting passed around, then the unconscious in the Jungian sense is a useless idea since what is getting passed around is a body of fadish symbols that both patient and doctor agree are deeply significant. Jung's theories will fall flat if it can be shown that the unconscious and the analysis that uncovers it are really a refraction of the best seller list of spiritual hits at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in league with contemporaneous assumptions about the Germanic people and the dehumanizing effects of Judeo-Christianity, effects that stand in the way of Germans recovering their original identity.
That said, I find Noll's qualities as a historian troubling in places. Let's agree for the thousandth time not to write about what other people are supposedly thinking or feeling, especially when we weren't there. Then, Noll doesn't do himself any favors when he seems to use Jungian categories to talk about Jung's troubled invention of Jungian analysis. Similarly, even if a book is being written for a popular audience, no one needs to read chapters that start with sentences such as " Without her, he might never have succeeded."
And, also on the topic of Noll's sense of historiography, how about some admission of negative evidence? Is it just as Noll has it in this book, or are there spaces for doubt? Wouldn't the book have been stronger to let in some doubt about the narrative that Noll constructs for Jung's life, along with some room to debate the selection and interpretation of evidence? History _is_ interpretation, of course, with the substantiated facts and footnotes in view. And, in my opinion, I think Noll goes too easy on Jung's anti-semitism -- it's appalling what Jung said and wrote about Jews (and Christians for that matter), not to mention evidence presented in the French reviews of this book that Jung went on the radio in support of Hitler in 1932 or 1933. Arguably, this story could have been cast even darker than Noll has it.
At the end of the book, I am left with the two sentiments. First, Noll has done us all a favor -- I read Jung in my early 20's and didn't know what he was talking about or how to contextualize him -- now, with Noll's assistance, I have a way to situate Jung in the milieu of the likes of Ernst Haeckel and Ernst Junger. Second, Jung now, justly, appears as a symptom of his time: another German writer desparate to recover his Germanness at any cost, and fired up with Goethe, Nietzsche, and Max Muller, hopes that the unconscious and Jungian analysis will be his highway to the Teutonic soul and salvation -- a rather pathetic and truly atavistic hope, all in all.
Three questions remain: 1) why it took nearly 100 years to figure this out; 2) why modern readers find Jung so captivating - the answer isn't going to be flattering; and 3) what to do next in light of the deep influence that Jung has had on the formal study of religion in America and Europe, especially as refracted through the works of Eliade Mircea which, though tilting Jung's project somewhat away from the Germanic focus (Eliade's relation in the 1930's to the Romanian fascist group, the Iron Guard, is another matter to be dealt with), still share much of the basic plan of recovering archaic man and his chthonic spirituality in a quasi-Jungian effort to return to primitive homo religioso. Don't we really need to understand this phenomenon of "reactionary modernism" and see how problematic it really is? And, similarly, shouldn't we awaken the likes of Karen Armstrong and other who draw so heavily on Jung and Eliade, to the troubled tradition to which they belong, even as they promise to save us from ourselves?
In sum, though I wish Noll wrote history with less purple prose, I am sure that his work will continue, deservedly, to be part of the self-evaluation that Religious Studies, at least in America, began roughly a decade ago.
And, for the prospective buyer who has read my lengthy review: buy the book!

the tune of those not in harmony.......2006-09-14

This book is an example of Richard Noll's self loathing. One writes a negative, critically dissective, slanderous account of another if and only if that individual has certain secrets or behavioral predilections that conjure an amount of resentment and regret in that individual's Self. Perhaps Noll's feminine half, his anima, or shall we say, his own aryan-poking-fun unconscious, meant to flash a slight knowing smile admitting such - while his self-righteous, or perhaps self-emulating, conscious half, and he is surely a half, not a whole, constructed this work of laughable fiction attempting to damage the personality of a man who understood more than Noll ever will.

However, I'm sure Jung appreciates, as do I, a serious wannabe humorist. Who wouldn't? It is clear that Noll himself does not understand the projection of his own Aryan obsession though the character of Jung. Perhaps, one might suspect, Noll does not grasp the fact that Jung himself is an archetype, and his connect-the-dots method of observing himself as such was what gave him his objective/subjective analysis of reality.

Of course Jung is limited; he is limited as anyone is by the personality by which others record the physical presence. Yet Jung admits this himself - frequently he refers to psychology as a modern version of alchemy. Jung persists in acknowledging that psychology is the beginning and the end of grasping the human psyche and what comes after. Words after all are words, and where ever you go, there you are. I'm sure Noll twists his lip at Wilhelm Reich as well.
This is a good comedy.

Jung's Public Shadow.......2006-07-21

As you can see from the diversity of viewpoints expressed both here and in reviews of Noll's "The Jung Cult", this is a highly controversial history of Jung's work with an emphasis on aspects that Noll claims have been suppressed. When I was debating whether or not to buy this book, I found one seemingly scholarly review that called it "bad history" and, just now wondering whether I should say what I am about to write, I did further searches and found several other, seemingly reasonable reviews which take Noll to task for bad scholarship. So, as one should always, I will try to remain open to the possibility that I have been misled. But the diary extracts, letters, and other source material from which Noll's conclusions are drawn are carefully footnoted and mostly gleaned from libraries where anyone could easily show deception if that were the case. So, for the moment, Noll has convinced me that there is a dark side (both in the Jungian and conventional sense) to Jung.

I came to this book with a very high regard for Jung and seeing him as a guardian of truth in standing up to Freud's dogmatic insistence on the sexual basis of all neuroses. I still regard Jung as brilliant and having made extremely important contributions to humanity, but I now see a more balanced picture. Freud may have been too focused on sexuality, but apparently so was Jung, although in a much more personal way. Noll provides a convincing picture of Jung as being secretly dogmatic that a form of free love is essential to psychological health. Jung's sexual relationships with patients and coworkers, and his advice to patients to have extramarital affairs seem incontrovertible based on the evidence presented here.

I suspect that much of the criticism of Noll is based on his evidence that Jung was heavily into an Aryan world viewpoint, which immediately conjures up Nazi stereotypes in our minds. Noll repeatedly tries to counteract that understandable tendency, saying for example (last paragraph of the Introduction) "But the most troublesome part of this story comes from asking you, the reader, to do the morally impossible: to imagine a world - fin-de-siecle German Kultur - in which the words "Hitler" and "Nazi" and "Holocaust" do not exist."

Along these lines, it helps to remember that many intelligent, respectable, well-meaning Americans (e.g., Lindberg, Joseph Kennedy Sr.) were early Nazi supporters, just as many were early Communist supporters. The horrendous evils perpetrated in the names of Aryanism and Communism were not present in their early philosophies. It also helps to remember that anti-Semitism and racism in general were the cultural norm througout the world until well into the 1960's or 1970's. It was almost impossible NOT to be prejudiced in Jung's time. (A related book that touches on psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism and that I highly recommend is Bakan's "Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition.")

Another problem concerns Noll's evidence that Jung disparaged Christianity and secretly reverted to (as well as secretly proselytized for) an ancient, pagan, Aryan religion. Such a move will be seen through a highly distorting filter if viewed in the context of today's Christianity. Again, it is hard, but important, to view Jung's choices in terms of the dogmatic Swiss-German Christianity of the late nineteenth century.

As with most movements that believe they have the secret to saving the world, many Jungians idealize their prophet and make him into a kind of god. In contrast, the picture that emerges from "Aryan Christ" is of a brilliant man -- but a man not a god and therefore with all the attendant human frailties. The danger is in forgetting Jung's humanity.

Average customer rating: Incredible Story This is really bad Buyer beware Fake memoir A Work of Fiction

BUT NOT FOR THE FUEHRER Helmut Jung Manufacturer: 1st Books Library ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Military & Spies | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Military | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books General | Germany | Europe | History | Subjects | Books General | World War II | Military | History | Subjects | Books Eastern Front | World War II | Military | History | Subjects | Books Personal Narratives | World War II | Military | History | Subjects | Books Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Similar Items: Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler's Most Brilliant General Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics) Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross Some Desperate Glory: The World War I Diary of a British Officer, 1917 (Touchstone Books (Paperback)) A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944 ASIN: 1414034458

Customer Reviews:

Incredible Story.......2007-06-04

This was an intense and enjoyable read from start to finish. It made me wonder what I would have done in the same circumstances, and it made me (as always) feel very lucky to have been born in the U.S. While it must always be difficult to know how much of any personal memoir is totally factual, I find the previous reviewers who claim it is a fake simply because "it seemed to be right out of Cross of Iron" or "I don't recall any other books mentioning this" or "I can't believe all of that could have happened to one man", to be wholly unpersuasive. I can even forgive mistaking the 6th and 10th armies at Stalingrad since the author never said he was at Stalingrad, and I can't say I can remember what other units were where, except for the one I was in, and I am not trying to remember nearly that far back.

That being said, I AM a bit troubled by the idea of building a huge fire so near the front, even if you are freezing to death. The Marine Corps refers to this as an "admin bivouac", as opposed to a "tactical bivouac" when nothing that might give away your position is allowed...especially fires. But then again, if it was so cold that you were in danger of freezing to death within minutes, I have to allow for the possibility that I might have been willing to risk it.

All told, it is an incredibly good book and I found it easy reading. The frequent typos and grammar errors did not remotely make it difficult to follow. I simply caution the reader to use his/her own judgement concerning whether or not to believe every detail of this account. I think the reader would be best served by reading several of these personal accounts and assuming that the truth will come to light in terms of the commonalities found in all of them, regardless of how "believable" they might appear to be.

This is really bad.......2007-02-09

I bought this book because it was recommended by someone writing in another publication. I wish I had spent some time reading the other Amazon customer reviews before plunking down my cash.

The book is simply unbelievable. No ancient veteran could remember such details, and no one except Zelig could have been witness to such a series of events. The writing is uneven, and it doesn't look like any editor ever reviewed the text.

Buyer beware.......2006-10-23

It's definitely an unusual book. With some severe editing it could be given a 3 or 4-star rating for fiction. But non-fiction it isn't. Even allowing for memory lapses that might have caused factual errors, no infantry soldier in the German army could possibly have had all the experiences, all the luck, and all the fortuitous circumstances that Jung claims. It would be interesting to know what Jung and Nesbitt were thinking when they collaborated to write this book, but not so interesting that one would take any time to find out.

Fake memoir.......2006-04-18

This story was probably constructed from a number of real memoirs, other sources like films, and Jung's and the author's imagination. Helmut Jung may have been a soldier on the Eastern Front but what he claims to have seen there owes more to imagination - perhaps the author's - than reality. Units composed of seven foot Mongols? (p. 297). Really. In the fifty or so books I have read about the German-Russian war nobody else noticed such units. In the same chapter, a description of the capture of a group of female Russian soldiers appears to have been lifted from the film version of 'Cross of Iron'. There are numerous other elements traceable to other sources throughout ths ridiculous book. Avoid wasting money on this 'memoir'. You will learn nothing about the real experience of combatants on the Eastern Front that you haven't already read elsewhere.

A Work of Fiction.......2006-01-13

I agree with some of the other reviewers that this is most likely a work of fiction. There is no real information given about the supposed author, Helmut Jung, other than his "incredible" wartime exploits. There are too many mistakes in the book about Jung's training and service to believe this is anything more than a piece of fiction put together by the American writer...it doesn't read or feel right. Save your money and buy "Black Edelweiss" for a real biography of a German soldier.

Average customer rating: Nilsson as a Warm, Funny, Unpretentious Woman For the Operafile, Wagnerite or Nilssonite, this is for you!!!

La Nilsson: My Life in Opera Birgit Nilsson , Georg Solti , and Peggy Tuller Manufacturer: Northeastern ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover General | Opera | Musical Genres | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books General | Composers & Musicians | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Entertainers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books Similar Items: Start-Up at the New Met: The Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, 1966-1976 Hans Hotter: Memoirs Metropolitan Opera Gala Honoring Sir Rudolf Bing [Highlights] Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs ASIN: 1555536700

Book Description

First published to wide acclaim in Sweden (1995) and in Germany (1997), the autobiography of opera legend Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) is finally available in an English translation. From her humble roots in rural Sweden to her artistic triumphs in Stockholm, Bayreuth, Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera House, this candid and utterly charming memoir reveals the personality behind one of the great voices of the past century.

Gracefully weaving together the private and professional, Nilsson chronicles her idyllic childhood in Vastra Karup, the early recognition of her unique natural abilities, and her first tentative steps into a wider artistic world. After achieving national acclaim in Verdi's Lady Macbeth, she went on to establish herself as the dominant Wagnerian soprano of her generation, appearing at the Bayreuth and Munich Festivals, and the Vienna and Bavarian State Opera Houses, creating, along the way, definitive performances of Sieglinde, Bruennhilde, and Isolde. The book details her rise to international stardom with behind-the-scenes recollections of her phenomenal triumph as Turandot at La Scala in 1958 and her headline-making Met premier in Tristan und Isolde the following year.

Nilsson's long and illustrious career (she performed until 1984), her celebrated professional and personal relationships, her friendships and rivalries, are all recounted with a down-to-earth wit and an engagingly odd admixture of ego and selfeffacement. She tells it all: the legendary quips, the often prickly relationships with Met impresario Rudolph Bing and conductor von Karajan, the infamous story of the stalker "Miss N," and the touchingly rendered relationship with her beloved husband, Bertil Niklasson.

What emerges from these pages is a diva in the old mold: a giant voice matched by an oversize personality, a professional who expected the same level of perfection from others that she demanded of herself, and a woman who loved and lived life with joy and good humor . . . and oh, that voice.

Includes 56 photographs and a discography.

Customer Reviews:

Nilsson as a Warm, Funny, Unpretentious Woman.......2007-09-13

This autobiography by Birgit Nilsson was originally published in Swedish in 1995 and in German two years later. This 2007 English translation of the German edition is by Doris Jung Popper, an American who was herself a former Wagnerian singer in Europe. It is for the most part in graceful, witty and seamless prose which catches the informal and down-to-earth way Nilsson spoke. We are taken from Nilsson's life as a farm girl in Sweden through her discovery locally, her schooling in Stockholm, her first breakthrough there and then internationally and her acclaim as the greatest Wagnerian soprano since Kirsten Flagstad. We get backstage stories about performances in New York, Milan, Stockholm, Vienna, London and, of course, Bayreuth. We read about her long happy marriage to Bertil Niklasson, a veterinarian. She shares funny and warm stories about her colleagues, not sparing those with whom she crossed swords -- most notably Rudolf Bing and, much more so, Herbert von Karajan, for whom she is particularly disdainful while admitting that he could draw magnificent music from his performers. She relates the details of her having to deal with her stalker, Miss N., a story well-known in opera circles but which may come as a surprise to some readers. One senses that Nilsson withholds some details in the interest of sparing the feelings of some opera world luminaries who are still with us. This reflects positively on her genuine concern for the feelings of others but might disappoint those who are looking for 'dirt.' There is a discography and a detailed chart outlining events in her life, as well as a compendious index. As well, there are over 60 black-and-white photographs from all periods of her life.

Warmly recommended.

Scott Morrison

For the Operafile, Wagnerite or Nilssonite, this is for you!!!.......2007-07-25

Nilsson writes a readable and enjoyable book about her career.

Those who have followed her will already be familiar with some of the stories but there are more details... One story she recounts which I had never heard or read anywhere was one that she tells of being pursued by a relentless stalker.

I myself worked with her professionally and can vouch for the fact that she was a warm and funny person who despite her self-assuredness onstage could express vulnerability when she was with you in a one-to-one setting. The book has moments that give the reader this sense.

She doesn't "tell all" but does "tell some" quite nicely. She was unique.

Average customer rating: Finally a comprehensive biography of Jung Regrettably incomplete THE Jung biography... A page-turner, but... Jung at Heart

Jung: A Biography Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items: Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung Stripped Bare: By His Biographers, Even Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction Ego and Archetype Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science ASIN: B000FA4VKK

Book Description

Deirdre Bair has written about some of the most influential figures in 20th century culture-Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Anas Nin. Now she turns her expert eye to the one person whose teachings and writings are the most influential of all: psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. The founder of analytical psychology, Jung became the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1910. Jung had a professional relationship with Sigmund Freud until he broke with the elder father of psychoanalysis over his emphasis on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex.As Freud's influence has waned over the years, Jung's ideas-the collective unconscious, the archetypal myths underpinning all societies, synchronicity, 'new age' spirituality, and much more-have achieved an overwhelming ascendancy.Bair addresses the myths about Jung-accusations that he was an anti-Semite and a misogynist, and that he falsified data-with evidence from his own writings and from those of his colleagues and former patients. The result is a groundbreaking and accessible work that promises to be the definitive life of Carl Jung.

Customer Reviews:

Finally a comprehensive biography of Jung.......2007-07-19

I have been reading Jung since the 1980's. The Jungian Institute is just down the street from my office. I used to talk to Mrs. Lori Zeller all the time-a shrewd, to the point, fun and caring individual. Her husband was Max Zeller. Both studied with Jung.

I have talked to people at the Institute about it and one response hit me-"it covers all the questions. I may not agree but it hits the questions."

What struck me was there was a new comprehensiveness. For example the struggle over how to publish Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. I never knew about the Red Book until now. I laughed at the episode of the Harvard Degree. His remarks of how Americans and the British differ were on target.

It's a good guide for the background behind each of his important books.
A good framework. I think it explained well the controversy that accompanies Jung.

This is a much needed biography that supplies a new dimension from which to read Jung's books. To me it's comprehensive. It's rich.

I have just read two other psychological biographies-one on Otto Rank-Acts of Will by Lieberman, and one on Harry Stack Sullivan. I have also take Progof's Journal Workshop. All these people are interrelated.
Funny, Deidre Bair wrote a biography of Anais Nin-one of Otto Rank's girlfriends. Progof asked Jung about Rank three times and Jung wouldn't answer. The index is a great reference.

My thesis is that you can't really understand a person and their ideas until you read a good biography of the person. This is that biography.
A great jumping off point. This is a biography with a lot of new information breaching a lot of the Swiss penchant for privacy.

Finally.

Ted Humphreville-Los Angeles

Regrettably incomplete.......2006-05-20

This book is obviously long and detailed, but Ms. Bair loses the forest for the trees. She gives far too much detail about personal matters, family tree stuff, and the like. What I wanted was a lot more about Jung's mind and how it evolved. I wanted to read a lot more about how he arrived at his intellectual break with Freud, his development of specific concepts, like "collective unconscious," "archetypes," and such. Perhaps this book should have consisted of two volumes, in which Jung's psychology is more adequately described.

One other thing that troubled me a bit was her use of "centered around" throughout the book. It's perhaps a minor quibble, but every time I came across it, I was stopped in my tracks.

THE Jung biography..........2006-03-17

This is the most complete Jung biography on the market... I had read other Bair biographies and am always impressed with her rigor in providing sources and an objective account.

A page-turner, but..........2006-03-13

C.G. Jung spoke about his number one and number two personalites, one corresponding to his physical/outer life experiences and the other to his psychological/inner life experiences. Like some of the editorial reviews above, I found Bair's biography to be sorely lacking in coverage and understanding of this second and most important aspect of Jung's life and work. The following quote he used in Memories, Dreams, Reflections to describe someone else could just as easily be applied in this case:

"Without the psyche there would be neither knowledge nor insight. Yet nothing was ever said about the psyche. Everywhere it was tacitly taken for granted, and even when someone mentioned it...there was no real knowledge of it but only philosophical speculation which might just as easily take one turn as another. I could make neither head nor tail of this curious observation" (MDR,98).

Look up "psyche" in the index of Bair's biography and you'll make the following unbelievable discovery: it's not there. She has written a biography on psychology and somehow left out the psyche, its most essential aspect.

After reading Bair, I picked up Sonu Shamdasani's "Jung Stripped Bare By His Biographers, Even." Rather than containing a heavy dose of vitriol, it is a very level-headed overview of biographical writing in general as well as of many of the bios on Jung up to the current one under discussion. Shamdasani proceeds to attack this latest biography from his carefully laid foundations. Highly erudite and equally highly readable.

In the case that you do decide to read Bair's book, I would label Shamdasani's book a "must-read" as well. Some tout Bair's as an effective means of counteracting the transference that so often surrounds Jung, making him out to be a god, but in so doing she leaves out half the picture of the man--arguably the most important half. On top of this, Shamdasani raises some serious questions about Bair's treatment of and scholarship contained within her many pages on that which Jung himself claimed to be his less important half.

Jung at Heart.......2004-07-06

Having been a Jung devotee since my college days in the 70s, I was enthralled to pick up the latest entry on the subject of the great Master. However, I must say to D. Bair what the emperor said to Mozart in the movie, Amadeus; TOO MANY NOTES. In this case, footnotes. There are 202 PAGES of them. One chapter had 171, another 168. My only wish here is that the writer herself would be forced to read the book, having to flip time and time and time again, from the text to the footnotes. If this had been a PHD dissertation, then maybe one could get away with the neverending notes, but to the general reader and buyer, it was overkill. And even sadder was that you HAD to read them, because occasionally one would be vital to ones understanding. In addition, this was a book sadly in need of a proofreader and an editor. Typos, misinformation, sentences that were incomplete or made no sense; all of these abounded in the book. But most important of ALL, and this is a CONDEMNATION of the whole publishing industry: IF THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH THEN YOU MUST PRINT IN ENGLISH ALL QUOTES IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE !! Which this book doesnt do at all! Now having said all of that, I did plod through to the end and I was glad I did, because the bottom line is I do know more now about the man that I did before hand and aint that what reading is all about.

Average customer rating: Excellent Introduction to Jung "Must" reading for all students of Jungian psychology.

Jung: A Journey of Transformation Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas Vivianne Crowley Manufacturer: Quest Books ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Social Scientists & Psychologists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Jung, Carl | ( J ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books History | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Psychoanalysis | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books ASIN: 0835607828

Book Description

This lively, entertaining text beckons the reader with simple explanations of Jung's major concepts and light-hearted exercises of self-discovery.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Introduction to Jung.......2006-08-16

This is one of the best introductions to the thought and life of Carl Jung. It covers all of his major psychological concepts in clear and concise language. The author has also included several "exercises" to help the reader in their own journey towards wholeness. For example, in one section, the reader answers a series of questions and then one is able to determine what "Psychological Type" they are. Several other exercises focus on Jung's method of active imagination and confronting one's own shadow. The book, then, is not just a dry academic presentation of Jung's psychology. Instead one becomes actively engaged with Jung's theories and through the exercises one can see how his ideas relate to our day to day life. In this sense, the author has made Jung much more enagaging and richer than many other standard "textbook" type introductions. The book is well illustrated with several photos of Jung and his world. I highy recommend this for anyone who is new to Jung and wants a good introduction to his thought. I have suggested this book to many of my friends and despite its brevity, it does an excellent job of capturing the heart of Jung's ideas on human nature.

"Must" reading for all students of Jungian psychology........2000-04-04

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is an amazing man whose personal researches and inquiries into the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Gnosticism, mythology, and psychology, created a profound influence on succeeding generations of truth seekers is presented and surveyed in a single volume that does full and complete justice to the man and his thoughts. Jung: A Journey Of Transformation will enable the student of metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological insight to fully grasp this original thinker's manifold observations, insights, ideas, and findings. Highly recommended.

Average customer rating: "Letters, we've got letters, we've got lots & lots of letters" Confusion about which book this is A Guided Tour to Carl Jung mind-blowing, dogma-shattering

C.G. Jung C. G. Jung Manufacturer: Princeton University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Psychoanalysis | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Jungian | Movements | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books Jung, Carl | ( J ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books Biographies & Memoirs | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books Similar Items: C.G. Jung Speaking The Freud/Jung Letters Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul The Grail Legend ASIN: 0691018472

Book Description

Beginning with Jung's earliest correspondence to associates of the psychoanalytic period and ending shortly before his death, the 935 letters selected for these two volumes offer a running commentary on his creativity. The recipients of the letters include Mircea Eliade, Sigmund Freud, Esther Harding, James Joyce, Karl Kernyi, Erich Neumann, Maud Oakes, Herbert Read, Upton Sinclair, and Father Victor White.

Customer Reviews:

"Letters, we've got letters, we've got lots & lots of letters".......2006-06-06

This is a huge book shining light on Jung's psychology--both personal & theoretical. I added over 100 quotes from it into my collection--an incredible amount. They address a wide range of topics such as: modern art, telepathy, astrology, fear, schizophrenia, the death penalty, ethics & morality, music, evil, psychological projection, Freud, science & its limits esp. in relation to religion, neologisms (creating new words), doctors vs. scientists, rationality/consciousness vs. non-rationality/unconscious mind, the dangers of groups, ethnic differences, & the nature of analytical psychology.

Of special interest, due to the accusations against Jung of anti-semitism, are the several letters sent in his own defense. Based upon the written material herein, these criticisms appear to be unfounded. For example, he wrote: p. 148 "It is my opinion that the peculiarity of the Jews might explain why they are an absolutely essential symbiotic element in our population. If there were no differences between them and other people, there would be nothing to distinguish them at all and then there would also be nothing in the characteristic influence, amply attested by history, which they have exerted on their environment. It must after all be supposed that a people which has kept itself more or less unadulterated for several thousand years and clung onto its belief in being "chosen" is psychologically different in some way from the relatively young Germanic peoples whose culture is scarcely more than a thousand years old" & p. 154 "I am absolutely not an opponent of the Jews even though I am an opponent of Freud's...not because he is a Jew."

He also succinctly describes the overarching nature of analytical psychology which, IMHO, differentiates it from forms of therapy in general & from Freudian psychoanalysis in particular: p. 377 "the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous characteristic."

Interestingly, despite his obvious erudition, Thinking orientation, & scholarship, he retains his connection to the real world (reminiscent of Buddhist mindfulness meditation & other techniques): p. 479 "Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books." Clever & profound IMHO. Worth 4.5*'s

Confusion about which book this is.......2004-05-26

Amazon's presentation on this Web page is very confusing as there are two completely different books being referred to here under the title "C.G. Jung":

C.G. Jung: Letters Vol.2 1951-1961, and
C.G. Jung: Word and Image [a biography].

The ISBN number used for this Web page is 0691097240, which refers to volume 2 of Letters (1951-1961). However, when you click on the "Paperback Edition" link, it takes you to Word and Image; ISBN: 0691018472! The Book Description obviously thinks this is the Letters book, but the reviews are clearly also referring to Word and Image.

This is all especially confusing for those looking for a used version of Letters Vol.2 and who are tantalized by the lower prices for an apparent paperback version. Jung's two-volume Letters collection has never come out in paperback and the used paperback that is actually being offered is Word and Image!

It might be time for Amazon to fix this discrepancy before someone receives a different book than the one he thought he was ordering.

A Guided Tour to Carl Jung.......2000-08-10

This is a biography of Carl Jung (1875-1961), but so much more than that. It traces his life and professional development, drawing on letters and extensive quotes from the Collected Works. It is profusely illustrated, not only with photographs of Jung and the relevant people and places in his life, but also with his drawings. After Jung's break with Freud in the early 1910's, Jung went through a about a decade of professional isolation and rich personal growth. During that time, he kept a journal called the "Red Book", which he decorated with drawing and paintings based on his dreams and active imagination. Many striking images from the Red Book are reproduced in this volume: a drawing of Philemon, Jung's inner spiritual guide; the viscerally disquieting "Meeting with the Shadow"; and a singularly captivating image, "The Light at the Heart of Darkness". Photos of Jung in his travels and at his house in Bollingen round out this engaging visual tour of Jung's contribution. This is a wonderful introduction to Jung's life and work, especially for someone of an artistic inclination.

mind-blowing, dogma-shattering.......2000-06-02

A very fine collection...with plenty of glimpses at Jung's trans-analytic speculations and personal reactions. Soulful and, in places, very funny too.

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