Psychology books I am getting rid of, Part II
The Essential Jung. When people tell me Jungian stuff, I love it! And then I attempt actual Jung. Where are they even finding all those cool ideas? All I am seeing is (opening at random) Even though alchemy was essentially more materialistic in its procedures than the dogma, both of them remain at the second, anticipatory stage of the coniunctio, the union of the unio mentalis with the body.
And it's not just because I'm opening at random. When I was in school I started from the beginning. The effect was exactly the same as if I'd opened it at random. Has anyone here read Jung in German? Is this just a translation effect, or is he equally incomprehensible in the original? (And what if you do know German, but you don’t know Latin? WHY IS THE LATIN NEVER TRANSLATED?)
Owning Your Own Shadow, by Robert Johnson
First sentence: The shadow: what is this curious dark element that follows us like a saurian tail and pursues us so relentlessly in our psychological work?
This is not Johnson’s fault but I was irresistibly reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (one of my all-time favorite books, by the way) in which she mentions a terrible sf story she read as a child which concluded with “And so they returned to the saurian slime from whence they sprung!” She and her brother created the jingle,
The saurian slime from whence they sprung
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
No, okay, that is Johnson’s fault. That is a ridiculous sentence and it also deserves a mocking jingle. I know it’s a metaphor, but it is also an imagine. Please take a moment to picture a psychoanalyst being stalked by a disembodied lizard tail.
If you don’t know the concept of the shadow this book is a decent introduction to it, but you could do much better. Unimpressive.
Inner Work, by Robert Johnson. This is actually a pretty good book on working with dreams and imagination and the unconscious. I’m not keeping it because I get the principles and it’s not so well-written or uniquely insightful that I’d re-read. But if you’re interested, this will give you a lot of useful tools.
I don’t do a lot of dream work, either for myself or for my clients, but it comes up occasionally. (I do a lot of work with PTSD-related nightmares, but that’s a different thing. Those are not subtle.) When clients ask me what a dream means, I tell them that only the dreamer can know the meaning of the dream and ask them what they think it means. If they have no idea, I start asking what specific parts make them think of, if anything has a cultural meaning or how dreams are generally interpreted in their culture, etc. (“Is there anyone in your family who knows a lot about dreams?” Not uncommonly, there is.)
Treating Eating Disorders, ed. Werne. This is from 1996. I’d rather read something more recent. I think a lot of ideas in the field have changed since then.
Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1231086.html. Comment here or there.
And it's not just because I'm opening at random. When I was in school I started from the beginning. The effect was exactly the same as if I'd opened it at random. Has anyone here read Jung in German? Is this just a translation effect, or is he equally incomprehensible in the original? (And what if you do know German, but you don’t know Latin? WHY IS THE LATIN NEVER TRANSLATED?)
Owning Your Own Shadow, by Robert Johnson
First sentence: The shadow: what is this curious dark element that follows us like a saurian tail and pursues us so relentlessly in our psychological work?
This is not Johnson’s fault but I was irresistibly reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (one of my all-time favorite books, by the way) in which she mentions a terrible sf story she read as a child which concluded with “And so they returned to the saurian slime from whence they sprung!” She and her brother created the jingle,
The saurian slime from whence they sprung
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
No, okay, that is Johnson’s fault. That is a ridiculous sentence and it also deserves a mocking jingle. I know it’s a metaphor, but it is also an imagine. Please take a moment to picture a psychoanalyst being stalked by a disembodied lizard tail.
If you don’t know the concept of the shadow this book is a decent introduction to it, but you could do much better. Unimpressive.
Inner Work, by Robert Johnson. This is actually a pretty good book on working with dreams and imagination and the unconscious. I’m not keeping it because I get the principles and it’s not so well-written or uniquely insightful that I’d re-read. But if you’re interested, this will give you a lot of useful tools.
I don’t do a lot of dream work, either for myself or for my clients, but it comes up occasionally. (I do a lot of work with PTSD-related nightmares, but that’s a different thing. Those are not subtle.) When clients ask me what a dream means, I tell them that only the dreamer can know the meaning of the dream and ask them what they think it means. If they have no idea, I start asking what specific parts make them think of, if anything has a cultural meaning or how dreams are generally interpreted in their culture, etc. (“Is there anyone in your family who knows a lot about dreams?” Not uncommonly, there is.)
Treating Eating Disorders, ed. Werne. This is from 1996. I’d rather read something more recent. I think a lot of ideas in the field have changed since then.
Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1231086.html. Comment here or there.