You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Like many of Jung's late works, Aion is a difficult book. The first few chapters contain some of Jung's most definitive writing on his major concepts of ego, shadow, anima and animus and the self. Beyond these the density of images, associations and references to obscure texts on Gnosticism, alchemy and the early Christian fathers make daunting reading, not helped by Jung's tendency to assume that his readers know this material as well as he does and need only the briefest of allusions to follow the dizzying flight-path of his ideas.
The Aion Lectures offers a sturdy guide through Aion's difficult terrain. Edinger's approach is to go through the material paragraph by paragraph, outlining the content, quoting significant passages, clarifying Jung's meaning (often by cross-referencing with other Jung texts), and drawing out the clinical relevance of the material, which is not always obvious. The lecture style has resulted in a text that is remarkably easy to follow, given the difficulty of the material. This is due in no small measure to Edinger's talent for communicating complex ideas in a simple (though not simplified) way. Indeed, it would probably be possible to read this book without reading Aion itself and get a clearer idea of what it is about than by reading the original text. However, this would be totally contrary to Edinger's intention which is to encourage a deeper study of Jung.
The great strength of this book lies in Edinger's absolute fidelity to Jung, albeit this is also my major criticism of his approach. For Edinger, Aion has the status of a Biblical text and therefore deserves the same devoted attention. He recommends that we ‘read one sentence at a time and become familiar with every term and reference in that sentence’. To do this it is necessary ‘to work with a dictionary and an encyclopaedia at your side’. By taking this approach himself Edinger has done a considerable amount of work for us. This alone makes his account invaluable. Edinger explici