Jung biography

Though I need another book right now like I need a hole in the head, I walked past the AUC bookstore sale table this morning and found the DEIRDRE BAIR BIOGRAPHY OF JUNG. When you’re loosely familiar with an author as I am with Jung, you often have the sense that you know their life story, but it suddenly hit me that most of what I know of Jung’s life comes from his correspondence with Freud, which I read in toto many years ago.

But here’s the thing…

If someone had asked me to predict, at about the age of 20 when I had read not a word of either Freud or Jung, which one I would probably like better, I surely would have predicted Jung. My prejudices would have been that “Freud reduces everything to sex, and is narrowly scientistic in the 19th century fashion,” while “Jung is open-minded and more amenable to metaphysical themes.”

And of course those prejudices are not entirely off the mark, and yes indeed, the prejudiced version of Jung sounds a lot more suited to me than the prejudiced version of Freud.

And yet, in practice, I love Freud and am almost always disappointed with Jung. (Though I agree that Jung is a bit more sympathetic than Freud in the correspondence between them.) Freud is consistently better than I remember him on every reading, and Jung consistently not as good as I remember him.

Maybe my opinions will change over the years, but those have been my reactions for nearly two decades now. I think I want to like Jung more than I do, and maybe that’s why I bought a biography I didn’t need just now.

Lacan simply annoys me too badly in stylistic terms. I find it a terrible chore to get through even a short essay by Lacan.