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In Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1957 - 1959) Jung writes: ‘… I feared I might be forced to recognize that I too, like Nietzsche, was “another one in the same mould”’ (pp. 122-3). The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) upon C. G. Jung
(1875 - 1961) was great, and finds expression in the numerous references that Jung makes to Nietzsche throughout his extensive collected works. Though this influence has often been acknowledged by commentators on Jungian thought, a thorough analysis , one that seeks to explore all significant implications, has rarely been attempted. in The Dionysian Self (1985) takes up the challenge in the shadow of what he considers to be three inadequate attempts to examine the affinities between Nietzsche and Jung (p. 13). According to Bishop, the second of these attempts is Patricia Dixon's PhD thesis that forms the basis of Nietzsche and Jung. Sailing a Deeper Night (1999).
The principal aim of Dixon's work is to demonstrate that ‘the quest for wholeness, the central theme in C. G. Jung's psychology, is [also] the dominant thread that runs through the entire fabric of Nietzsche's writings’ (p. 3). Dixon therefore attempts to offer a context in which the influence of Nietzsche's thought upon Jung can be clearly seen and evaluated. Indeed, in her evaluation, Dixon establishes a secondary aim in her work: to show that although Jung was influenced by notions within Nietzsche's thought, these were often misunderstood by Jung, and Jung was in fact being influenced not by Nietzsche but by a misrepresentation of Nietzsche.
The book itself comprises fifteen chapters that are divided into four sections, an introductory section, a bibliography and an index; there is no concluding chapter. The introduction expands upon how the projects of both Nietzsche and Jung criticize Western culture for its one-sided emphasis on the authority of rationality at the expense of the irrational. Here she introduces the notion of a union of opposites