The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity - Hardcover

Rosen, David H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670860697 ISBN 13: 9780670860692

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1996

Synopsis

This startling and revealing new interpretation of Jung's life and psychology is based on the insight that he was essentially a Taoist. Drawing throughout on Jung's own letters, aphorisms, and other writings, The Tao of Jung looks at Jung through six crises of his personal development, including his break with Freud and his later work with the I Ching.
In structure the book is modeled on the classic Tao Te Ching - the world's most translated book after the Bible. David Rosen traces parallels between Jung's natural world and the psyche and that of Taoist philosophy, exploring the integration of opposites such as shadow/persona, yin/yang, dark/light, feminine/masculine; 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.

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.

Reviews

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.

David Rosen, M.D., who has the unique distinction of holding the only American full professorship in Jungian psychology, has written a biography of pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung, illustrating the development of Jung's philosophy of psychology and its similarities to the Tao Te Ching. Rosen traces the six crises of Jung's personal development, explaining how each stage compares to a tenet of the "way of the Tao." At the end of his life, Jung was introduced to Taoism and himself remarked on the similarities between the two philosophies. Rosen writes clearly and meticulously documents all of his references to Jung and the Tao. His work serves as a good introduction to both Taoism and Jungian psychology. Ted Leventhal

Psychiatrist Rosen has written a biographical study of his mentor, Carl Jung (1875-1961), from a Taoist standpoint. The text alternates between Jung's life and commentary based on quotations from the Tao Te Ching, which was well known to Jung. The integration of opposites?the balancing of yin and yang?structures the examination of the life events, dreams, and theories of both Jung and Rosen. In limpid prose, the author leads us on a journey of religious certainty along the Way, making use of mandalas and Chinese pictographs, sychronicity and facile dream interpretation. The converted will revel, while the skeptic will squirm at the mystical, self-justifying, banal connections. When presenting more straightforward biography, Rosen is both critical and forgiving of Jung's sexual affairs and his transient support of Nazism. In addition, he offers readers a surprisingly candid glimpse of the collapse of his own marriage over the writing of this book: "We, too, can let go of ego, confront shadow,...be guided by the soul and the spirit...[and] surrender to the natural way of integrity." For a more balanced, nonidolatrous approach by a Jungian from Asia, see Hayao Kawai's Buddhism and the Art of Psychotherapy (LJ 7/96).?E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670860697
• ISBN 13: 9780670860692
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224