A fascinating, carefully researched study of the origins of Carl Jung's highly original, influential version of human psychology, and a work likely to generate intense debate. Noll's (History of Science/Harvard) goal here seems to be to deepen and expand arguments put forth in his previous work (The Jung Cult, not reviewed) that Jung didn't so much intend to develop a new form of psychoanalysis as to create a new pagan religion, one that was a unique (and alarming) blend of ``German mysticism, Hellenistic paganism, and Gnosticism,'' colored by Jung's growing anti-Semitism. Noll focuses primarily on the first two decades of the century, the period that saw Jung aggressively shape his revolutionary theories and break with Freud (he had been Freud's chosen successor). He traces in great detail Jung's fascination with the many arcane schools of mysticism current in northern Europe at that time, uncovering groups, books, and some bizarre would-be prophets, and he demonstrates the ways in which Jung incorporated their teachings into his theories. He also stresses the importance of a little-known incident in 1913 during which Jung, after repeatedly inducing a trancelike state, imagined that ``his head changed into a lion and he became a god.'' This occurrence, Noll argues, is a central event in Jung's life, validating for the Swiss thinker the idea that he was a pagan savior, sent to summon Aryan culture back from the failed religion of Christianity (``a Jewish religion,'' Noll describes Jung's view, ``that was cruelly imposed on the pagan peoples of Europe''). All of this is bound to be intensely controversial, and Noll doesn't help his case by a sometimes scattershot approach. Still, there is much here that's hard to refute, and the image of Jung that emerges from this thoughtful study is deeply disturbing. (For another view of Jung, see Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung, p. TKTK.) Surely not the final word, but nonetheless an important, angry work of historical revisionism. (photo insert, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-44945-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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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