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This is a well written and interesting book, the third on a Jungian topic by Robert Hopcke, who is styled on the book's cover as a ‘Jung-oriented psychotherapist’. One of his previous books dealt with homosexuality and that topic figures prominently in the present volume. The book describes dream work with two men, one heterosexual and one homosexual. A central theme is ‘the patriarchy’ and its negative influence on both men.
The dreams of the two men form a home base from which excursions are made into many other areas. A frequent side trip is the amplification of Greek myths as, for example, the story of Ouranos-Chronos-Zeus, all taken to illustrate the excesses of ‘the patriarchy’. Later in the book Christian material is also used in amplification.
A dream of ‘Pete’, one of the two men discussed, is of him urinating on his own daughter, then washing her in a tub. It is only through amplification on the archetypal level that the dream is shown to have positive meaning — that of contrasting urination to the alternative action of shooting her.
Several examples show how intrapsychic dynamics influence the transference situation and how the transference can be used to illuminate the patient's situation.
Perhaps Hopcke's most interesting (and controversial) suggestion is to loose the anima from its theoretical moorings as contrasexual to the conscious sex of the ego. He suggests defining it by its function of mediating between the conscious and the unconscious psyche. This would allow one to see certain male figures as serving an