Likely to become the standard biography of the revolutionary psychoanalyst. (16 pp. photos, not seen)
A polished, highly professional biography of Jung that covers all the personal and intellectual bases, as well as demystifying his more rarified theories, from Hayman (Thomas Mann, 1995, etc.).
Although this is very much a linear biography, the author works the neat trick of bringing the older Jung to bear as self-analyst on his youthful self. Working from both Jung’s bulky correspondence and his scholarly writings (particularly Memories, Dreams, and Reflections), Hayman works up through Jung’s difficult childhood years, his important association with Freud, and onward to his independent work on myth and the collective unconscious. Jung’s intellectual substance is ably conveyed and given new context, with his letters (many of them here published for the first time) used by the author to help reveal the genesis of Jung’s ideas. Certainly, Jung’s work on symbols and myth, the stories at the root of our consciousness, primordial images and archetypes, synchronicity, and the role of amplification in interpretation make fascinating reading, but what feels so vital here is the delineation of Jung’s milieu at home and abroad. There he is in Munich, squabbling over psychoanalytic bragging rights with the Viennese School as the National Socialists rise to power; there are his lovers, who somehow never compromised the rock of his domestic life; and there is his voracious appetite for theological discussion. It is a very well-choreographed piece, as Hayman sets the stage, dives into the fray (where colossal personalities were vying over the human psyche), then surfaces again to remind readers that Jung was a fellow with his own set of foibles, missteps, and crazy notions (check out some of Jung’s sentiments on Judaism).
Likely to become the standard biography of the revolutionary psychoanalyst. (16 pp. photos, not seen)Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-01967-5
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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