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I was delighted to have been asked to undertake this review as my first paper, ‘Reflections on the origin and aim of nostalgia’ (PETERS 1), although much smaller in scope, engaged with the same archetypal area, and involved reflection on many of the themes which (although I did not know it) Mario Jacoby had explored in this book. Longing for Paradise was first published in German in 1980; my review here marks the publication of the English translation. Some readers might be interested to read (or re-read) 's review of the German edition ( J. Anal. Psychol. 26, 4, 1981).
I found it a pleasant book. Like a Chinese meal, it left me feeling well-fed but not heavily-laden. At first I thought that the lightness of style, the everyday language, and the very short chapters were not giving me much to get my teeth into. But the further I went the more I found myself appreciating these very qualities, and that the author emerges with an unpretentious and mature wisdom. Similarly, at first I found myself thinking that the book was really directed at a psychologically-aware general public, and that although pleasant, there was not much new or unfamiliar in it for practising analysts. But by the time I had finished, I had changed my view. The lightweight impression is deceptive; it conceals and makes easily digestible a considerable scholarship and an interesting blend of Jungian and post-Jungian thought.
In his preface, Jacoby states that the book ‘attempts to circumambulate and reflect upon’ the many-faceted archetypal phenomenon ‘paradise’, and that this involved venturing into quite a number of other fields (e.g., theology, anthropology, sociology). The introduction comments upon nostalgia and the ever-present longing for a paradisial state and the tendency to believe that it has been in the past and has been lost.
Jacoby has divided the remainder of the book into three parts. The first part, ‘Paradise as an image of primal bliss’, he begins by establishing the ubiquity of i