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My first impression of this book was that it was a scholarly and balanced work which informed without judging. As I read on, however, I came across more and more instances where unattributed opinion had been inserted into the narrative. Each chapter consists of a detailed assembly of facts but in order to give the book narrative structure conjectures are introduced. So instead of the book taking its coherence from the author's understanding of the profound nature of Jung's work and its significance it is a collation of facts some of which are at best precarious.
Why did Bair write this long detailed account of Jung's life? She has neither expertise in Jungian matters nor particular interest in the development of Jung's thought. Rather she says that she became interested in his ‘sullied’ reputation (p. xi). It is also clear from the notes in this book that the way the committee of heirs responded when approached by a professional biographer was to confine themselves to answering the question they were asked (see author's note on p. xi). This can be significant if the professional biographer does not know the field and the directions in which to broaden his inquiry. Despite this the reader could be misled into thinking that this is in some way an officially approved scholarly biography, as the notes contain many references to supposedly unavailable or restricted access texts, some of which, such as the protocols of Aniela Jaffé's interviews with Jung which went to make up Memories, Dreams, Reflections are in fact available in the Library of Congress, rather than restricted as Bair suggests (note 7, p. 657). Another very important feature of this biography which claims to be an ‘objective’ history is the frequent citing of unnamed sources. The explanation for this is ‘Swiss reverence for privacy’ (p. xiii), but in an objective account, using unnamed sources challenges the credibility of these sources. More importantly these unnamed sources are often responsible for the