The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity (Compass) - Softcover

Rosen, David H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140195025 ISBN 13: 9780140195026

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1997

Synopsis

This startling new interpretation of Jung's life and psychology is based on the insight that he was essentially a Taoist. Drawing on Jung's own letters, aphorisms, and other writings, David Rosen examines six crises in Jung's personal development, from childhood revelations and youthful rebellions to his break with Freud and his later work with the I Ching. Rosen discovers many parallels between Jung's natural world of the psyche and that of Taoist philosophy: the integration of opposites; the Great Mother as the origin of all things; the I Ching and synchronicity; the Way of Integrity and individuation; and the need to release the ego and surrender to the Self or Tao.As an increasing number of people turn to Eastern philosophy as a means of handling the many stresses of an increasingly confounding world, this illuminating introduction to both Taoism and Jungian thought provides a valuable spiritual resource for contemporary followers of the Path.

About this title

About the Author

David H. Rosen, M.D., holds the only American full professorship in Jungian psychology, at Texas A&M University.

From Publishers Weekly

Jungian concepts such as archetypes and the collective unconscious have become part of our culture's worldview, just as have some principles of Asian philosophies. So the insights in this book combining the two can be expected to intrigue many of today's readers. Indeed, psychoanalyst Rosen's (Transforming Depression) brief analysis of Jung's life in terms of Taoist principles is more an inspirational work than a biography. Jung became fascinated by Chinese religion and philosophy later in life, he explains. Rosen attempts to illuminate Jung's psychic development in terms of the Chinese concept of crisis, expressed by the pictographs for danger and opportunity. Jung's crisis, in Rosen's view, consisted of his break with Freud, with the pre-Freud and Freudian years represented by danger, the post-break years by opportunity. The text here consists mainly of biographical anecdotes juxtaposed with quotes from the Taoist masters Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu and selections from the I Ching, some of which are more relevant than others. Rosen's approach works best for Jung's years at Bollinger, where the middle-aged and then the older Jung expressed his deepest understandings in stone carvings as well as in words. At Bollinger, Jung, already steeped in ancient lore, lived the life of a Taoist sage as he "integrated yin and yang forces and became a modest person in harmony with nature."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140195025
• ISBN 13: 9780140195026
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224