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This beautifully written and illustrated book on images and archetypes is one of the best introductions to Jung's ideas I have come across. The first chapter interested me particularly. The authors review the controversy about concept and image in the light of the history of European culture. Its beginnings can be seen in religious controversy. In Judaism and Islam the making of images was forbidden; in the Christian tradition this commandment was not strictly adhered to, but from time to time there were outbreaks of puritan fervour in which images were destroyed. The controversy continued in philosophy and psychology. The Scholastic belief that rational and logical methods alone could arrive at the truth endured into the scientific age; thinking in images was regarded as essentially inferior. Jung was one of those who arrived at a balanced view in the field of psychology; that these different ways of thinking were equally valid.
The authors quote Goethe extensively, which is refreshing as Jung's ideas when juxtaposed to Goethe's appear as much more concrete and embodied than when mystical texts are brought forward in the belief that they add value to what he says. The first part ends with a good general description of archetypes. I enjoyed the way the authors emphasize the dynamic, ambivalent aspect of archetypes in contradistinction to Plato's ‘ideas’. The latter are static; the perfect representations in another world of the good, the true and the beautiful, whereas archetypes contain all the opposites which belong to the nature of man.
In the second part, three archetypes are discussed at greater length, namely the anima, the animus and the great mother with her appendage the father. This unusual sequence seems relevant and useful as difficulties with the parents are uncovered and illuminated by anima/animus relationships. In describing the ways in which these archetypes manifest themselves emphasis is put on the need to differentiate between their empirical funct