You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr Redfearn has always been a respected and attractive writer because he works from his own extensive clinical and supervisory experience in an especially personal and embodied way. He is also able to think through and articulate some difficult and adventurous psychological ideas in a way which makes them accessible, perhaps for the first time, to his readers who can then make them their own and develop them further in an individual way. The interest and influence of his work have never been confined to the Society of Analytical Psychology, in which for many years he was Director of Training and is still a prominent and active Training Analyst.
In the present volume Dr Redfearn takes on the problem of ‘the almost inherently explosive nature of the human individual’. Since we now have the technological means to bring about the actual destruction of our world, the problem is immediate and urgent. One of the most important general findings in the book emphasises that it is not by striving for, or concentrating on, peace or harmony or moral rightness that a destructive outcome of our human predicament can be averted. That one-sidedness is more likely to contribute to the build-up to real world catastrophe because unrecognised destructive elements, inevitably present in all human beings and groups, will be enacted externally without consciousness or projected outwards onto an enemy against whom it will seem fully justified to go to war with all the means at our disposal. The nuclear threat can be used individually and collectively to avoid taking responsibility for the omnipotent destructive wishes, originating in the hurt and angry feelings of the child, which are part of all of us, recognised or not. These may be displaced onto the image of the bomb itself, which becomes a sort of impersonal scapegoat, or others can be blamed for its existence or deployment.
The relationship between behaviour and consciousness is not a parallel one. It is easier to behave angrily without