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The author, enamored of Jung's so-called personality types, attempts to utilize these—we suspect blab-blab words—as a key to the understanding of the unhappy marriages of Milton, Verlaine, Molière, Byron, Shelley, Heine, and Wagner.
The mere fact that almost nothing systematic is really known of the unconscious of these individuals the effort to present their personalities along introvert-extravert (wrongly spelled as is widespread extrovert) lines is a bit farcical.
It makes interesting reading but so far as real understanding is concerned the book belongs to the ‘columnist’ type of superficialities.
Practically no psychiatrist can fail to find similar case histories where only child, only son with elder sisters, only son with younger sisters, eldest sons, only daughters, eldest daughters, etc., etc., are to be found, but at the same time statistically can show quite dissimilar life histories with similar family settings.
Writers of such books should read Dollard's ‘Case Histories’—as a sample of a rational mode of approach before shooting off their superficial interpretations and flimsy argumentations.
At all events this is the reaction of this particular Pooh-Bah reviewer.