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David Tacey's anthology is a scholarly masterpiece. In a free and fluent style he introduces Jung to contemporary humanity. He has skilfully devised a scheme to make Jung palatable to those who shy away from him because of the wide variety of subject matter and sheer volume of the collected works. Tacey focuses on four key areas of Jung's work: the nature of the psyche, archetypes, religion and culture, therapy and healing. He provides an authoritative and helpful introduction to each area, followed by a brilliant selection from Jung's original writings. In this way the reader becomes directly acquainted with Jung as author and potentially engages in a reflective exchange with the author of this anthology.
In Part I, Tacey awakens the reader's attention to the unique quality of Jung's psychology. It affirms the historical roots of the psyche, is ‘soul-centred’ and avoids a reductive materialism or a scientific attitude that excludes the spiritual. As an empirical psychology, it attempts to study the facts, even if Jung's facts sometimes are more like interpretations. A study of the psyche must include the imponderables of the unconscious that compensate the one-sidedness of the conscious attitude. Jung's psychology is a process psychology. In the first half of life, the ego establishes itself in the outer world, in family, friends, society and profession. In the second half of life, the psyche attempts to embrace the fullness of life, by drawing attention to the non-material and spiritual.
In Part II, Tacey asks why the archetype has been accepted by the arts but refuted by science. Jung's continual use of the term ‘primordial image’ to describe an archetypal disposition, prior to conscious experience, is partly responsible. He contends: ‘how can an “image” be without “content”?’ (p. 139). This contradictory use of language has fuelled accusations of Lamarckism and the discredited view of inherited innate images, despite Jung's repeated attempts to affirm the distinct