Critical Notice

VON FRANZ, MARIE-LOUISE Trans. Andrea Dykes. Number and time—Reflections leading towards a unification of psychology and physics.  Northwestern University Press and Rider & Company, London, 1975. Pp.  332. £3.75.

As the sub-title shows, the aim of this book is a unification of two disciplines which, at first glance, could not be more different, especially as regards the methods they employ. What has the science of man, what have the humanities got to do with quantum physics? In order to find common denominators, one would first of all wish to embark on such a search and have a motive for doing so. Secondly, the person who sets out in search of unification of psychology and physics would have to be expert in both. How few people would be so qualified and motivated is a matter of conjecture. But it is in the nature of reflection, and, indeed, of creative thinking that it begins with speculation. The hard, detailed slog towards evidence comes afterwards. Some tentative and, I guess, from the experts’ point of view, dubious steps in this direction have been undertaken by the author, but the impression this book made on me was that it remained a highly speculative survey of a limitless field.

Many readers may feel overawed by the breadth of knowledge which is called upon in order to provide evidence for the existence, or at least assumed existence, of a unus mundus, a unity which underlies the multiplicity of phenomena in the empirical world. This unity ‘denotes a potential structure which becomes only sporadically actualized in the real inner and outer worlds’ (p. 9). Quoting Jung, the author states, ‘that there is little or no hope of illuminating this undivided existence except through antinomies’, and she continues, ‘we do know for certain that the empirical world of appearance is in some way based on a transcendental background’ (author's italics). By transcendental she means transcending consciousness.

Personally, I find it hard to be certain of anything that transcends