The philosophical dialectic turns the conversation into an extended metaphor that supports the themes of the text. Lament is relevant because none of those realizations is somewhere that I ever would have gotten without the tradition that I am standing on top of. We see the foggy outlines of the ethics that these men hope will guide modern psychology but we are not quite able to see it as they see it. Both of the dialogue’s figures know the man of Jung so well that they do not need to address how he was misperceived by the public. If you are familiar with the Jung's ideas of archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation, and want to know more, then this conversation between two prominent Jungians can help you.

This intimate and accessible series of dialogues is an exemplary complement to Red Book and also stands alone as a wonderful—if allusive—introduction to the significance of Jung’s work. The idea of psychology, especially Hungian psychology, as either a science or as an ensoulung of arid overspiritualized religions drowns in the depths and tides of Jung’s personified, poetic, haunting, lyrical imaginings — ‘blood for the ghosts’ of the sacred Dead. Some of my favorite James Hillman books are the ones that transcribe his conversations, capturing his thoughts on the fly. One gets the sense in the book that Hillman is marveling painfully at an experience that he had been hungry for for a long time. Those words rippled through my perception of my own writing as I read them, not only because Hillman is no longer with us and we are still trying to come to terms with him and the loss of him, but also because I'm getting along in years myself, and my own works have come to reflect more emphasis on the questions of mortality and immortality.

Lastly I would say it is a somewhat inward-looking series of conversations which we are given, the reader is somewhat left outside of the internal signification of the dialogue, and as such unable to really assimilate it into any wider contexts of understanding. I also saw them devoid of a practical technique or application for a world where years of analysis cost more than most trauma patients will make in a lifetime. The book is cast as a conversation between the authors as they explore the outer limits of Jungian psychology. I feel that experiential and brain based medicine techniques like brainspotting are the future of the profession. There may well be more psychopathology actually going on while transcending than while being immersed in pathologizing.

Power in business, politics and the world of work, to most people, implies competition, domination, control and reward. Eisler’s method is significantly interrelational and systemic, it supersedes traditional binary oppositions and offers an interesting correlation with alchemy. The Jungian analyst helps the patient acknowledge and integrate all of the forces of the psyche that the parent ran from, so they are not passed down to future generations.

A. in psychology, and I've spent the rest of my time on Earth discovering what consciousness is about. He viewed artists that descended into the abstract with no path back or acknowledgement of the history that gave them that path as failures.

Some scholars believe Jung was partially psychotic while writing The Red Book, others claim he was in a state of partial dissociation or simply use Jung’s term “active imagination”. The prophet and the scholar describe their function and limitations as gatekeepers of the spiritual experience. Shamdasani has deftly avoided the fads, misappropriations and superficialization that have plagued the Jungian school of thought for decades. We need the coldness of death to see clearly", interestingly Hillman died during the production of this book.It would have been easy for me to merely critize his failures instead of seeing them as incomplete truths. The text is only superficially about the Red Book, what we are mostly left with are loose commentaries on related themes which never quite manage to give an elucidating word on the meaning of Liber Novus other than some paltry chat on the theme of the ancestors. Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, was one of the most prominent psychologists in America and is widely acknowledged as the most original figure to emerge from Jung's school.

A brilliant collection, evocative of all that is wonderful and strange about Jung’s Red Book and about the human psyche.A Jungian analyst and the originator of post-Jungian ""archetypal psychology"", he held teaching positions at Yale University, Syracuse University, the University of Chicago and the University of Dallas. From this dramatic but poorly developed restatement of Jungian mysticism, the authors proceed through sketchy, meandering discussions that touch on Jung’s testy relationship with Christianity, the obscurantism of latter-day Jungian analysts, and the need to infuse the Red Book’s literary, humanistic approach into psychology’s current scientistic model. Unfortunately, the authors’ exposition and elaboration of Jung’s arcane and often vague ideas is very unsatisfying, in no small part because of the discussion format. Perhaps it is undefined because these men are feeling something or intuitively, seeing something that the living lack the intellectual language for. Mellick’s monumental The Red Book Hours is not only a profound scholarly study of Jung’s own extraordinary Red Book, but also a multifaceted, dynamic and living work which sheds light on the process of Self-analysis as a breakthrough towards wholeness.