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Neurosis: The logic of a Metaphysical Illness is Giegerich's latest book and follows several earlier books in German and Japanese; his more recent books in English have been The Soul's Logical Life, and What is Soul?. In addition to his books, Giegerich has written numerous papers on aspects of Jung's
seminal ideas for a psychology of soul and with soul. His English papers have been collected into six volumes edited by Greg Mogenson and published by Spring Journal Books. Giegerich had been thinking about this book for many years and it brings together much of his thought from his long career as a Jungian analyst and his critical examination of Jung's psychology project. Although he is often critical of Jung's thought, Giegerich expresses his deepest respect for his work.
The essential touchstone of Giegerich's critique of Jung, is Jung's seminal insight that there is no Archimedean point outside of psyche from which to study or know about psyche. There is no external subject-object relation as exists for the natural sciences in which the scientist observes some event external to himself. This perspective, the ‘no Archimedean point’, is the fundamental basis for ‘the purely psychological standpoint’ upon which Giegerich unrelentingly insists, and the one to which Jung does not always adhere. This ‘psychological standpoint’ is equivalent to Jung's insight that every psychological phenomena has everything it needs within itself, and one to which nothing from the outside should be added. This is the primary basis of Giegerich's immanent critique of Jung's psychology project, i.e., when Jung, himself, deviates from his fundamental insight, and when he deviates from staying within the psychological phenomenon. Staying inside the phenomenon is the sine qua non of a psychology of soul and with soul. But soul is not an existing entity, not anything substantial or metaphysical. It is logical form, not formal logic or syllogistic logic (and not Jung's ‘thinking function’) but