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This book is as well written and constructed as it needs to be, because the author treats his theme (‘Depth-psychological circumambulation of an archetypal image’) by adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, which comprises no less than social psychology, ethnology, the phenomenology of religion, theology and anthropology. It is not quite clear whether he does this in order to build up a kind of hologram for the general reader or in order to demonstrate how concentration on a particular symbol of the self and its manifold aspects, can help analysts in the understanding of their patients. As clinical vignettes, often supported by selected dreams, are interwoven with general psychological deductions and amplified by the multidimensional approach, I take it that Jacoby is attempting to do both. Perhaps this is in the best Jungian tradition, but within the compass of a relatively slender volume such breadth could easily become bewildering; can readers listen for long enough on the right wavelength to be sure of the theme on which they are requested to focus? The author tries to cope with this, admittedly difficult, problem by dividing fewer than 220 pages of text (there are also eight beautiful and apt illustrations) into three parts: I. Paradise as a representation of original wholeness; II. A psychological attempt at interpreting the biblical story of Paradise and the ‘Fall’; III. Paradise as a future expectation of salvation. (This is by far the shortest.)
Having done so, he subdivides the chapters by a total of 33 subheadings in addition to a preface and an introduction called ‘the phenomenon of nostalgia’ which is distinctly chatty. (A list of 87 references is appended.) Personally, I should have preferred an index and fewer sub-divisions. For example, under ‘patients’ one could have looked up ‘young woman violinist with stage fright’ or ‘the angry and ambitious young man’, both of whom are incidentally cited under the longest subheading of the book ‘Original sin and