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This book is written by a clinical psychologist with qualifications in history and philosophy. Its aim is to make “the psychology of Jung more understandable to interested, though uncommitted, general readers”. The sympathetic and well-informed interest of the writer is never in doubt, but when she describes herself as objective and uncommitted, analysts will be curious to know how someone who studied this subject so closely, and even spent a session at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, managed to remain uncommitted and sympathetic (meaning presumably that she did not undergo analysis). Dr Dry is very well aware that this objection may be raised from “within the movement” to anyone who studies it from the outside. The reason for mentioning it again here is merely to get it out of the way so that it can be forgotten for the remainder of this review. For Dr Dry has written a competent exposition and her criticisms are well documented. The book, therefore, deserves the attention of all students of analytical psychology.
Before commenting on some of the author's major criticisms, I should like to express agreement with her view that a remark made by Theodor Merz about Goethe might be applicable to Jung as well (p. 139): “Such natures are wronged whenever one tries to construct from their scattered expressions, by hook or by crook, a rounded philosophical system; we can ever attempt only an indefinite indication of the essence of their views”. The essence of Dry's criticism can be summed up as follows: Jung is primarily concerned not with abstractions but with immediate experiences, especially in the form of imagery. This makes the formulation of a coherent theoretical framework difficult and is also apt to give his concepts, e.g. that of archetypes, a molar or blanketing quality. On the theoretical side she is censorious of Jung's capacity to borrow imagery from divers regions of religion, mythology, dreams, etc., without paying sufficient attention to the differences