JUNG'S CARTOGRAPHY OF THE PSYCHE

A synoptic guide to pioneering psychologist Carl Jung’s thought, structured as a glossary of key terms.

According to Driscoll, Jung is the “the modern age’s greatest explorer and cartographer of the self,” but “the revolutionary impact of [his] findings for the entirety of humanity has yet to be grasped.” In an effort to contribute to such intellectual appreciation, the author has composed a concise, single-volume introduction that’s fewer than 200 pages in length, organized as an alphabetical catalog of important terminology. Driscoll diligently covers the fundamental notions of Jung’s psychoanalytic worldview, defining concepts such as archetype and collective unconscious while also attempting to situate Jung’s ideas within the philosophical tradition of his own era. The book also tackles the philosophical notions that Jungian concepts birthed: “Jung was not a philosopher, but his discoveries could provide a basis for future philosophies,” the author notes, particularly highlighting the importance of the psychologist’s “insights on the nature of God, time, and the self and psyche.” As a result, the book is sprinkled with references to William Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Karl Marx, and other literary and philosophical luminaries. Along the way, Driscoll also draws the reader’s attention to other ideas, such as the ways in which Jungian archetypes are more Kantian than Platonic in character. The end result is a broad, if sometimes excessively general, interpretation of Jung’s “roots in Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud,” as well as an assessment of his effect on the philosophical currents of a future that his ideas at least partly inspired.

Driscoll’s overview of Jungian concepts astutely furnishes a philosophical context in which readers will be able to more fully appreciate both their depth and scope. Moreover, he does manage to accomplish his goal of supplying a “modernized and more Americanized Jung” that takes new and evolving conceptions of human sexuality seriously. In this way, the author perspicaciously reveals the ways in which Jung was “limited by the conventions of his times” but not thoughtlessly determined by them. However, the discussions of the psychologist’s intellectual relationship to other thinkers throughout history are so briefly developed that they often amount to little more than references; for example, an explication of the concept of eros in light of St. Augustine’s notion of caritas and St. Paul’s agape never manages to fully come to life. Similarly, the book is filled with judgments of an extraordinarily peremptory nature, such as “Eternity is not a realm separate from Time as Plato, the neo-Platonic tradition, and orthodox Christianity assumed.” The crux of the problem is the book’s format, as it seems counterintuitive that a full explication of Jung’s “organic system” could be composed as an alphabetical list of terms; indeed, even the sequencing of these terms seems philosophically arbitrary. As a result, this book won’t be a particularly helpful guide for those who are relative newcomers to Jung, but it won’t be appropriate for experts, either, who surely will want more detailed and intellectually rigorous treatments than this format can effectively provide.

A highly general Jung primer that’s ultimately unsatisfying.