Stanislav Raevsky read for us Carl Gustav Jung’s book Symbolic Life.
“This book includes some of Jung’s key works. I especially like the lectures he gave in 1935 at the Tavistock Clinic (Institute of Medical Psychology) in London. Jung is an excellent lecturer, able to combine the breadth of coverage of topics, depth and clarity of presentation. For example, the first lecture gives an idea of how and why Jung came up with the idea of dividing people into types. Thinking type, feeling, intuitive. Introverts and extroverts … Now many psychologists, managers and personnel specialists use his personality typology. Each reader will be able, with the help of this text by Jung, to find out and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, to understand the causes of conflicts in the family and in business. And another lecture explains the word-association-like test on which the modern lie detector is based. It helps to detect those of our emotional reactions that consciousness does not control — and thus reveal our complexes. Jung was convinced that these complexes have nothing to do with our personality, behind them is hidden content imposed from the outside, family history or collective ideas.
A separate chapter is devoted to psychological projection — the transfer of one’s thoughts and feelings onto another person. This often happens when we are in love, when we transfer our own inner ideal to our beloved, and later, when we see reality, we are disappointed. In contrast to Freud, who explained erotic feelings for a psychologist as a desire originally directed at the father (mother), Jung offers more complex and varied explanations for this phenomenon.
In the part of the book that reproduces a seminar at the London Guild of Psychological Pastors in 1939, Jung talks about the most important thing for himself — about the spiritual crisis of modern man and the need to fill everyday life with a higher, symbolic meaning.
The ideas of Carl Gustav Jung have become fundamental for many modern sciences — psychology, philosophy, philology, mathematics … To get a first-hand understanding of complexes, archetypes, the collective unconscious — in my opinion, this is the best way to understand both the author and oneself.