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This book is one of a series of studies, published by Inner City Books, which present lectures given by the late Edward F. Edinger on a variety of topics - ranging from key works of Jung through Melville's Moby-Dick, Goethe's Faust, and William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job. The current book is a companion piece to Edinger's The Bible and the Psyche: Individuation Symbolism in the Old Testament (Edinger 1986). In his writing Edinger takes on the large task of presenting a comprehensive view of the significance of Jung's opus for the contemporary world, which he apparently intends to be not only comprehensive but also definitive. In Ego and Self, as in The Bible and the Psyche, Edinger wishes to subject the Bible to the
whole new world-view growing out of depth psychology [that] studies the psyche as an experienceable, objective phenomenon. It takes old data and approaches them in a new way. For instance, mythology, religion and sacred scriptures of all kinds are taken out of their
Page 121traditional contexts and understood psychologically, that is, are seen as the phenomenology of the objective psyche.
Edinger understands his studies of the Hebrew Bible in the context of what he calls the difficult transition ‘from the metaphysical standpoint of religious faith to the empirical standpoint of the psyche’ (ibid.). He is straightforward about his personal stake in this change of viewpoint from ‘metaphysical standpoint’ to ‘empirical standpoint’:
Between these two mountain ridges lies a dark valley, the valley of lost faith, alienation, meaninglessness and despair … [F]or those who, consciously or unconsciously, have already slipped off the ridge of faith and are in the dark valley, the discovery of the psychological approach may just possibly be life saving.
In order to appreciate Edinger's accomplishment in the Ego and Self (and in his earlier study), we need to hold in mind the urgent psychical need that he is addressing - the need for e