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This book is written by ten practising academics, philosophers and theologians, yet the ordinary analytical psychologist (if there is such a one) need not be deterred from reading it, or at any rate most of its chapters. The advantage of a collection of essays on a difficult subject, allied though they are by close approximation to the aims and requirements of the editor (p. 3), is that it is possible to pick about in the book more easily than it is in a single-author volume. Out of the ten only two might be difficult for readers unversed in university philosophy, Steven Katz's ‘Language, epistemology and mysticism’ and David Mackinnon's ‘Some epistemological reflections on mystical experience’. But the others will repay careful study by those who have, perhaps, read and appreciated in a personal way some of the texts of the great mystics, whether of the Christian or of other traditions, and who have felt inclined to find out more about the interpretation and understanding of mystical experiences. The authors' scholarly approach to this subject, which is ill-served by mindless enthusiasm, is likely to appeal to the analyst who tries to be with his patients but not taken over by them. Moreover, outside the consulting-room, ignorant opponents of Jung have so often used ‘mystical’ as a term of abuse that anyone hoping to understand Jung would do well to find out just what mystical does really mean.
During the discussion after one of his Tavistock Lectures in 1935, Jung said: ‘You should define what you mean by mysticism. Let us assume that you mean people who have mystical experiences. Mystics are people who have a particularly vivid experience of the processes of the collective unconscious. Mystical experience is experience of archetypes’ ( Coll. wks., 18, p. 98). There are other references to mysticism in Jung's works and letters, and more again to particular mystics: they will perhaps be collected and commented upon some time. It is of course well-known that he had re