Eleanor Bertine: Jung's contribution to our time. New York,  Putnam's Sons for C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology; London, Barrie & Rockliff, 1968. pp.  xvi + 271. 63s.

This book is a collection of fourteen papers, of which eleven were read to the Analytical Psychology Club, New York, between 1938 and 1960, and all but two of these were subsequently published in Spring. One of them, called ‘Men and women’, was also published in a slightly shorter version as a Guild of Pastoral Psychology pamphlet (No. 60, 1949) in England.

Eleanor Bertine belongs to the generation of people who analysed with Jung himself, and who were directly affected by his personality and ideas. Other books of this kind have been published in recent years, and it is interesting to see how much, in spite of a common subject matter, the personality of the writer delineates itself in each case. Eleanor Bertine is a case in point. Her central theme may be summed up like this: what light does Jung's exploration of the unconscious throw on typical situations and experiences? How, in particular, do the opposites manifest themselves, and how are they dealt with, in outer and inner reality? The author traces this theme in the relation between the sexes; in the dual commitment of modern woman to a career on the one hand, and to her innate instinctual pattern on the other; in the tensions between the individual and the group. Two papers deal with the problem of good and evil; two others, noteworthy for their directness in getting down to essentials, deal with the problem of religion.

But what I find of particular interest is that Bertine extends this approach to some of the great impersonal issues of our time connected with the second world war. Incidentally, her papers on this subject precede the publication of Jung's Essays on contemporary events and show the originality of her mind. It is well to be reminded that the search for the unconscious roots of the psyche, down to the archetypal patterns of myth, is not merely a private concern, but provides equally a basis of orientation towards conflicts and crises in world affairs.

The vexed question—which has also been discusse