INTIMATE FRIENDS, DANGEROUS RIVALS: The Turbulent Relationship Between Freud and Jung

by Duane Schultz ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1990

The brief and fruitful fellowship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, revisited here in a blow-by-blow summation and commentary. Schultz, a veteran of psychology textbooks and WW II chronicles (The Doolittle Raid, 1988, etc.), combines both interests in this account of a battle between titans at the dawn of the age of psychoanalysis. The six-year relationship between Freud and Jung began in 1907, with mutual admiration and rosy hopes for a lengthy collaboration. For Freud, his young Swiss colleague was the answer to prayers for a gifted follower who would carry on the work of bringing the gospel of psychoanalysis to all nations. Jung, for his part, was flattered and fulfilled by these attentions, although aware from the outset that Freud's emphasis on the primacy of sexuality in analysis of the psyche existed as a bone of contention between them. The transitions from this early period of promise to the establishment of a virtual father-son relationship, and thence to the inevitable split, with its bitter exchanges and recriminations, are minutely analyzed here by an intense scrutiny of all meetings and correspondence between the two. The focus shifts occasionally to external matters, such as marital crises or divisions in the psychoanalytic ranks, but such excursions are clearly of secondary importance. Strong in its attentiveness to the nuances that each man derived from their encounters, this account is nevertheless loosely organized and disjointed, and adheres only in principle, not in practice, to a strict chronology. A new packaging of familiar material, then--less attractive than one might hope, but still functional.

Pub Date: March 9, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tarcher--dist. by St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION