On Jung

Carl Jung's mother withdrew into depressive illness; his father, a pastor, lost his faith and suffered feelings of spiritual impotence. These influences, writes Stevens, made Jung ``a lifelong gnostic,'' an introspective quester who was driven to seek out forceful father-figures like Freud. Jung's love-at-first-sight encounter with his future wife, Emma Rauschenbach, was ``a classic case of anima projection.'' Stevens, a Jungian analyst and author of The Roots of War , sees Jung's midlife breakdown, a four-year descent into madness, as an archetypal journey of isolation, initiation and return. Brimming with fresh insights, this Jungian biography of Jung throws sharp light on the inner recesses of his psyche, showing how his personal makeup shaped the therapeutic system he created. Jung's ``psychology was also a cosmology,'' ascribing to the individual's life a divine or cosmic significance. Stevens relates Jung's ideas on individuation and the collective unconscious to this larger perspective. Photos. (July)