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James Astor has succeeded in rendering in a lively, animated and very readable way the history and personality of Michael Fordham. He gives a clear account of Fordham's contributions to Jung's work and to his theoretical formulations and also conveys something of Jung, the man. Finally he presents the story of analytical psychology from its origins to our own day. This is indeed a formidable achievement carried out by Astor in an economical and very engaging style.
The prologue to this book is particularly interesting. Astor concentrates there on the beginning and the ending of the Freud-Jung collaboration, on what brought them together and what separated them. He also clarifies some of the facts that have not always been properly appreciated. For instance, how many of us have really been aware, as John Kerr has pointed out, that at first it was Freud who had needed the international prestige of Bleuer, Jung and the Zurich medical school so as to gain wider recognition and acceptance? And how many have remembered and reflected on the fact that Jung reacted to the break-up with Freud by becoming so deeply distressed that he feared he might suffer a complete psychotic breakdown? Freud's reaction was very different; he founded and organized a secret committee whose purpose it was to marginalize the Zurich group, to guard against any future deviations from Freud's views, and to drown by a flood of counter-publications whatever position Jung took or published. Indeed all who were - and were considered to be - loyal to Freud would not from now on even read Jung. Astor points out that this was the actual professional climate when Fordham began his work in London.
Michael Fordham, as James Astor emphasizes in various ways, was really always ‘Jungian’; this is shown by his immersion in and understanding of Jung's ideas. But his love of analysis and of all studies of the development of the mind prevented him from allowing himself to be restricted by the disagreements of the