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This is the book of a course of talks on Jungian thought in the modern world given at the British Association of Psychotherapists. It comprises fifteen papers written by those who taught the course. The papers have been thoroughly edited to render them suitable for reading. This process has certainly produced papers which are succinct and tightly-argued, free from unnecessary verbiage and to the point. The book addresses the issues implied in the title. It is therefore an introduction to how some Jungians think and provides a potential cradle for those who might consider Jungian psychotherapy for themselves or perhaps a training as a Jungian psychotherapist. Of course, the reader misses out on the experience of attending the course itself, with the possibilities of questioning and dialogue which these papers all stimulate in the reader.
Like all good teaching material, the papers are arranged in sections: Jungian thought and the individual, the collective, the new sciences, religion, ethics, and the creative spirit. There is an immediate sense of order and pattern. It is an order which picks up the central organizing ideas of Jung himself: the Self and the Collective. If you had wondered whether London Jungians were truly Jungian, then you will be convinced otherwise by this chosen pattern for organizing the material, but above all by the ideas central to the Jungian tradition with which the authors grapple and work out their theses. Within the sections, the chapters inevitably focus on a limited range of issues while touching within them on wider perspectives. Naturally, for Jungians, the Self takes primacy of place and it is stimulating to engage with the varied theories which Jung has spawned, including Coleman's reworking of these into an up-to-the-minute synthesis.
Jung's own family is, unusually, examined from a family therapy perspective which includes the usually forgotten dead sibling who was precursor to Jung's own birth. This section ends with a discussion