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In the early years of the C. G. Jung Institute a number of books appeared written mostly by scholars who had collected round Jung himself. The volumes were of a high standard, so the enterprise of translating and publishing them in the series Studies in Jungian Thought, edited by James Hillman, is to be welcomed.
The present volume contains three long essays. The first by Jacobson is an interpretation of an ancient papyrus that has puzzled Egyptologists. Understanding of it has been speculative and unsatisfactory. Now Jacobson convincingly demonstrates how its contents can be understood as an internal dialectic between a world weary' man and his soul (his Ba). Linking this with his thesis that Egyptian civilization was organized so that personal individuality was not given any significant place, he suggests that the object of the dialogue is to integrate the conscious personality. He then generalizes his argument to conclude that the text illustrates the conflict of Egyptians in an age when the temples and sacred tombs were destroyed and regular participation in religious worship had become largely impossible.
This essay is interesting and original throughout. There is scholarly annotation but it does not obtrude on the main text which can easily be read by those with some knowledge of Jung's work.
There follows “The dream of Descartes” discussed by von Franz. It is a rich, erudite and scholarly essay which criticizes Cartesian rationalism on the basis of three dreams. It argues that Descartes, in trying to establish a system of universal logic, had over-developed his logos function at the expense of eros.
The centre-piece of the exercise revolves round an ‘object’ in one dream. ‘Descartes (who) had the impression [italics mine] that this was a melon …. There follow about 19 pages in which ways the ‘melon’ has been used as a symbol in historical texts are collected together. The ‘melon’ is then said to symbolize the neglected function (feeling) represented by the anima