Product Description

Though he was a prolific writer and an original thinker of vast erudition, Jung lacked a gift for clear exposition and his ideas are less widely appreciated than they deserve. In this concise introduction, Anthony Stevens explains clearly the basic concepts of Jungian psychology: the collective unconscious, complex, archetype, shadow, persona, anima, animus, and the individuation of the Self. He examines Jung's views on such disparate subjects as myth, religion, alchemy, `sychronicity', and the psychology of gender differences, and he devotes separate chapters to the stages of life, Jung's theory of psychological types, the interpretation of dreams, the practice of Jungian analysis, and to the unjust allegation that Jung was a Nazi sympathizer. Finally, he argues that Jung's visionary powers and profound spirituality have helped many to find an alternative set of values to the arid materialism prevailing in Western society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11884 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Anthony Stevens is a distinguished Jungian analyst, psychiatrist, and writer on Jungian themes. He is a graduate of Oxford University and in addition to his DM has two degrees in psychology. His other books include Archetype: A Natural History of the Self (1982), The Roots of War (1989), On Jung (1990), The Two-Million-Year-Old Self (1993), and Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming (1995).

Customer Reviews

the best introduction to Jung's work ever
Anthony Stevens' Very Short Introduction is a must for everybody who is interested in the life and work of Carl G. Jung and psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory in general. With this little book, Stevens deals with the most simple aspects of Jungs insights (such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, complexes...) as well as explaining the more difficult sides, such as alchemy, eastern philosophy, and the much overlooked relationship between Jungs psychology and the ideas of some new disciplines like Evolutionary Psychology and Lorenz' Ethology. A big thumbs up for Stevens: Jung was indeed a brilliant thinker, but far from an excellent writer...

An exellent starting point.
With so many "introduction" books flooding the market these days it can be difficult to know where the best place is to even start when interested in difficult subject. In my experience it has been the Very Short Introduction series that offers the most effective presentation of key ideas to particular thinkers. The modesty of these books (unwilling to claim that they are going to introduce you to anything more than an absolute basic) is not to be misunderstood, this series is far more effective than Icons more popular Introducing... series, there are no cartoons here and it's written in a traditional chapter, sub-section style of an academic text book. The books though are so readable and clear, there is a totally unpretentious quality to them and clear examples and elaborations of key ideas. I read the Introducing Jung sometime ago and it sparked an interest, I even bought some of his books but still I found them difficult to grasp, this book however left a much clearer imprint of Jungian ideas and I can now tackle some of his original works. The series only drawback is it lacks some topics available in icons range, I would dearly love to see a Very Short Introduciton to Lacan, or Levi-Strauss, hopefully in yhe near future. I whole heartedly recommend these books, you learn more as the 150 so pages are pretty much text instead of drawings and text bubbles and yet the readability means while they take more time to just read through (most say they read an Introducing book in an hour, it might take you two or three to read these) you actually grasp the ideas more quickly.

handy little intro
brief, simple, to the point, but covers all major point in a straightforward language which makes no assumptions of past knowledge.