This book demonstrates for the first time the significance of Jung’s work to the humanities, and to those areas where the humanities and sciences share borders. More radically, it shows that Jung was a writer of myth, alchemy, narrative, and poetics, as well as on them.
Jung’s core concepts are introduced, their ongoing relevance is championed. The book also addresses Jung’s sometimes questionable judgment on politics and gender, and previews contemporary extensions of Jungian theory.
By privileging the creative psyche and exploring the connections between individual, natural environment, and social/psychological collective, Jung anticipates the new holism, offering the promise of reconciling the sciences with the arts, humanity with nature.
Biography
Susan Rowland is 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. Future work includes The Ecocritical Psyche, which introduces Jung to the emerging field of ecocriticism.
‘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
‘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 new-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
‘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
