C. G. Jung: Word and Image (review)

REVIEWS 271 ery of narrative analysis to other biographies. Dowling's approach to Boswell's Life could conceivably be applied to Henry James's Golden Bowl with its various worlds or centres of consciousness, but would it be useful for a study of Richard Ellmann's James Joyce or Leon Edel's Henry James? There are other questions, too, which are raised by Dowling's handling of the notions of "absence" and "discontinuity" and by the exclusion of any historical considerations from his treatment of Boswell's text. But there is no need to rehearse these questions here for they are articulated by Michel Foucault in his well known essay "What is an Author?"—questions which he directs in part to Derrida and which William Dowling would have been wise to use for his point of departure. Joseph A. Buttigieg University of Notre Dame Aniela Jaffê, C. G. Jung: Word and Image. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979. 238 pp. $25. Based on the observance of Jung's centenary in 1975, Word Image was inspired by the exhibition sponsored jointly by the City of Zurich, the C. G. Jung Institute, and the Psychological Club of Zurich; this is the same exhibition that later toured cities and universities in the United States as an exhibit of large photographic panels. The collection, presented here in an over-sized edition, consists of 205 artistic works and photographs, 47 of which are in color, interspersed with passages from the published writings as well as with passages from unpublished letters and journals. All of this, in turn, is woven into a biographical fabric by Aniela Jaffé, Jung's long-time disciple and colleague. Not in the least way critical of Jung or of his work, but intended rather as a tribute to his life, the volume contains several sections that fall into three unacknowledged groups: the first group proceeds chronologically from his childhood and student years through his association and eventual break with Freud; the succeeding sections trace his intellectual development from his early confrontations with the unconscious through the key interests of his mature years with mándala symbolism, alchemy , Paracelsus, psychotherapy, and the transference; the concluding sections treat home and family, travels, Éranos, the tower, religion and, finally, life and death—a chronology, a list of definitions, and an index are included. Most of the passages cited are from Jung's autobiography and from the collected works, while others are from unpub- 272 biography Vol. 5, No. 3 lished writings from the early years and letters; accompanying these in print for the first time are a number of Jung's paintings of landscapes and figures from the unconscious, as well as several photographs of Jung. Coming in the wake of other recent Jung biographies, most notably Laurens van der Post's Jung and the Story of Our Time (1975) and Paul J. Stern's The Haunted Prophet (1976), there is something reassuring —if only deceptively so—about the photo essay format of the present biography, which places images of Jung's life in the context of selections of his own words; notwithstanding the collection's having its origin in an exhibit, one cannot escape the sense that the words are meant to illustrate the images, rather than its being the other way around—Jung would approve of this, no doubt. And while the reader's sense of well-being may be illusory, the effect is that of an invitation to appreciate the life of one of the more compelling figures of our time— the reader has the impression of being free to dawdle and to assess for himself rather than having the feeling that his attention is always being redirected to a fixed critical point, as is often the case with more traditional biographies. When they are considered all together, what the several Jung biographies and commentaries accomplish—especially when they are regarded in the light both of the autobiography, Memories , Dreams, and Reflections, and of the selections from his notebooks, Psychological Reflections—-is to reveal just how complex and, at once, how singular Jung's, or any human being's, life actually is; we also learn, I should add, something about the nature...