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This is a book in the OUP ‘Past Masters’ series. ‘Past Masters’ is a series of concise, lucid, authoritative introductions to the thought of leading intellectual figures of the
past whose ideas still influence the way we think today.’ So says the cover. It feels odd to have Jung placed so, among sixty-odd Masters including Aristotle, the Buddha, Jesus, Machiavelli, Ruskin and, of course, Freud — but the blurb does reasonably describe Anthony Stevens's treatment of his subject. Mainly his account is of Jung's thought as expressed in published work or letters; it is ‘classical’ Jung and is admirably concise and lucid. It is presented much as it evolved, in steps described in Memories, Dreams, Reflections and, as in those memoirs, related especially to the narrative of inner events: what is described is, appropriately, about much more than Jung's ‘thought’. The overall arrangement of the material is well suited to the purpose of the book.
So, as well as a presentation of ideas, this is also a condensed biography. There is a natural emphasis on Jung's relations with Freud, with a sympathetically understanding account of their coming together and of the break. There is more about Jung's marriage and his relations with other women than is revealed in Jung's memoirs. Among all the other aspects of his life a whole chapter on ‘Jung's alleged anti-Semitism’ could seem disproportionate, but the case, for and against, is very clearly and interestingly summarized and illuminates the subject of the man, his thought, his feeling and his relation to his time.
The chapter on ‘Archetypes and the collective unconscious’ gives a condensed account which might bring much light to students who have wrestled with Jung's complicated and sometimes confusing writings on the subject. The writer both clarifies and supports this area of theory by comparing the concept of archetypes with the unconscious ‘infrastructures’ of the French school of structural anthropology, the linguistic ‘deep struc