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4.5
This book has the distinction of being the first biography published of C.G. Jung. Sadly, that is this book's sole distinction. As Brome himself admitted: "However, this does not set out to be a definitive work. That will have to wait another thirty years before it can be written" [Preface, page iii]. There are 3 fatal flaws: 1) the book highly derivative from Barbara Hannahs' earlier (1976) biographical memoir ("Jung: His Life and Work") and especially Anelia Jaffe's (1963) "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" (Jung's falsely so-called autobiography) and is largely organized (or I should say disorganzied) after them. 2) Brome was a long-time Freudian and friend of Ernest Jones, Freud's biographer, and accordingly has little to no sympathy for Jung or his psychological thought. Consequently, the book is riddled with misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of Jung's life, character, and thought. Finally, 3)—and partly as a consequence of (2)—it is replete with amateur psychologizing and belittling ad hominem attacks on Jung, on almost every page.The most glaring example is Brome's continuous rant about "Jung's [supposed] Breakdown," which is the title of Chapter 18. (This malicious bit of anti-Jung mythology—or should I say lie?—was even promulgated by R.F.C. Hull, the Jung translator.) However, Jung was always very clear that his conscious descent into the Collective Unconscious, disorienting as it surely was, was a conscious descent and not a helpless plunge into madness. (For more on this, see Jung’s “Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925,” revised 2012 edition by Sonu Shamdasani.) This description of a “descent” was also given by Jung in Jaffe’s MDR: “I resolved upon the decisive step. I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking over my fears. Then I let myself drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way beneath my feet, and I plunged down into dark depths. I could not fend off a feeling of panic. But then, abruptly, at not too great a depth, I landed on my feet in a soft, sticky mass. I felt great relief, although I was apparently in complete darkness” [MDR: page 179]. Despite these details of Jung’s own account, Brome insists on describing Jung’s experiments with the Collective Unconscious as madness, a psychosic breakdown: “Internal conflicts were now so intense that he could no longer lecture coherently” [p. 171]. “[T]he straightforward term ‘breakdown’ describes the general, non-technical characteristics of what took place…until the rationally willed was indistinguishable from the compulsively inescapable” [p. 173]. “[H]e found himself so wrought up that he had to do certain Yoga exercises to hold his emotions in check” [p. 174]. “[H]e fulfilled the classic pattern of some deeply distubred persons by resisting further withdrawal into himself” [p. 174]. “Jung’s reminiscences frankly admit how near he came at this period to madness” [p. 181]. “Signs of recovery became apparent early in 1918” but “the duration of his breakdown… [possibly] did extend into 1929” [p. 182]. “In the end his breakdown became a creative illness” [p. 182].This fundamental misunderstanding of Jung’s discovery of the Collective Unconscious and invention of active imagination is where Brome’s rank and amateurish psychologizing glows dullest: “At a deeper level had he all his life avoided confrontation with his true self, the person skilfully camoflaged behind the masks…? As he lifted one corner of the veils on his true self, did the shock of the first revelation drive him to drop it hastily in place once more?” [p. 183]. Or consider Brome’s rank reinterpretation of the dream about the murder of Siegfried (which presaged Jung’s recognition that he needed to relinquish ego control in favor of a Taoist wu-wei acceptance): “[I]dentification [of Siegfried] with Freud was clearly possible and his deliberate destruction literally admitted as an act of murder; but now, searching for expiation, Jung saddled the little brown savage [the Shadow figure in the dream] with the crime. A clinching detail occurred in his admission that by destroying Siegfried he had destroyed himself” [p. 178]. With such willful misinterpretations, Brome insists on mistunderstanding and condeming Jung at every step.Finally, 3) the book is desperately vague and in search of a time-line almost every major (and minor) event of Jung's life. The layout of chapters genearally derive from MDR and Hannah’s “Jung” while adding little new insight. For example, the 10 pages of chapter 22 on “Bollingen and New Mexico” spends 4 pages talking about Jung’s friendship with the Sinologist, Richard Wilhlem, before getting around to a mere 1½ pages briefly mentioning the construction of the Bollingen tower—with no discernible dates. He then briefly covers Jung’s well-known trip to Taos, NM and his discussion with Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) in another 2½ pages, before lurching ahead to a dream about his father (in 1902) and his mother’s death (in 1923). As I said, no time-line. Call me fussy. But I expect a biography to have a coherent storyline about a person’s life and to include actual dates of events.All told, this is a lousy book full of misleading statements, with a biased perspective, and is basically a poor excuse for a rewarding biography. Readers are advised to skip Brome’s diatribe and read instead Shamdasani’s outstanding “Jung Stripped Bare (by His Biographers Even” and then Barbara Hannah’s fine “Jung: His Life and Work.” Barbara Hannah knew both Carl and Emma Jung who lived, worked and studied with them for many years. Sonu Shamdasani is a professional Jung historian. Both offer keen insights into Jung’s actual life and work (far exceeding anything found in Brome).(Finally, regarding Brome's supposed interview with Jung in 1928 [as mentioned by a previous reviewer], it appears to be an exaggeration. Brome himself said "The long pilgrimage into Carl Gustav Jung's life began as far back as 1957 when I first encountered John Layard [a British psychologist] in Cornwall....However, it was 1972 before I settled down to a task of intimidating proportions" [Preface to "Jung: Man and Myth," page i]. Now it would certainly be strange for a professional biographer to wait 45 years before even thinking about writing a biography on someone he had interviewed at the young age of 28, stranger still to not even mention it in his biography. But no such interview is mentioned in the author's bio on the frontispiece, nor in the Acknowledgements [page prior to page i], nor under the "Interviews with Jung" in the Select Bibliography [page 343]. Fake news? In any case, I conclude that it never happened.)
