From Publishers Weekly
Jung's shade would be content with Bair's biography, which in bulk and detail suggests that there is little more to say. Lucid and persuasive, the National Book Award-winning biographer of Beckett strikes a balance between damage control and deification, for Jung's ambition, arrogance and lack of generosity tend now to obscure his originality as a thinker and his impact on theories about why we dream and how we think. While Bair provides perhaps more about almost every aspect of his youth, maturity, rivalries, renown and old age than we care to know, it takes an author's note and two long endnotes to realize how much censorship the Jung heirs still insist upon. Bair was, for example, denied access to the diaries of Jung and his mother, which were deemed "too private," and to the thousand letters between Jung and his devoted (yet mistreated) wife. Even so, through interviews, published documentation and the papers released to her, Bair has evoked the man in all his cynical self-interest, opportunism, moral ambiguity, paradoxical insecurity and charismatic hold on decades of disciples. How much a purported Swiss temperament of suspicion, exclusiveness and obsession with ancestral status influenced Jung's development is a fascinating thread winding through Bair's narrative, affecting his personal and professional relations. Freud, father figure and then foe, comes off badly as ambitious, arrogant, single-minded and vengeful. Bair's Jung is no saint, but he is less unpleasant and exploitative here than as portrayed in Frank McLynn's 1997 biography. The large hole in this large book is not biographical. Jung's significance has much to do with his theories of archetypes and the related power of the collective unconscious. One finishes the book without much explanation of either. 32 pages of b&w photos. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Bair, award-winning author of books on Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Anaïs Nin, wrote Jung with the aid of the psychoanalyst's family. She gained access to all of Jung's professional papers, but not the personal ones, including diaries or letters to his wife. With this plethora of information she has produced a judicious, sympathetic, slightly academic, and, above all, comprehensive portrait of Jung's life. This thoroughness comes at a cost. By focusing on the details of Jung's life, Bair fails to explore the interaction between his career trajectory and ideas. Yet as a "definitive" account of his life, Jung "will be praised by scholars, read by the general public and loathed by the partisans--just as a good biography should be" (New York Times Book Review). Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Shortly after the death of Carl Jung in 1961, lightning struck a tree beneath which he had often practiced his analytical psychology. In a biography that maintains the excellence she has achieved in previous works on Beckett, Nin, and de Beauvoir, Bair recounts the life of the famous analyst whose career provoked so much controversy that one of his contemporaries regarded the lightning bolt as its only natural postscript. Predictably, Bair focuses on Jung's stormy parting from his famous mentor, Sigmund Freud, her detailed chronicle exposing the collision of two authoritarian personalities as well as the theoretical divergence of two speculative thinkers. Bair also probes Jung's much-disputed relationship with the Nazis, ultimately clearing Jung of the charge of anti-Semitism but documenting episodes of deplorable recklessness in the years Jung crusaded for a distinctly German psychotherapy. Deftly integrating her theoretical exposition into narrative glosses on Jung's motives, Bair shows how Jung projected his own gender ideals onto female patients; how he allowed his obsession with collective archetypes to smother his interest in individual patients; and how he first attracted, then alienated, disciples with his bizarre fusion of alchemy, religion, and psychology. A capacious portrait of an enigmatic pioneer. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Deirdre Bair has written about some of the most influential figures in 20th century culture--Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and AnaÔs Nin. Now she turns her expert eye to the one person whose teachings and writings are the most influential of all: psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. The founder of analytical psychology, Jung became the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1910. Jung had a professional relationship with Sigmund Freud until he broke with the elder father of psychoanalysis over his emphasis on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. As Freud's influence has waned over the years, Jung's ideas--the collective unconscious, the archetypal myths underpinning all societies, synchronicity, "new age" spirituality, and much more--have achieved an overwhelming ascendancy. Bair addresses the myths about Jung--accusations that he was an anti-Semite and a misogynist, and that he falsified data--with evidence from his own writings and from those of his colleagues and former patients. The result is a groundbreaking and accessible work that promises to be the definitive life of Carl Jung.


About the Author
Deirdre Bair has been a literary journalist and university professor of comparative literature and culture. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York. She lives in Connecticut.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the most influential thinkers of our time, Carl Gustav Jung has profoundly touched virtually all aspects of our modern culture, including medicine, religion, philosophy, literature, art, and, of course, the ever-evolving field of psychoanalysis. Born in Switzerland in 1875, this son of a poor country parson and his troubled wife would by the end of his life become an iconic figure, his vast body of writings and teachings known the world over. Through his pioneering theories of personality and the unconscious, Jung is responsible for many terms we now consider common: the archetype and the collective unconscious, introvert and extravert, anima and animus, synchronicity and individuation, and even New Age spirituality. Despite Jung's renown, however, the details of his life have been steeped in secrecy and controversy. Now, National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair draws on new research into untapped sources to reveal the father of analytical psychology as we have never seen him before.

Jung was Sigmund Freud's "crown prince," handpicked by the elder father of psychoanalysis to become the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1910. However, in 1914 Jung abandoned Freud's theory to found his own system of analytical psychology. As Freud's influence has waned over the years, Jung's ideas -- about dream interpretation, about the integration of the psyche as the goal of personal development, about the common roots of all human mythologies -- have achieved an overwhelming ascendancy. Yet Jung has also been the subject of much dispute and conjecture. Did the respected scientist fake the data that led to his seminal theory of the collective unconscious? Was he an anti-Semite, a Nazi sympathizer and collaborator? Was he a misogynist who conducted polygamous relationships throughout his life? Did Jung really author his well-known autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, or was it vetted and rewritten after his death?

Drawing on unprecedented access to private archives, restricted interviews, analytic diaries, and early drafts of Jung's own writings, Bair addresses these accusations and separates fact from myth and misconception, revealing surprising discoveries about Jung's personal and professional life. We learn the truth about Jung's role as "Agent 488," working for the U.S. government during World War II; about his relationships with the women in his life; and about the actual content of the papers that purportedly proved his scientific malfeasance. No apologist for her subject, Bair paints an engrossing, objective, and very human portrait of the controversial genius. The result is a groundbreaking, authoritative, and thoroughly readable work that promises to be the source for future discussion and debate about Jung and about his lasting impact on how we think about ourselves and our world.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Bair's stated goal is to rise above the fray and answer the questions most often posed about Jung: Was he an anti-Semite? Was he a womanizer? Was his psychological theory a form of religion? She largely succeeds. Painstakingly fair, she digs up and scrutinizes sources with an admirable, if sometimes exhausting, thoroughness. — Robert S. Boynton

The New Yorker

So many women flocked to Zurich to be analyzed by Carl Jung that they were punningly referred to as the Jungfrauen (“virgins,” in German). The legendary analyst can’t be accused of neglecting the opportunities to which, in the days before clear therapeutic boundaries were established, his charisma and their transference gave rise. And there are more serious dents to his reputation, including his decision to accept the presidency of a German analytic society in 1933—he remained until 1940. Bair, the author of exhaustive biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, has turned her research skills to clarifying these, and other, controversies, including Jung’s famous split with Freud, in 1913 (they disagreed on the primacy of the sex drive). The result is largely balanced and thorough, though Bair’s perhaps excessive focus on the minutiae of Jung’s life keeps her from illuminating the ideas and the analytic legacy of the man who invented such concepts as introversion, extroversion, and the collective unconscious, and was able to blame an overactive anima for his womanizing.

Publishers Weekly

Jung's shade would be content with Bair's biography, which in bulk and detail suggests that there is little more to say. Lucid and persuasive, the National Book Award-winning biographer of Beckett strikes a balance between damage control and deification, for Jung's ambition, arrogance and lack of generosity tend now to obscure his originality as a thinker and his impact on theories about why we dream and how we think. While Bair provides perhaps more about almost every aspect of his youth, maturity, rivalries, renown and old age than we care to know, it takes an author's note and two long endnotes to realize how much censorship the Jung heirs still insist upon. Bair was, for example, denied access to the diaries of Jung and his mother, which were deemed "too private," and to the thousand letters between Jung and his devoted (yet mistreated) wife. Even so, through interviews, published documentation and the papers released to her, Bair has evoked the man in all his cynical self-interest, opportunism, moral ambiguity, paradoxical insecurity and charismatic hold on decades of disciples. How much a purported Swiss temperament of suspicion, exclusiveness and obsession with ancestral status influenced Jung's development is a fascinating thread winding through Bair's narrative, affecting his personal and professional relations. Freud, father figure and then foe, comes off badly as ambitious, arrogant, single-minded and vengeful. Bair's Jung is no saint, but he is less unpleasant and exploitative here than as portrayed in Frank McLynn's 1997 biography. The large hole in this large book is not biographical. Jung's significance has much to do with his theories of archetypes and the related power of the collective unconscious. One finishes the book without much explanation of either. 32 pages of b&w photos. (Nov. 13) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

By their choice of occupation, psychologists become fair game for biographers, but not many subjects hold the fascination of Carl Jung. Bair (Samuel Beckett: A Biography, winner of the National Book Award) tackles the Swiss founder of analytical psychology who began as a Freud acolyte before breaking away and developing a professional and general audience for his work on psychological types, myth, symbols, and synchronicity, among other things. Her well-crafted narrative integrates life and work, though the latter predominates. Jung's following included celebrities and students, though he often behaved badly. Of course, he was brilliant, but he was also "half-mad," a virtual bigamist, an absentee father, and a hothead. His leadership of a Nazi-sponsored psychology group created a furor; those who fault Jung on this point-and on his womanizing and irregular modes of therapy-will consider Bair an apologist. To her, he was politically na ve, culturally embedded, and prone to poor judgment. Her abundant and vivid detail (supplemented with 200 pages of notes) allows readers to appraise the force and foibles of a peculiar, phenomenal man. This massive and masterful treatment of Jung balances other, more contentious writing about him and will long be the definitive biography. For all libraries.-E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews