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This affectionate tribute to analytical psychologist James Kirsch of Los Angeles on the occasion of his seventieth birthday will appeal not only to Dr Kirsch's well-wishers but also to a broader public interested in Jungian psychology. Given the difficulties attendant upon the making of such a Festschrift, this broader appeal cannot simply be taken for granted. What is the editor of a Festschrift to do, for example, when one of those invited to participate submits a piece that is dull, inappropriate or clumsily written? And, indeed, this volume here and there does not entirely escape the grab-bag quality common to collections of this sort. Thus, there is no obvious logic to the arrangement of the essays. For example, one on ‘The maintenance in cell culture of motor neurons from the adult mammalian spinal cord’ is sandwiched between a psychological case history and a note ‘On the (ir)relevance of technology on [sic] analytical therapy’.
In some of the pieces there are bits of stylistic gracelessness; and the level of some of the translation—several of the essays are translated—will be suggested by the phrase ‘quasi-non-***Euclidically’ and by the sentence, ‘The accumulation of such reactions leads to circumstances known as mass phenomena.’ A single style for footnotes is not followed throughout, and the book contains quite a few printing errors. Some of the unevenness of the book may come, more specifically, from the fact that it is Jungian. Often at a congress of Jungian psychologists one will hear things of profound psychological substance, along with some banality, in a not always elegant presentation. If one concentrates on the substance and does not quibble over details of format, one will be rewarded, often very greatly. And so it is with this valuable and attractive book.
An example of one of the many rewards I found in it may help to convey something of the special quality of the book: shortly after reading the excellent essay by Kate Marcus on ‘The stranger in