Ann Walker

The Escape of Sigmund Freud. (2012). By David Cohen. New York: Overlook Press.

their corresponding aspects of consciousness. He concludes his amplification of the number 17 with a quote from the Arabic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan: “Know that everything on earth—I mean in the world of becoming and of perishing—will not pass beyond the seventeen power-units” (as cited in Abt, 2005, p. 165). Part III of the book concludes with a summary of criteria that may indicate a weak ego structure in a patient and hence the possibility for the development of a latent psychosis. This section reveals the opposite urge in the unconscious discussed previously—that of the move toward differentiated consciousness—and focuses briefly on the potential dissolution of the ego and its immersion in the unconscious. In his final considerations in Chapter 4, Abt reminds the reader of the long lineage of alchemy as a corresponding symbol for the making of consciousness as detailed in this fine small book. He states that the circumambulation and resulting amplifications of the image can be “applied successfully to the interpretation of dreams, fairy tales and myths” (p. 175) as well as to the interpretation of pictures. When I was first given this book a number of years ago, I dreamt that I was standing with my office mate and colleague around a small round wooden table in our office. He introduced me to Theo Abt, who had joined us in the room. Abt opened his jacket and, reaching into an inner pocket, pulled forth a beautiful red rose and handed it to me. I noticed that the sturdy stem bore many growth nodules and said, “This will grow very well here.” So it is with Abt’s Introduction to Picture Interpretation; as the rose and its stem, planted in the ground of one’s intent to understand the deep meaning conveyed in pictures, “it will grow very well.”

Mercury Rising: Women, Evil, and the Trickster Gods. (2011). By Deldon Anne McNeely. Fisher King Press.

M ercury Rising is a lively investigation of the trickster archetype as it appears in Jungian psychology as well as in mythology, history, art, culture, ethics, politics, and social venues, among others. Deldon McNeely has provided an extensive examination of the trickster in his many forms and extrapolations. Using wonderful myths, client dreams, and even social media to illuminate the trickster, the author begins by noting that our present time is an eon of spiritual transition and that the trickster is the guide for a time of transition. When unintegrated, rising up from the unconscious, the trickster is highly unpredictable and destructive. But if worked with consciously, the trickster brings creative transformation and wisdom. McNeely notes, “The Trickster Gods . . . play off the dominant authority and by their contradictions bring issues to light and reinforce the basic structure of the society by their clarification of fundamental conflicts. As folk-hero, the Trickster represents the underdog who prevails in the end” (p. 19). The author quotes from an interview of Marie-Louise von Franz, published in 1993 in “The Geography of the Soul”: “I have the impression that our culture and civilization is in a final stage, that it has entered a stage of decay. I believe that we shall find a renewal or else that we are at an end. And this renewal I can only see in that which Jung discovered, namely a positive contact with the creative source of the unconscious and with dreams. These are our roots” (p. 25). Deldon McNeely shows that the trickster conveys this renewal by mediating transformation through paradox, absurdity, irony, contraction, enigma, and humor to lead to integration of the unconscious. The author comments along the way on a variety of topics from the perspective of the trickster archetype. I particularly liked her brief comment on substance abuse: “Alcohol and drugs are tricksters, promising what they can’t give, demanding confrontation, and not gullible acceptance” (p. 35). She also explores the analyst–analysand relationship through the lens of the trickster archetype. The shadow of analysis is that enormous power over clients can be accessed through the transference. Transference entails loving and trusting the analyst, and it enables transformative libido to become available for the work of analysis. Transference feelings of love and trust for the analyst persist long after analysis is completed. The author notes that therapists and analysts abuse this relationship, feeling that they have a clear image of how the individual needs to develop, when in reality only the unconscious can provide the source and guide the individual’s transformation. McNeely clearly describes the issues in just a few words: “If therapists, inflated by the transference

A Review Of “Return to Joy. (2010)”

R eturn to Joy is a sweet, warm book about the descent into dementia. It is an issue close to my heart as the sole caretaker of my elderly mother. There is much written on dementia from medical and clinical perspectives—much that is cold, detached, and unrelated to the process of the experience. Return to Joy is a dramatic and wonderful contrast to these perspectives, written from within the experience and with an awareness of the profound mysteries that arise at the end of life. Charlotte and Virginia Parker had the task of caring for their mother, Kathryn, at the end of her life. In Return to Joy, Charlotte and Virginia generously share practical advice on medical issues, how to access needed services, and how to deal with the difficult social circumstances that unexpectedly surface. But the real treasure of Return to Joy is the focus on the spiral path traveled as the daughters and their mother worked through the end-of-life process ignited by the descent into dementia. Charlotte and Virginia do not minimize the suffering they endured along the way, but they were able to consciously face and hold their suffering. Consciously enduring suffering is profoundly transformative. Charlotte and Virginia have woven the underworking of the archetypal dimension into their process. These two women grounded the tale of their journey with their mother in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter is the Greek goddess of fertility, and Persephone, her daughter. Persephone was suddenly and unexpectedly kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld, who wanted Persephone to be his bride. Demeter did not know where Persephone had gone, only that she was gone. Demeter’s deep love for her daughter dropped into a deep depression, bringing endless winter to the world. During her depression, Demeter lived in Eleusia among mortals who welcomed and supported her, even though they did not know that she was a goddess. Demeter eventually found

The Break-Out Heuristic: The New Neuroscience Of Mirror Neurons, Consciousness, And Creativity In Human Relationships. 2007. By Ernest Rossi. Phoenix, Az: Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press

The human touch of naming the animals and looking for their individuality, social relationships, and emotions led Jane to observe the chimpanzee’s ability to use tools. It is this use of tools that changed the definition of what it means to be human. The odyssey then began of obtaining research funding, withstanding the scrutiny of the scientific community, and jumping through the hoops of obtaining her doctorate degree from Cambridge University in England— all the while having a personal life of unending triumphs and tragedies. Goodall carries the same passion today that she had as a child hiding in the henhouse motionless for hours to see the hen lay its egg. Only now she educates children in many nations, through “Roots and Shoots” (www.rootsandshoots.org), to appreciate and nurture their environment, including the animals, especially the chimpanzees, and trees. What an amazing legacy Jane Goodall brings us. Dale Peterson writes a thorough, comprehensive, and intelligent biography in the same spirit as Ms. Goodall performed her detailed observations. Reading Goodall’s story is an epic experience. Some readers might find the nearly 700 pages of the book excessive and daunting, but I read every word and found it inspiring.

A Review of: “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. 2005”

The final chapter is unique, I believe, in its focus on the development and healing of a man’s relationship to his own feminine energies in the course of analysis. Here we have a long (25 pages) description and commentary, including his dreams and meditative fantasy work, and the analyst’s commentary on his work, on her own reactions and dreams, and on their conscious interactions (which were sometimes stormy). Somehow, the very difficult job of conveying an individual analytic process comes off convincingly, and we can feel this man’s intensity, watch his leaps into the unknown and his reluctant retreats, his fear and his anger, as his dreams guide him, and as Douglas, as analyst, hangs in, ponders, cherishes, and attends to her own inner process as it responds to his. Finally, there is change in his relation to women in his life and a release of some of his own distrusted feminine energies. He writes of finally feeling free to be all that he is. This analysis illustrates something that is not always clear to women who are struggling against male domination in their own relationships: how a man’s controlling macho attitude may arise from his fear of any feminine power and be linked to his childhood ridicule or rejection by a mother unconscious of her own power. And so the issues come full circle, and the work to reclaim our full selves, especially full access to feminine energy, must be done by men and women alike. It falls to the woman to reconnect with the power and passion of her instinctual nature and to know it consciously so that it can be humanized, embodied, and also curbed when it endangers those she loves. The man’s work is to examine the demons and womanfears of his past and so transform them, allowing him to see women for what they really are and to own his feminine soul. This fine book gives us a guide to this essential work.

A Review of: “The Use of Dreams in Couple Counseling”

out west.” Grassi’s “yes” also allows her to yield to the enticement of a relationship that puts her in the place of Orpheus, “not knowing [her] ‘yes’ will make him vanish.” This is, however, a progression of discovery and the reunification of her psyche. Her catholic approach to life is evident in her use of Biblical symbols, Jungian archetypes, mythology, literature, and art. My personal preference is the poems in which she uses paintings to understand her own life. About halfway through the book, starting with observations of Emil Nolde, she begins to look at art as if looking through what is there into her own life. Art gives her, as does literature, an opening for reflection. “What might have been may haunt us yet.” These meditative yet lyrical poems are rich with her careful observation of color and art and give rise to her ability to see through the obvious and reclaim her own powers. Reading this entire collection rather than just one or two poems, allowed me to grasp the full spectrum of her gift. Although I found her early poems engaging, it wasn’t until she began to move from the more descriptive to the contemplative that I felt truly connected. Her love of art and literature mirrors my own, and these rich poems encouraged me to see the world as transparent and to also say “yes.”

A Review of: “The Secret Garden: Temenos For Individuation. 2004.”

The images of arcana I through XXI express constant movement and change. They form two concentric rings in which the inner ten represent our spiritual context, the archetypal backdrop placing our ephemeral materiality within the infinite and eternal, and the outer eleven depict a developmental sequence in which each image is constantly transformed into the next. The Fool does not participate [emphasis added]. In contrast to the surrounding images, he remains set in eternal youth, passive and poor, without name or shape. He stands motionless in the center, in the hub of the wheel, where immobility within rotation is possible; he looks detachedly at the glittering carousel turning around him. . . . Although he is almost naked, he no longer desires anything. (p. 293)

A Review of: “The Passion Of Perpetua: A Psychological Interpretation Of Her Visions. 2004.”: By Marie-Louise Von Franz (Edited By Daryl Sharp). Toronto: Inner City Books

Memories protocols and the Nameche interviews, and interviewed people who had known Jung. She also used anonymous sources and anonymous private archives. This sheer volume of material which she drew on makes it extremely difficult for most reviewers to discount her conclusions. Only someone like Shamdasani, who has had access to the same materials (and more) is really in a position to judge the factual basis of her biography. Since he has been highly critical of it, this leaves most readers in a position of not knowing whom to believe. Let’s take one example. Bair, like Richard Noll, who wrote The Jung Cult, believes that Jung stole his idea of the unconscious from his colleague J. J. Honegger, whose patient had the famous vision of the solar phallus. Shamdasani carefully examines the problems with this conclusion, but the best refutation for this idea is simply to follow the chain of ideas that led Jung to his idea, as Shamdasani records in C. G. Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology. The idea of the unconscious evolved out of a complex philosophical tradition and was “in-the-air” in the late 19th century. Jung was the person who brought all the disparate ideas together into a whole formulation that has lasted to this day. Though this is the most extensive chapter in Shamdasani’s book, I’m afraid that I will have to leave it to the interested reader to further follow his detailed account of the errors he feels that he has found in Bair’s biography. Readers will have to make their own judgments. Though a relatively small book (132 pages), Jung Stripped Bare is an important piece of Shamdasani’s attempt to slowly construct an accurate history of Jung’s psychology. All Jungians should appreciate his effort and read this book.