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A review by mveldeivendran
Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung
5.0
There's this famous Buddhist parable that I'm often reminded from a book that I'd read few years ago. A Surgeon rushes to begin the work of saving the life of a man who got struck in the chest with a poison arrow but the man resists. He first wants to know the name of the fletcher who fashioned the arrow’s shaft, genus of the wood from which it was cut, name of the horse upon which he rode, and a thousand others that have no bearing upon his present suffering or his ultimate survival. The man needs to get his priorities straight that his commitment to thinking about the world results from a basic misunderstanding of his predicament.
We might be dimly aware that only acquiring conceptual knowledge will not help us move any forward but only a delusion of the same when it comes to dealing with the human problems in totality.
"In a period of human history when all available energy is spent in the investigation of nature, very little attention is paid to the essence of man, which is his psyche, although many researches are made into its conscious functions. But the really complex and unfamiliar part of the mind, from which symbols are produced, is still virtually unexplored. It seems almost incredible that though we receive signals from it every night, deciphering these communications seems too tedious for any but a very few people to be bothered with it. Man’s greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, and it is often directly mistrusted and despised. 'It’s only psychological' too often means: It is nothing."
This book has great dynamic parts concerning some of the major lifetime works of Jung presented in laymen vocubulary for public consumption. The contents might give it all a new perspective to the fundamentalists on the both sides of rationalism and religionisms. I have lots to say but saying a lot would do nothing when we keep seeing the world as we are than as it is.
"If the reader should feel stimulated to work further on the investigation and assimilation of the unconscious—which always begins by working on oneself—the purpose of this book would be fulfilled."
Personally i feel I wouldn't have taken anything serious if I weren't troubled myself with the ideas of rationalism, postmodernism for absolute at certain phases of my life. I highly recommend people like Alan Watts, Emerson, Joseph Campbell before jumping into the Jungian Psychology.
We might be dimly aware that only acquiring conceptual knowledge will not help us move any forward but only a delusion of the same when it comes to dealing with the human problems in totality.
"In a period of human history when all available energy is spent in the investigation of nature, very little attention is paid to the essence of man, which is his psyche, although many researches are made into its conscious functions. But the really complex and unfamiliar part of the mind, from which symbols are produced, is still virtually unexplored. It seems almost incredible that though we receive signals from it every night, deciphering these communications seems too tedious for any but a very few people to be bothered with it. Man’s greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, and it is often directly mistrusted and despised. 'It’s only psychological' too often means: It is nothing."
This book has great dynamic parts concerning some of the major lifetime works of Jung presented in laymen vocubulary for public consumption. The contents might give it all a new perspective to the fundamentalists on the both sides of rationalism and religionisms. I have lots to say but saying a lot would do nothing when we keep seeing the world as we are than as it is.
"If the reader should feel stimulated to work further on the investigation and assimilation of the unconscious—which always begins by working on oneself—the purpose of this book would be fulfilled."
Personally i feel I wouldn't have taken anything serious if I weren't troubled myself with the ideas of rationalism, postmodernism for absolute at certain phases of my life. I highly recommend people like Alan Watts, Emerson, Joseph Campbell before jumping into the Jungian Psychology.