Noll's terrible attacks on Jung are just sensationalistic propaganda, and they deserved a detailed, thorough and entirely irrefutable response. Given Jung's status as the greatest psychological theorist of all time - compared to him, Freud is nothing (and the Freudian organisations are far more cult-like than the Jungian ones - remember all those psychiatrists who were expelled from psychoanalytic societies, even after Freud's death, simply from refusing to dogmatically assert that all his theories are true!) - such a response to Noll would easily be achievable by the properly erudiate, learned scholar. Unfortunately, this book does not achieve that, and so is a completely wasted opportunity. So, while I am glad someone is responding to the ranting, speculative nonsense of Noll, if someone reads this and Noll, they will not be so convinced of Jung's innocence (and brilliance) as they definitely should be (he deserves some long overdue wider recognition) and as this book could have easily done so.

I recommend Ellenberger's "Discovery of the Unconscious" and Stevens' "Intelligent Person's Guide to Psychotherapy". Stevens refers to this book and puts an end to the anti-Jung myth properly, while Ellenberger shows how Freud stole most of his ideas from other people and unscruplously ruined the lives of many patients and colleagues, while forming a Freudian cult circle, while Jung not only was far more modest than he needed to be (attributing to Freud and to many pre-20th Century thinkers like Nietzsche and so on far more credit than they even deserved), but also was immensely more original and brilliant.

well deserved razor sharp slashing of Richard "Hoo-Hmmm" Noll's books. I wonder why Noll rates himself as "scholar", and as Sonu demonstrates in this work, no one really should. In fact Sonu exposes the many levels of deceipt and manipulation spread in Noll's dishonest work.

Four years ago I was completely smitten with Noll's Jung Cult and the many facinating threads to follow from the book's many descriptions of cults, personages and movements at the time of the fin de siecle. I thought Noll truly brilliant. This past year I followed one of those threads from Noll to Sonu Shamdasani's Cult Fiction. Reading the two led me to a lesson in scholarly research and withholding judgement. I could have founded a Noll cult after reading his writing. I learned to question it more objectively reading Shamdasani. The two do a great tango and I have found it of essence to read them both. I don't know and find it ridiculous to say they hate each other--hey they sell each others' books and I am a different thinker and Jung adept after reading both authors. Noll is rich with references and associations--Sonu questions very thoroughly and almost without flaw Noll's argument. Shamdasani does grip Noll's hamstring but the joy of reading the Jung Cult for me isn't flagged--only changed in the sense of I am glad I got past Noll to read Sonu.

This book is a disappointment, but it was very close to good. The articles are mostly anecdotes and project descriptions by Wirth's students. I, too, was expecting more direct descriptions of Wirth's teachings. The glimpses shown here were almost enough, but in the end, unsatisfying.

I'm giving it three stars. If you will do anything to learn more about Wirth, you should certainly read this. For general programming insights of similar ilk other books, such as The Practice of Programming or Meyer's Object-oriented Software Construction, are better places to look.

Echoing the previous reviewer's sentiments, I expected to learn more about the person. Instead, you get some short articles (of uneven quality) by his students. Remarkably, the one most aligned with my current job--the Clint network--was the one I found most tedious.

As a minor plus, the book has a really *nice* cover.

I donated my copy to the local library.

This is the first nerd-book that I've read in a _long_ time that I could call inspiring. It got me back to my roots of computer science and applying Occam's razor to everything I see, think, or do. I only gave this a 4 star because one of the chapters is not congruent with the goals of the book. Chalk that up to the ego of that author and ignore it. The rest is great.

If you are an older generation software engineer and feel like you are drowning in the needless complexity of modern day languages like C++, perl, or java, then I think you owe it to yourself to give this book a try.

If you are a newer generation software engineer and haven't seen what some of your predecessors were doing before and around the time of your birth, then you REALLY owe it to yourself to give this book a try.

I was born the same month as Smalltalk. It's one of my favorite languages. When were YOU born?

Gustav Hasford wrote three novels-"The Short-Timers, "The Phantom Blooper," and "Gypsy Good-Time"-before he died in obscurity in Greece, where he had exiled himself after being released from the California prison he had been sent to for stealing thousands of library books.

"Phantom Blooper," "Short-Timers" sequel, failed miserably both artistically and commercially. "Short-Timers" was granted some measure of retroactive acclaim after Stanley Kubrick used it as the template to create the film "Full Metal Jacket". No auteur came to the rescue of "Phantom Blooper" and it disappeared without a trace. Rightfully so, for this is not a good book. The dialogue mouthed by the stick-figure characters is cartoonish and glib. The plot is incoherent. All Americans are venal and corrupt and all Viet Cong are joyful and righteous. So bad are the Americans that the main character (Joker Davis aka the Phantom Blooper) can gleefully participate in the castration and crucifixion of one and blast others from the sky. (Toward the end of "Short-Timers" Joker murders his best friend, Hasford's way of satirizing the Marine Corps tradition of never leaving their dead or wounded on the battlefield.) So industrious are the Viet Cong that the scenes of village life resemble something from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". With guns. One bizarre analogy sympathetically compares the Viet Cong to the Confederate States of America, the "... first victim of the American Empire".

Any notion that "Phantom Blooper" was pulled because it was too controversial is just wrong. It was preceded by better, more elegant and equally controversial novels like "Paco's Story", by Larry Heinemann, and "Meditations in Green", by Stephen Wright. "Phantom Blooper" failed for all the right reasons-it is poorly written and dull.

At least the Short-Timers introduced some interesting characters, but the "Blooper" is just too dull. It also feeds the fire of misinformation about the war, the VC/NVA, and the typical GI.

What an odd, ambitious, and ultimately frustrating book. Like its predecessor, "The Short-Timers," The Phantom Blooper is comprised of three novellas, but each seem to have been written by a different author. The first, "The Winter Soldiers," is just as great as anything in "The Short-Timers;" the second, "Travels with Charlie," comes off like "Dances with Wolves" in Vietnam; and the third, "The Proud Flesh," almost reads like a political book, with long diatribes against the US government. In short, it's an unfocused novel that might not only grate readers with its unwillingness to be "The Short-Timers, Part Two," but also with its heavy anti-US politics sentiment.

What most frustrates me is that the first novella in the book is so promising. In fact, I enjoyed it more than anything in "The Short-Timers." Starting off with rumors and legends about the Phantom Blooper, it features an apocalyptic, night-time battle that is beyond any of the action in the previous novel. However, the second novella, "Travels with Charlie," abandons the characters and writing style Hasford previously employed, and instead, as another reviewer so accurately depicted it, comes off as Snow White with guns. Perhaps my main problem with this section of the novel is that I just don't buy it.

It's hard to believe that a village of Viet Cong would so readily accept a US Marine as one of their own. I can't recall reading about any real-world American POW's in the Vietnam war who experienced the idyllic, almost hippie-like existence Joker enjoys; it seems to me that most US prisoners were too busy being abused and tortured by their Viet Cong captors. And it also rubs me the wrong way that Hasford can have the VC commit atrocious acts, yet for them it's justified, whereas when he has US soldiers commit atrocities, it's just because they're basically inhuman. Hasford doesn't paint a very balanced picture, and though he dedicates this book to veterans of the war, he portrays the US soldiers as murdering, uncaring monsters. I can't imagine too many vets who would be flattered by their representation in this novel.

Another thing is that the Joker who narrates this novel is very different from the Joker we knew in "The Short-Timers." Gone is the stone-cold view of the world. Instead, the Joker of the Phantom Blooper is a caring guy, who seems to just want to live off the land for the rest of his life. This is totally against the grain of the blank-slate Joker in the previous book. It really seems to me, especially in the second and third novellas, that Hasford mostly just used Joker to promote his own opinions.

Whereas the previous novel had several interesting characters, with even more interesting names, The Phantom Blooper only features a few. In particular there's Black John Wayne, in "The Winter Soldiers," a black activist Marine who protests the war and refuses to fight. To tell the truth, I would've preferred to have seen more of this character than just about anything in either "Travels with Charlie" or "The Proud Flesh." Fans of the first novel may feel a bit let down that we barely get to see any of the characters from "The Short-Timers." Even Animal Mother, who most people know from his appearance in "Full Metal Jacket," only gets a small mention, in the beginning and end of the novel.

In short, I would say this book should be read by those who enjoyed "The Short-Timers." However, I wouldn't say that it's necessary for anyone else, unless you want to read an unusual novel about the Vietnam War, one that offers a very different message from any other.

Criticisms of Richard Noll books about Jung have grown steadily in the last years. In fact the only faithful are the born-again christians, which in countless sites in the internet shower praise on him, but on them Noll's so-called scholarly research is wasted, since they have always hated Jung anyway. So Noll is in pretty bad company, and I dont think that the adulatory churchlady lecture circuit was what he was after, but fittingly that serves him well ".. oh...professor Noll ...tell us...was that Jung..linked to..u know..to..well..the...hhmm..Devil? .."

First, unlike many of the arrogant modern academics alive today, I am a person of the old school who believes that we should let the dead rest. This means that we should not go through all their personal letters which their estate deems PRIVATE and then concoct some wild fantasies in order that we may judge them based entirely on this. This book just goes to show that in today's politically correct academic environment ruled by self-righteous PC elites, we can throw around the term anti-Semite against any German thinker we dislike and thereby discredit him. Noll obviously has some sort of partisan agenda and personal animosity towards Jung and he has done a lot to try to discredit the great man. Fortunately it is not paying off.

That said, the book does have some good points. The pictures are nice and it does include a lot of detail about the relationship between many German thinkers of the time. It situates Jung in his historical context and presents a picture of him that contrasts with the fluffy image popular among many of his "followers" today. It astounds me however to see the rudeness of some reviewers who call the ideas circulating in Germany at the time, and Jung's unique form of self-understanding "crazy" or "insane". We can learn a lot from the so-called insane (insanity by the way is a modern myth and an attempt by a degenerate society to get rid of undesirables). And, even if Jung were mentally ill (much evidence suggests he may at times have been), he certainly did not harm anyone, and this does not take away from his discoveries. Jung was not a megalomaniac or a cult leader a la Jim Jones. And, this type of hysterical nonsense is unfortunate. Jung brought light to Freud's abysmal views of human nature, and has been hated by the academic establishment ever since. As such, he is a Prometheus-Christ figure, who dared to challenge the psychoanalytic Freudian movement, which remains second only to the Marxists in their use of abusive ad hominem attacks to discredit.

Jung was not a pagan, but a Christian (of sorts, albeit perhaps unorthodox). And, psychoanalysis in its Jungian form is not a religion or a religious anti-religion, but rather a compliment to traditional orthodox religion. Many disparage Jung because his views will place man at the whim of forces beyond his control (as Jung had posted above his door, "Invoked or uninvoked the Deity is always present!"). These forces used to be called God and the Devil; however, it has become more fashionable in recent times to call them the Unconscious. Nevertheless, the principle remains the same. Jung's discovery of the Collective Unconscious, his regression into deep trance and his meeting with the archetypal forces of the human mind, should not be seen as a sign of madness, but rather as the attempt of a brilliant man to perpetuate his own unique form of self-understanding. In our smug self-satisfied life, we refuse to hear of such things, and we view ourselves as in complete autonomous control of our own destiny. While we are able to use our conscious thoughts as feedback into the unconscious (we are Aristotelian rational animals afterall), this is not exactly the case. One has only to be called out from one's apathetic existence by the presence of tragedy to realize the truth in this, i.e. that control is a myth. And, this is the lesson we can learn from the Jungian Unconscious.

Much more can be learned from the kind of thinking circulating in Germany before the World War. However, if we ignorantly ignore it, for fear that it may be contrary to our modern ideologies then we will miss out. Of course, we must sort the wheat from the chaff, and not engage in racism. But, to blindly regard anything Germanic as necessarily racist or anti-Semitic is a prejudice of the highest order. This is the historical context of Jung and his time.

In this book, Noll argues that not only did Jung create a religious movement but that Jung himself believed he was a savior of sorts. The first claim is, of course, completely convincing (and is, I believe, the main focus of Noll's _The Jung Cult_, which I have yet to read); the letter to C. Long which the author quotes late in the book pretty much closes that debate.

On the other hand, I remain unconvinced concerning the nature of Jung's 'revelation' in 1913 and how he saw himself subsequently; i.e., whether he really believed he was the "Aryan Christ". Noll quotes extensively from dozens of documents, and many of them are very suggestive of this, but when actually coming to this point, I feel Noll loses his grip a little; in each case where this is stated, Noll momentarily leaves the historical evidence behind and infers this final point, which is, unfortunately, the basic thesis of the book.

Still, despite that consistent flaw, which pops up about half a dozen times in the book, Noll's thesis that Jung saw himself as a god or savior is compelling, and I suspect that, if and when the Jung estate opens its archives, he will be proved correct. In the meantime, however, I must remain doubtful.

The rest of the book concerns the development of Jung's various theories and is critical of the concept of the 'collective unconscious' while occasionally lauding Jung's contributions to personality typology. In contrast to critics of this book, I see no evidence that Noll has a 'hidden agenda'. In fact, for the most part I think he has been more than fair to Jung and his movement.

I do not recommend this book for the advanced woodworker. The projects are not refined and of little interest to the serious woodworker.

This is a weak Arts & Crafts furniture book. Many of the plans are simple and pseudo "Arts & Crafts" pieces (a CD holder?). There are a couple of nice plans, but that's it.

The drawings look like they are from a budget CAD program, but that aside are quite detailed and informative.

I would recommend looking at another book, such as "Classic Arts & Crafts Furniture You Can Build" by Andy Schultz or "The Furniture of Gustav Stickley : History, Techniques, Projects". Those are two really nice books, with excellent plans.

For all you critics out there who have not written books but have instead just commented on them without really thinking about why they were written the way they are here is a second thought. Books are all different and some are good and bad, this book does not show to be any less quality and actually has some really nice drawings which are very helpful compared to those who have none at all. These peices of furnature range from a cd rack which is very useful around our house to a near-by coffee table that lies in our living room now. This book instructs those who want to learn some fairly easy projects that progress in difficulty even if you have the right tools. Why not have the something decorative and useful such as the cd-rack in this book?

If this book is any evidence, Jungian psychology is a silly little movement run by people without much depth. The author parades for us a group of minor thinkers, most of them working in pop psychology (the genre to which this book really belongs). Some of these people may have something to say, but they are always on the fringe of the respected psychological traditions. You get the sense that they can never quite break in and yet are sadly desperate to be taken seriously. This would be an interesting story, yet the author manages completely (I would guess deliberately) to ignore the 'hot' issues in Jungian psychology: its heritage of affiliation with the Nazis; its abuse of clients ('analysands'); its founder's self-designated messianic status; his assault on women in his care; the cult-like structure that his modern disciples have designed to keep it going and themselves flush. In short, whether you're looking for depth or honesty, you're going to be disappointed. A minor book about a minor trend.

I return again and again to this very useful and well-written map of the Jungian terrain. Jungian psychology is again coming into its own as a powerful and affirmative therapeutic approach. Samuels' volume helps the reader orient to the whole spectrum of this work.

This is a well written and very useful map of the many branches of contemporary Jungian psychology. It will be of great interest to anyone wishing to understand some of its links to other schools of depth psychology and to appreciate way in which Jungian psychology has developed in several different countries.

The Bride of the Wind, while scrupulously researched, fails to bring its subject to life. Alma Mahler must have been possessed of much charisma and fire to attract the geniuses that she did, but Keegan's dry account of Alma's self-absorption and reputed beauty left me wondering what she had missed, since the portrait does not accord with the events of the subject's life. (The movie of the same title, by the way, has the same flaw, though it at least paints an atmospheric picture of turn-of-the-century Viennese society, which the book also fails to do.) The book also bogs down with information about Austrian history and classical music that is far too inside-baseball to be interesting to a general reader.

The Bride of the Wind by Susanne Keegan is the perfect biography for anyone wanting to avoid a stale representation of the illustrious Austro-German arts community in late nineteeth-century and early twentieth century. Written by a woman about a woman, this account contains insights and even some facts that a male biographer would have left out, yet these are the very facts which bring out the qualities of an historical figure which can affect his or her resurrection to the modern world.
Most interesting for anyone intrigued in the enigmatic character of Gustav Mahler are the accounts of Alma's 12 years with him. Keegan sheds light on a side of Mahler most biographers gloss over for fear of blurring the importance of his music. However, one might find that after reading about Mahler from Alma's point of view (and with the help of Keegan's many intuitive insights), that one can dig deeper into the emotional maze that is his music than ever before.
Susanne Keegan has made an accurate and insightful chronicle of a life that affected so many men of importance around her, a life which hitherto has, before this book, been left largely to mere speculation. She has done for Alma what Henri de la Grange has done for Mahler.
Look for the movie based on this book which will hopefully be coming out soon.

Frankly, this was a disappointment. I went back from it with far more sympathy for Jung - and far less for Noll - than I had believed possible; and that in spite of the fact that - after a juvenile pash for Jung more than twenty years ago - I have long since given up on psychoanalysis (and in particular on the doctrine of Archetypes) as a system of knowledge and explanation; and that I was and am not impressed with Jung's private life and his abuse of patient/doctor relationships. The basic problem with this book is the juvenile, unmeditated, unintelligent pseudo-rationalism at its heart. Noll is apparently under the impression that there is something called "the historical Christ" which contradicts the teachings of historical Christianity; and therefore he approves of Freud, in spite of the howlingly obvious elements of pseudo-science, self-justification and superstition, because Freud takes religion to be a disease in need of curing rather than a legitimate way to view the world. Conversely, he opposes Jung because Jung, however distant his view from any orthodox religion, justifies religion as a state of mind. This, of course, is the reason why Jung's success continues in spite of his more than dubious scientific standing; because, however you look at them, in terms of the most basic issues of human thought Freud is a jailer, chaining us to the lowest processes of our bodies and offering us nothing more liberating than sex, and Jung is the man who turns the key and sets us free. I regard neither of them as in any way scientific, reliable or intellectually sound, but I also regard the influence of Jung as infinitely less pestiferous than that of Freud - and I owe this view to Noll's book, because it placed starkly in my face the sheer ugliness of the motives of those who attack Jung and defend Freud.

Reading some of the truly vicious customer reviews below, I cannot help but suspect that most of them were written by Jungian analysts. Having spent several years within the Jungian world (as neither a patient nor an analyst, I hasten to add), I feel that Noll has done the public a great service with his book. While I admire many of Jung's ideas as reflections of an interesting mind, I have seen no evidence of their practical applicability. Even more, I wonder about the damage done to patients by their being applied so narrowly, doggedly, slavishly by Jungian analysts. The Jungian world is filled with mediocrities -- people as unimaginative as Jung, for all his faults, was imaginative -- who band together tightly and congratulate each other endlessly on their genius, their sensitivity, their depth, their soulfulness. Meanwhile, they often seem to be engaged in particularly vicious power games, perhaps because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge their "shadow" sides. And the patients too often seem to get lost in the shuffle, or actually damaged. Noll's book serves to underline the painful truth that the man these analysts take for a God was in fact not only deeply flawed but little concerned with the truth or otherwise of his theories, and not very interested in his patients'welfare. He has created a model of egotism that all too many Jungians seem to follow, without possessing his genius.

Richard Noll's two books on Jung, THE JUNG CULT and THE ARYAN CHIRST, are the very best books ever published on Jung and his psychology. Read Jung? Of course, read Jung. But do not believe Jung. Read Jung as you would any other major thinker -- Darwin, Freud, Marx -- and discover for yourself what makes sense and what does not. Noll provides a valuable service by showing us how to be a litle more careful aboutswallowing Jung whole -- as Jungian analysts want us to do. Jung does not belong to the Jungian analysts. They are not the experts on Jung. Richard Noll is. Do yourself a favor and read the truth about Jung -- and learn a little something about German culture, 19th century science, and ancient mystery cults along the way. Noll does not disappoint.

Hayman's biography, though well researched, is a grave disappointment. First, the author fails to offer a balanced picture of the varied and complex person of Jung. Instead, Hayman engages in a reductive enterprise and reduces Jung to little more than a caricature. Second, Hayman continues his reductionist approach when arguing that Jung's work amounted to little more than scouting out archetypes in the dreams of his patients and in world mythology. In this, Hayman misses the deeper aspects of Jung's work and ignores the epistemological significance of the manner in which Jung presaged post-modern and post-structuralist thought. Third, the biography is badly focused and organized because it leaps from scene to scene and person to person without logical reasons for doing so. Fourth, the style of the biography is troublesome; not only is the prose in need of vigor, but the grammatical structures are often troubling: i.e., the books is rife with sentences that contain pronouns that have no clear antecedents. Fifth, the biography fails to discuss a key aspect of Jung's life: his relationship with his children. Sixth, many of Hayman's assertions and conclusions about Jung are unfounded, unsupported, and misguided.

Other reviews have pointed out some serious problems with this book: the scattered telling of the story, the sometimes unclear writing, the fact that one does not come away with a very clear picture of Jung's thought even after 450 pages of summarizing his theories. But there is another reason I was disappointed in this book: namely, that Hayman is a Freudian who criticizes Jung through Freud's eyes (Read Louis Breger's "Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision" for an example of how bad an idea that is). While Hayman assumes as common sense that we accept the theories of the typically modern, sex-crazed, materialistic Freud, he criticizes Jung precisely for presuming to break with Freud, thereby assuring (in Hayman's mind) that Jung and Jungians will remain in the arena of madness, rather than mental health. Hayman quotes a psychoanylist, with marked approval, who says: "If [Jung's] main life's work was in the end to be founded on a personal and scientific incompatibility with Freud, there are those who believe, like myself, that this was a disaster, and in part an illusion, from which we suffer and will continue to do so until we have repaired the damage." (p. 213) In short, the only way to be an acceptable Jungian is to be a Freudian. As many of us have found the modern ethos of sex and materialism to be a dead end, and trying to re-think spirituality in an age of the dessicated fanaticism of fundamentalist religions hard enough in itself, a dependence on Freud is surely no help. If one need not acept Jung as if he were a god -- always the problem of Freudians in relation to their master -- at least Jung has pointed the way for many people to a view of life that is compatible with a regenerative spirituality, not just Freudian myths about repressed childhood trauma and the primacy of sexuality in self-understanding. Hayman's biography has the very desirable effect of presenting Jung as a man whose life was troubled by psychosis and full of the turn-of-the-century Spiritualism that tends no longer to be accepted as factual among thinking people. Worshippers of Jung doubtless don't like this aspect of the book. For myself, I found the manner of Jung's break with Freud -- his experiences of internal dialogue and vivid fantasy, his belief that sexuality is only one factor among many in human life, his refusal to submit to the enervating Freudian materialism as a final arbiter in all judgements, his wide-ranging interest in creation myths as opposed to Freud's reductive readings of Oepipus et al, his belief that we should explore the fantasies and delusions we encounter in life in relation to the world of archetypes rather than trying to extirpate them by analysis and replace them with Freud's own truncated little fantasies -- to be more creative and productive than if he had remained a Freudian true believer. But let's not worship Jung, either: reading Hayman may not make Jung quite clear, or an acceptable object of worship, but the former (along with the implicit Freudianism) is the real problem I had with his book, not the latter.

Sometimes I feel guilty for not starting at the beginning of a book like this and reading right through. Hayman removes such guilt by the curious expediant of neglecting to put his anecdotes into any coherent form. It hardly seems to matter where you start -- the author seemed to have trouble even putting individual chapters into order. One interesting theme he mentions was how Jung served as a link between pre-modern and post-modern spirituality. Neither this nor other themes were developed. But ultimately I forgave Hayman, mostly, because much of what I found was interesting, despite the mayhem. It is like dropping in on an eccentric friend at irregular and unscheduled intervals: you do get a feel for who the man is, perhaps as much because of as in spite of the disorder.

There were times when I found myself wondering, "Why did this guy write a book about a person for whom he seems to have so little respect?" (Being, apparently, rather skeptical of the occult side of Jung.) But in other scenes, Jung comes across as sane and sensible, and his insights perhaps of value. The author doesn't explain those insights in way that makes it very clear to me, but of course Jung can speak for himself on that. At one point, what appeared psychobabble -- or at least esoteria -- to an outsider like myself, flew thick and fast between Jung, Freud, wives, and girlfriends. The author tells us what the persons involved "really" had in mind. "What happened was they had unconsciously 'swallowed' part of one another's soul." Hmmmn. At times like that, the author comes across like the friend who was supposed to stay sober at the party, but took a few sips anyway.

Overall, I found much fault with this book, but interesting tidbits, and kept picking it up, till I read it through. There's some interesting stuff on Freud and other early psychological persons, as well. I am still not quite sure what to make of Jung's theories -- and have some theories of my own by which to consider them -- but Hayman has, at least, helped me to put those ideas in rough, if not entirely coherent, context. And I enjoyed the book. ...

McLynn doesn't like Jung ideas. Not a problem, really, but then why write a book about him? So the book crawls slowly, unhappily amassing all negative gossip about Jung, leaving the reader ( as probably also it did to the writer), miserable, exhausted, untill, at last the book ends, and a sigh of relief is impossible to avoid. Was this really necessary? Was this a paid, imposed job? This is really a pathography, a subgenre of our sick postmodern times, and I hope that these kind of people never go so far as the write a new life of Christ.

So far, I find this book captivating like a traffic accident. Page 222 of 529, for example, consists, in it's entirety, of three paragraphs about Freud. And it's so chock-full of whiney, vague "interpretation," that McLynn has become in my mind the handlebar-moustache-twisting, bound-lady-on-the railroad villain of all biographies. What other reviews of this book have said comes to mind: McLynn's book is valuable precisely because it is OBVIOUSLY the most unfair and degrading description one could credibly sling together based on any interpretation of the facts (in fact, I would say, well beyond "credibly," except, naturally, I am not aquainted in a thoroughgoing way with every detail of Jungs's life... which it's worth noting, the author assumes I am. McLynn omits a vast array of details as if he were *deliberately* trying to make himself sound even more of the dire propogandist than he actually is.) One wonders if this book was written in an attempt to discredit the whole field of critical biography of Jung. That's my theory. Jung must be above reproach, if his foremost critics are the likes of McLynn.

As a warts-and-all story, this book provides the most negative view of Jung and his theories you are likely to read from an 'impartial' biographer. Unfortunately, McLynn's own railings against the illogicalities present in Jung's theories manifest themselves as a frank rejection of his work. Also evident by the end of the book are the considerable Freudian sympathies McLynn harbours. Despite the author's partialities, the book is well-researched and provides a factual window into the day-to-day life of a man who was nothing if not influential. Jung-lovers and -haters alike should enjoy it immensely for those reasons alone.