JUNG: HIS LIFE AND WORK

The current quickening of interest in Carl Gustav Jung has produced a number of books. This one, says its author--a now 80-year-old Englishwoman--""claims only to be a biographical memoir, showing his life as it appeared to me."" On the MS being shown to Jung's children, they ""thoroughly disapproved,"" feeling that his Memories, Dreams and Reflections met the need for a biography. Note also the 1975 book--not a biography--C. G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time by Marie Louise von Franz, in whose understanding of his ideas, says Miss Hannah, Jung had complete confidence. In her own book Miss Hannah sets out to show ""how Jung first lived his psychology and later formulated in words what he had lived."" She draws on her journals, recollections of conversations with Jung, and her sharing in the life of his professional household for many years, so that her book runs to over 400 pages and is full of the kind of detail that can be important in understanding so individual a figure. She touches base frequently with Memories and deals at length with two issues on which, she feels, circumstances have left her with special knowledge. The first is Jung's attitude to the Nazis; her completely convincing account leaves him with a clean record. And second his relationship with his associate Toni Wolff; here her apologia is less successful. The author may be more Jungian than Jung but she always leaves the reader wanting to follow up her pointers to his own writing. Her clear explanatory narrative can serve as an introduction to Jung, and her sturdy account will also draw aficionados.