Reflections, Dreams, Memories

Jung's own words on his childhood, musings, and how his philosophy developed. His split from Freud, his interest in Asian spirituality and his concept of the shadow and why it is important for us, in a world where can destroy ourselves and our planet at the press of a button, to recognize that we all have a darker side. "How could this have happened?" is the response of a society in denial.

This paperback edition is very friendly to the reader. I have read Jung's memories many times in the las 25 years, finding something new an amazing every time I go back to them. I bought this one as a gift for my niece. Good buy.

Marianne Faithfull has put together passages of her life and times entwined with a host of well known and not so well known characters that make for riveting stories with a perceptive insight.

This book gives much more rounded details of the life that has been Faithfull's as compared to previous offerings. The Rolling Stones and 60's connections are here of course (the Beats and more contemporary fare as well), but there's so much more. Family, friends, Mariannne's indepth knowledge of history, literature, and music all figure in here and ultimately provide an understanding of why Marianne is who she is and where she's been. Also, why she is such a compelling musician and actor.

Marianne has lived life with a passion that can sometimes be scary, but is ultimately textured and is as grand as the lady's rich heritage.

The adoring fan base she has garnered over the years is well deserved and all of those fans will surely love this book. Others will too. Marianne is a hoot -- with beauty, intelligence and class.

I wonder if Britain and the British press realize what a treasure this lady is. I hope she's acting, singing, and writing for the next "20 years" she mentions toward this book's conclusion. Her work will be one of France's (or Ireland's) best exports.

Fantastic / all the missing pieces I've wanted to know / but the myth and magic of her rich rich life left intact . Marriane is as honest as a cool clear creek. And wow /can anyone match her life so far ? She understood what she was looking at . She knew these folks. Her insights are better than anyone's , she was there , and she puts you there .

Marianne Faithfull’s first autobiography, Faithfull, was published in 1994 and is a brilliant rock autobiography, probably something that just about anybody should read, as long as you can deal with the incredible self-absorption (hey, it’s a rock bio – what do you expect?). She followed it up with this book in 2008; sadly, though, it is simply not as good. It re-treads a lot of material as the first one (mommy and daddy’s doomed relationship is revisited, but without any new insights, other than “one of the reasons I was sent to the convent was so that my mother could have a sex life.”), but also tells interesting anecdotes of her grandfather and his Jewish wife in Vienna, so dipping back into the past is not all wrong! Finally moving ahead in time, it deals quite superficially with events that have come up in the years in between, which includes health issues (most importantly the fortunate, fluke-y just-in-time discovery of deadly cancer – Al Jourgensen had the same luck), friends dying, recording sessions, acting, and more tours. She also dwells on the Beats, her appreciation of them, and of experiencing the passing of William Burroughs, (hero or monster?), Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.

The chapters are all over the place, some of which are devoted to a single friend’s memory (for Caroline Blackwood, Henrietta Moraes, Juliette Greco and Gregory Corso she becomes a sort of “Speaker for the dead”, a la the Orson Scott Card book in his Ender series, which I have just finished reading – which I guess is what happens when people get old and survive their friends, family, acquaintances), and one chapter covers her surreal conversation with Fabulous Beast (herself). Being a proto-goth, she gets gloomy too. “I think the apocalypse will appear for far more banal reasons than [the end of the Mayan calendar]: war, pestilence, famine, and global warming. And rampant greed. And, of course, sheer incompetence. It ain’t gonna get any better. I just hope my grandchildren get to see the world I grew up in and know what a tree is. It’s tragic, I know. I’m beginning to sound like a complete curmudgeon – but I am a curmudgeon! And now I see how curmudgeons get to be that way. This world sucks!”

She also goes back to the Sixties a lot in the text (and even more so in the pictures section), talking about how beautiful and stoned everyone was, but how the Sixties were really just a weak version of the Fifties, which she was too young to be involved with until later in life when she moved in with the Beats. “Being with George (Harrison) and Pattie (Boyd) was very relaxing. Mick and I were able to lie back on Moroccan cushions, get high and float away listening to George’s new songs.” She claims that Mick Jagger had nothing to do with the writing of “Ruby Tuesday”, despite getting a writing credit, but that Brian Jones had a large hand in it (more than any other Stones song), it “was a collaboration between Keith and Brian. Without Brian there wouldn’t be a ‘Ruby Tuesday’.” She talks about the Joe Orton play “Up Against It” that they were trying to cast the Beatles to make a movie of, which would have been edgy, and potentially career-destroying, but for which they may have built up enough popularity and credibility to pull off. In it, “the Archbishop of Canterbury turns out to be a woman, the [Beatles] get dressed up as women, commit adultery and murder, and are involved in the assassination of the Prime Minister.” Hmmm… tantalizing to think about what may have been, or if Mick Jagger and Ian McKellan had taken it up afterwards, as is the legend! (Orton was murdered by his gay lover, inspiring the Beatles song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”).

We learn weird tidbits throughout, some of which complement the first book; for example, it seems that she lost all ability to speak French after her near-OD in Australia and six-day coma. Interesting, she also gets to sing an unused Roger Waters song from 1968, "Incarceration of a Flower Child". She gets catty with Paul McCartney, and Mick in a sort of backwards way. “Whatever we thought of Linda – and she didn’t make that great an impression on me – I think it was a credit to Paul that he didn’t marry a model. A module. Because that’s what all the others have ended up doing, they’ve married these modules. And they have children who also become modules.” Of course, Mick, Keith and Ron all married/allied with models/former models, and some of their kids have become models now too! “There was a lot of dark, creepy stuff in the sixties, I can tell you: The Process, Mel Lyman, Manson, Anton LaVey, and L Ron Hubbard. Those people were always trying to get hold of me. Somehow I managed to negotiate my way around them quite successfully. I didn’t get involved in any cults, apart from going up to Bangor for that regrettable weekend with the Maharishi and the Beatles, the weekend that Brian Epstein killed himself.” Inspection of Brian Epstein, inspection of Spanish Tony’s Vesuvio (“like all dealers, he didn’t consider himself just a dealer, he wanted to be something else, something a bit more grand, a maitre d’ to the hipoisie; thus the Vesuvio”), and regret about ever having anything to do with Kenneth Anger (she had played Lilith, “a cemetery-haunting female demon” in his film Lucifer Rising; “dabbling in the occult has a nasty way of casting its baleful influence long after you have left the scene – and accumulating vengeful force along the way”).

But things were much different then for privileged people like Faithfull. “The artistic community, even in the sixties, was very small. ‘The Sixties’ was actually a very few people. In the sixties you could go up to the Stones’ Maddox Street office and tell Mick some crazy idea you had and he’s listen to you – not that he’d probably do much about it, or Paul at Wimpole Street, but today it would be beyond belief what you’d have to do – apart from the fact that you wouldn’t want to! There’d be fourteen lawyers prancing, seven accountants simpering, managers mulling, minders, minions, middle-men, media mentors, marketeers.” The book is incredibly chatty, and at times the author doesn’t even try to cover up that this was all narrated to him: “”When I hear Gregory laughing while I’m reading his poetry on the album – which you must get – I see Gregory rise up with his wicked puckish grin, a wild jail kid, but so sweet.” At one point she even gets someone else to tell the story!

It is with great envy that I read about her collaboration with Nick Cave (!!), the Bad Seeds, and PJ Harvey (!!). Unfortunately, her chapter on Before The Poison, the recording where she collaborates with them, is brief, and she really doesn’t talk much about other musicians! Happily she also mentions being in Singapore, staying at the Raffles Hotel, and walking around the corner in search of an opium den to hang out on Bugis Street (also called “Boogie Street”, according to the local pronunciation, which Leonard Cohen wrote a book about), and nearly getting killed by the tough punks who used to hang out there (times have changed - now it’s a youth hang-out). And with drugs she’s still unrepentant, willing to find some good there. “I’m not prepared to feel that everything I’ve done in the last ten years is wrong. I am ready to admit that my body prefers it when I don’t drink, but I'm not sure about the rest of me! I’m convinced that there’s something in us deep down that needs a break from the regular life. My theory is that by keeping yourself just slightly off the straight and narrow you can avoid all sorts of things perhaps major things, that otherwise could spell trouble. I know that when I’ve been in top form, off drink and whatever, it’s then that I can get into all sorts of trouble – sexual pickles and all that stuff. I’ve even been known to marry the wrong person soon after sobering up.”

Of course, none of this changes that fact that we’re hearing all of this from the Marianne Faithfull, who along with Michelle Phillips became the vision of hippy chick beauty and youth. The fact that she’s aged like a wine into this incredible songbird is also a stunning achievement of someone who has really had it all, on both sides of the coin. What a life!!

The pictures are great, and the book even has an index!

This book reads much like diary- remembrances of friends and events, as though Ms. Faithfull is reconstructing the puzzle of her life. She holds nothing back- whether rcalling the joys of her relationships or re-evaluating the difficult times, observing what can only be seen clearly in the mirror of hindsight. Though she writes her memoir from a personal level, her experiences help understand the social conditions of society during her lifetime. She writes as though she is telling her story for posterity, a letter to her inner child, honestly facing her humanity in a way most of us never will.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
First, I found myself relating to his questions and observations about God, church, family and individuality.
The honesty, within the scientific language, had me laughing. These were good laughs. A release arose from me as I continued with this book. It became a deeply moving experience, and I am somewhat sad that I’ve finished it.
Philosophy is a place where I’ve felt the most safe and the most love, in my life’s experiences. Jung has been a fortifying energy throughout a lengthy illness that I’m dealing with.
It seems all the “things” I thought I was alone in experiencing, are universal. Why I didn’t discover this sooner, I don’t know, and regret.
I am a better person for having experienced this book. It’s honest, brilliant, dreamy, substantial and solid. It’s what I call “a living book” and those are rare.
I missed a few chapters, because I fell asleep. Which gives me an excuse to listen to it again. I’m hoping those few missed chapters, that were towards the end, will help me make sense of the last three chapters. I got a little lost, but I wonder if Jung did too. I would have enjoyed more about his correspondence with Freud. I greatly dislike Freud’s “contributions” to modern day therapeutic modalities. And for many of the same reasons Jung describes.
A good book changes world view, it encourages personal growth, and stays with a person, indefinitely. It opens mind- doors, not only answering questions, but raising equally important ones. This book accomplishes all of the above.

This is an interesting book. Very baroque and odd. However, Jung, and his followers despise scientific investigation of their work. It scares away their mojo or woo. Makes one think of a psychic claiming there's a doubter in the room, and this prevents their connection to the psychic realm. Sounds like pretty unreliable science. For instance, "In consideration of Z's connection to the anima, shadow content, blah, blah, blah. I had Mr. Z go see a prostitute, this healed him." The whole story probably is more like: Mr. Z came back said he felt better, went back to his life, his marriage was ruined. He stopped seeing Dr. X, the Jungian, who wrote up that his client was healed. Jungians seem to excel at destroying marriages, women and children be damned. Famous real world examples: Augusten Burroughs mother's analyst in "Running with Scissors", a Jungian. Another, Prof. Harry A. Murray, Jungian psychoanalyst who for experimental reasons, tortured Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber) for a total of 2,000 hours at Harvard when Ted was a freshman, a teenager, an awkward mathematical genius, who was away from home at a very young age. See Harvard's archives they probably have the audio tapes if you have the stomach for it. I don't doubt most Jungians want to help, I think they're very unprofessional and misled. That is my personal experience, it cost me hope, money and time.

This book will take you on a very unusual journey through the mind of one of the most important people on human psychology in history - father of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung.

The book that is not easy to read even though it supposed to be an autobiography. And it is, just most of the times it looks like an unusual biography and seems like it was written about the life within the author's mind. This book is my first meeting with C. G. Jung and I should admit that there were parts where I didn't understand exactly what he had in mind. Probably I will have to read it once more in a few years after I'll read more of his works. But I liked it, because it portrays very interesting personality, who spend all his life studying human psychology and basically creating most of today well know psychology works and practices. I am very interested in psychology and it's always very interesting to know the basics.

What is interesting in this book, that you can be acquainted with both parts of Jung's life - his life events and his inner life, his mind and thoughts. Both parts are very interesting - his childhood, early years, school, studies, work as a psychiatrist, relationships, trips and so on. Another part is more difficult and as I mentioned above it's not so easy to perceive. Jung talks about his dreams, visions, reflections, that sometimes really seem very crazy. That's why this personality is so interesting to me.

I believe you should be ready to read this book and probably you will have to read it couple of times in couple of year's period. If you are interested in human psychology, behavior and philosophical personalities, I believe you will like this book as well.

I will finish my review with one of Jung's thoughts that caught my eye in the end: "We become lonely not when we don't have close people, but when we can't share things with them that seems important to us or when we hold on the attitude that is not acceptable to others".

This book, an autobiography, for which we can thank Aiela Jaffe since it was her initiative and her project, provides raw material for an understanding of Jung's work, which otherwise would be much more daunting to approach. It provides personal reminiscences not of events of his outward, public life, but of those memories and dreams that he recognized as bedrock to his thinking. Also quite helpful and quite relevant is a glossary of the key concepts such as archetype, anima and animus, unconscious, persona, self, mandala, and synchronicity. Important terms missing from this list include ego and psyche.

The two concepts that are of central concern are the unconscious and the archetype. In the course of his psychiatric activities Jung found it necessary to delve into his own unconscious. He underlines the fact that the encounters with the unconscious it was imperative that he not allow himself to be cut off from the rest of the world. For that, he had his family to thank. He felt compelled to turn the energies of the psyche into images so that whatever it was that was making it's way into his consciousness could be identified and therefore made less threatening. For that, he delved into the symbols of mythology and identified archetypes. He focuses especially on the Christian culture of the Western world, which was his heritage, drawing prominently from Gnostic and Alchemist sources. Also playing a role in his heritage is the Germanic spirit, which for him is epitomized in Goethe's Faust myth, something that he repudiates.

Jung is reluctant to embrace Indian or Buddhist philosophy, particularly the negation of the Will. He did not set out to quench the outpouring of energy from the unconscious, but rather to make it a part of consciousness and to understand what it had to tell him. He used yoga exercises during the time when he was especially struggling, but he relates that they were only for calming himself.

The substance of his ideas is drawn from what he gleaned from his intuition concerning myths and dreams based on empirical knowledge that he gathered from patients and himself. He is very critical of excessive rationality: that view which refuses to accept anything beyond what is tangibly known. Such a point of view tends to make a person materialistic, possessive, and oriented toward the short term. In losing sight of the confines of the self - the real limits of the self vis-a-vis the universe, a person becomes incapable of orienting toward the infinite.

As a psychology teacher, I have used Memories, Dreams and Reflections many times as a primary or secondary textbook. My first foray into Jung was while working on my Masters thesis in Psychology in a treatise entitled Levels of Mind. Essentially what I did was start with Freud's model of a Conscious, Preconscious and Unconscious and then delve into Jung's Collective Unconscious which I linked to FWH Myers' idea of the Universal Mind (which predated Jung).

I had a friend in graduate school who was a Jung freak, and he had his Collected Works. Resembling a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it encompassed thousands of pages! However, Jung kept M, D & R separate and would not allow its publication during his lifetime. One could say it is an autobiography, but what is really is, is an exploration of his unconscious. The only other major person that is discussed in this masterwork is Sigmund Freud, who Jung had a love/hate relationship with.

Their rift, which is discussed in detail herein, concerned the role of the Oedipal complex in people's lives. Freud thought the complex was central, because he, himself suffered from its consequences. Jung describes how Freud fainted several times when the topic of father/murder came up, and in one instance, Jung himself carried Freud into another room and placed him on a couch just as Freud awoke.

Jung then later discusses his famous dream which he told Freud of a four-story house with a sub-basement while they were on a boat headed to Clark University in 1909. At the bottom of the second basement were two skulls, and Freud wanted to know who those two skulls were. Of course, on one level, they stood for Jung and Freud, and the theme of father/murder was apparent, because, in a symbolic sense, Jung needed to kill off Freud so that his expanded theory could take hold. At least, that's probably how Freud saw the dream. But Jung resisted that idea, and so, in Jung's own words, he lied to Freud and said that they stood for his wife and mother-in-law.

Jung also discusses in great depth the Shadow, which is an expanded version of Freud's Id, our animal nature, but also the predator in us. Jung is asking the BIG QUESTIONS, "Why does man have to kill and why do we have to die?" The answers, of course, are unknowable. We humans cannot truly comprehend the depth and complexity of our existence. Thus, the Shadow is much more than the id. It is our unconscious, the part of us that is unknowable, and more than that, it is our route to connecting to God, and/or the entity or energy that created us and that communicates to us in dreams.

This book is ESSENTIAL READING. It doesn't get any heavier than this. However, in my book Where Does Mind End?: A Radical History of Consciousness and the Awakened Self I take issue with Jung's interpretation of his break-up with Freud, for I contend that Jung chose his wife and mother-in-law to stand for the two skulls for a psychoanalytic reason. If we look at it as a Freudian slip, why would Jung wish these two ladies (symbolically) dead? I also discuss, in depth, the full range of Freud's theories and the probable real cause for Freud's Oedipal complex and Jung's wish or need to minimize its importance. I highly recommend Memories, Dreams & Reflections. It is an amazing journey into the psyche of one of the greatest minds of our times.

At one point in the largely fascinating hodgepodge of his remiscences, musings, and summings-up of his life and work, aka "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," Jung makes a startling admission, the implications of which, if he notices at all, go unremarked upon. That is, Jung describes the development of his psychoanalytic system as driven by his desire to fit his own experiences--many of them unconventional, inexplicable, if not downright paranormal--into some order of normality. "I may be insane," he might well be saying, "but if I can fit my experiences into a coherent template and demonstrate that a lot of other people's experiences can also be explained thereby, then I am perfectly sane."

This attitude doesn't invalidate Jung at all; it merely honestly affirms the solipsistic basis of all our so-called rational thought. We use reason to rationalize how we intrinsically are the way a lawyer uses argument to defend a murderer. Nothing wrong with that...especially when someone is brilliant enough to come up with an explanation that rationalizes--and thereby normalizes--a good deal of the rest of us in the process.

This celebrated book is not so much an autobiography, it's not even completely written by Jung, but sort of cobbled together from a variety of source material, some of it by Jung, some of it transcriptions of what Jung said, all of it, we're assured, overseen by Jung and given his imprimatur of approval. Jung himself makes it clear that this book isnt to be taken as strictly biographical inasmuch as he believed, quite rightly, that autobiography inevitably becomes either hagiography or apologia.

By way of contrast, what Jung does here is give an account of the major events of his life, (including his psychic life--the dreams, visions, etc) that shaped his work. As a result, "Memories, Deams, Reflections" is a curious blend of intimacy and impersonality. Jung divulges the content of some of his most harrowing dreams, but at the same time he manages to give away almost nothing of his personal life with family, friends, lovers, etc.

I find it puzzling that where psychoanalysis is still considered seriously at all, it's dealt with in almost strictly Freudian terms, as if Freud's bacon hasnt already been fried and refried, his water carried and carried back, enough times already. Jung is saying something entirely different than Freud, something, it would seem, far more cogent to our times than Freud's reductionist psychological materialism, which seems now so much a product of the late 19th century. Is the relative marginalization of Jung a judgment passed by the academic elite that Jung, always abundantly more popular, especially among New Age types, is considered a bit of a crackpot, a pseudo-scientific fabulist akin to a Tolkein or a C.S. Lewis, a mystico-literary curiosity suited more for artists and occultists, and not for serious-minded medical men?

Jung is often derided as a god-obsessed, would-be prophet of the New Aeon (as opposed to Freud's scientific atheism), but a careful reading of Jung's reflections in this book shows the matter to be quite different. What Jung tried to point out is that the "god-need" in our psyche is real, even if god, per se, is not. Human beings have a need for "religion" almost as desperate as their need for air. And if it isnt Judaism or Islam or Christianity that satisfies this need it'll be something else, like Marxism, Fascism, Scientology, Environmentalism, Statism, Satanism or any one of the ten-thousand-and-one "self-evident truths" that people will cook up in order to provide a transcendent meaning to their lives. One look at the rabidity of some radical green activists, for instance, is enough to convince you that worship of God has been replaced in their minds by worship of Mother Earth, and the violent fanaticism that led to Inquisitions and Crusades in the one instance is never far from the surface in the other. Our age has its sacred cows just like any other and those who dont worship them are subject to ridicule and ostracism just like they've always been.

Wherever one god is overturned, another rushes in to claim his place. The throne is never left empty for long. Our psyche, it seems, abhors a god-vacuum.

This is an important insight into liberating ourselves from the notion that we now stand liberated from the need for god. That notion, perhaps more than any other, has led to some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

What Jung points out more than anything else is the limits of reason, boundary beyond which science cannot go. The psyche, he argues, has its own reality and its own needs and they cannot always be squared with what is reasonable or scientific. During a period of intellectual history in which we've been led to believe that science could provide us with verifiable answers to all our questions if only we were clever enough to understand them, Jung's insistence that there exists a class of "truth" that cannot be categorically proven-- except, perhaps, by gathering evidence of its traces in what is common in our dreams, histories, and cultural artifacts--must almost by the definition of "science" be regarded as a form of mystification.

Thus, Jung's rather ill-deserved reputation as a "mystic," "prophet," and "sage." If he were any of those things, it was only incidentally. As "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" amply points out, Jung approached his project with intellectual and scientific rigor, even to the point beyond which science, and to some extent, intellect itself, could not go. At that point, he rather courageously refused to dismiss what could only be limned darkly and sought instead "proof" that it might well exist in the abiding need we have for it to exist. Jung is something of an archaelogist of the psyche. He searches for traces at the bottoms of consciousness, he reconstructs the bones of giants (the Archetypes), and he identifies their evolutionary descendants in our own shifting times.

If god were a brontosaurus long extinct, he's left his tracks in the ossified mud of the lower layers of our brain. No one may ever have seen a brontosaurus in the flesh, but something left those tracks, something left those bones, something Big.

If Jung is a "Christian" as he's often maligned to be, than he's the sort of Christian who would have been burned at the stake. Jung's idea of "Christianity" is one of perpetual heresy, of a "god" in a constant state of development--an idea that he took a lot of heat for in his book "Answer to Job." Jung's notion of religion was always, first-and-foremost, one that demanded an on-going personal relationship between the individual and whatever he might conceive as "god." In the absence of such a relationship, man's connection with god withers; when god stops growing and religion stops developing than Christianity (in this case) ossifies and dies, just like any other mythology

Well, Im in Florida at the moment, in a hotel room, lying next to my boyfriend--its nearly 6pm and we've been out all day. I think I'll give him a massage; altho he might have drifted off to sleep, in which case, I'll let him nap for a while. Anyway, while I'm off taking care of that, I really think you should begin reading "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"--its gotten me back into Jung and reminded me of why I used to love him so much. I've started drawing mandalas; I'm whistling a happy tune; even my coffee tastes fresher. Thank you Carl Gustav Jung!

This riveting sequel to 1994's Faithfull is less formal and detailed, a series of vignettes of people, places, movies, plays & music rather than a structured narrative. The first chapter deals with some unexpected, funny and frightening reactions to the first book. Along the way, her observations serve as a captivating history of popular culture since the 1960s. Yes, there are flashbacks; Marianne revisits her family background, childhood impressions and many interesting personalities and scenarios from the 60s and beyond.

She writes with candor about her long relationship with drugs but the most arresting parts are those in which she affectionately remembers friends and acquaintances, living and departed, like the author Caroline Blackwood (who was briefly married to the confessional poet Robert Lowell), Henrietta Moraes, Roman Polanski and the legendary Beat writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Fans of her music will love the three chapters devoted to the recording of specific albums: Vagabond Ways of 1999, Kissin' Time of 2002 and Before the Poison, released in 2004.

The most absorbing flashbacks to the 1960s include reminiscences of the young Beatles, Stones, Brian Epstein, Andrew Oldham, Joe Orton and albums like Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, Ram & Tea for the Tillerman. She shares with Bob Dylan an ambivalence towards the sixties, claiming that 1950s bohemia was more authentic with e.g. the Beats and the decade's jazz masterpieces, so unlike the mass bohemia of the next decade which resulted in much tragedy and wretched excess. Yes, and rock `n roll was born although she doesn't mention the phenomenon.

The chapter My Life as a Magpie is a brief filmography; Marianne performed in films & TV series like Absolutely Fabulous, The Black Rider, Marie Antoinette, Irina Palm, Moondance, Shopping, Intimacy, Paris je t'aime, Lucifer Rising and Girl on a Motorcycle amongst others. One of the most enjoyable features of the book is her knowledge of and appreciation of art & literature. The text is enhanced by references to Blake, Francis Bacon, Boccaccio, Brecht, Cocteau, Dante, Flaubert, Lucian Freud, Horace, Keats, Kerouac, Lowell, Maimonides, Marlowe, Murdoch, Petrarch, Pope, Rimbaud, Sartre, Shelley, Verlaine and Welles, to mention a few.

Less famous authors, actors and directors that she appreciates plus books & movies that she finds noteworthy are introduced with interesting anecdotes or brief descriptions. These include Juliette Greco, Mick Brown, Frank Wedekind, Roberto Calasso, Philip Pullman, John Cooper Powys, Pretty Baby, Les Enfants du Paradis, Innocence, The Third Man and Manon des Sources. The chapter on Decadence with reference to Huysmans' "A Rebours" made me laugh out loud due to its subversive view of nature as measured against the Zeitgeist. The protagonist finds the artificial more appealing than the organic, praising two steam locomotives whilst dismissing nature's `disgusting sameness.' Another heresy is Marianne's rejection of the artist's self-destructive Romantic urge as infantile.

Two sets of plates, one at the beginning and another in the middle, contain 29 full-color and black & white photographs; the book concludes with an index. Although the aforementioned autobiography titled Faithfull is informative and entertaining, the spontaneity of this sequel makes it the more appealing of the two. In Marianne, the wisdom of age emerges hand-in-hand with the most delightful humor. I enjoyed this sparkling read; it is as amusing as the James Young biography of Nico, Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio, but significantly more thought-provoking. Currently out of print, Marianne Faithfull: As Tears Go By is a revealing biography by Mark Hodkinson that charts Marianne's life and career up to 1991.

This riveting sequel to 1994's Faithfull is less formal and detailed, a series of vignettes of people, places, movies, plays & music rather than a structured narrative. The first chapter deals with some unexpected, funny and frightening reactions to the first book. Along the way, her observations serve as a captivating history of popular culture since the 1960s. Yes, there are flashbacks; Marianne revisits her family background, childhood impressions and many interesting personalities and scenarios from the 60s and beyond.

She writes with candor about her long relationship with drugs but the most arresting parts are those in which she affectionately remembers friends and acquaintances, living and departed, like the author Caroline Blackwood (who was briefly married to the confessional poet Robert Lowell), Henrietta Moraes, Roman Polanski and the legendary Beat writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Fans of her music will love the three chapters devoted to the recording of specific albums: Vagabond Ways of 1999, Kissin' Time of 2002 and Before the Poison, released in 2004.

The most absorbing flashbacks to the 1960s include reminiscences of the young Beatles, Stones, Brian Epstein, Andrew Oldham, Joe Orton and albums like Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, Ram & Tea for the Tillerman. She shares with Bob Dylan an ambivalence towards the sixties, claiming that 1950s bohemia was more authentic with e.g. the Beats and the decade's jazz masterpieces, so unlike the mass bohemia of the next decade which resulted in much tragedy and wretched excess. Yes, and rock `n roll was born although she doesn't mention the phenomenon.

The chapter My Life as a Magpie is a brief filmography; Marianne performed in films & TV series like Absolutely Fabulous, The Black Rider, Marie Antoinette, Irina Palm, Moondance, Shopping, Intimacy, Paris je t'aime, Lucifer Rising and Girl on a Motorcycle amongst others. One of the most enjoyable features of the book is her knowledge of and appreciation of art & literature. The text is enhanced by references to Blake, Francis Bacon, Boccaccio, Brecht, Cocteau, Dante, Flaubert, Lucian Freud, Horace, Keats, Kerouac, Lowell, Maimonides, Marlowe, Murdoch, Petrarch, Pope, Rimbaud, Sartre, Shelley, Verlaine and Welles, to mention a few.

Less famous authors, actors and directors that she appreciates plus books & movies that she finds noteworthy are introduced with interesting anecdotes or brief descriptions. These include Juliette Greco, Mick Brown, Frank Wedekind, Roberto Calasso, Philip Pullman, John Cooper Powys, Pretty Baby, Les Enfants du Paradis, Innocence, The Third Man and Manon des Sources. The chapter on Decadence with reference to Huysmans' "A Rebours" made me laugh out loud due to its subversive view of nature as measured against the Zeitgeist. The protagonist finds the artificial more appealing than the organic, praising two steam locomotives whilst dismissing nature's `disgusting sameness.' Another heresy is Marianne's rejection of the artist's self-destructive Romantic urge as infantile.

Two sets of plates, one at the beginning and another in the middle, contain 29 full-color and black & white photographs; the book concludes with an index. Although the aforementioned autobiography titled Faithfull is informative and entertaining, the spontaneity of this sequel makes it the more appealing of the two. In Marianne, the wisdom of age emerges hand-in-hand with the most delightful humor. I enjoyed this sparkling read; it is as amusing as the James Young biography of Nico, Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio, but significantly more thought-provoking. Currently out of print, Marianne Faithfull: As Tears Go By is a revealing biography by Mark Hodkinson that charts Marianne's life and career up to 1991.

One of my all time favorites. Jung is deep stuff. A lot of it is too dense and deep for easy reading. His autobiography, however, is not that way. It is filled with inspiring tidbits and incredible images from the man who changed psychological thought. A treasure trove and a chance to get a glimpse of this important man in his own words.

For anyone interested in learning about Jungian psychology, this book is a perfect introduction to Carl Jung. It is extremely readable and deeply rich with wisdom. This book is a summation of Jung's personal thoughts and insights about the different phases of his psychological work and life completed towards the end of his life.

Jung discusses psychiatry as a relatively new science and that his belief that psychology is all about psychic energy. Because of this awareness, Jung believed that peoples' drives are energetic processes and the unconscious itself is a psychic process. He describes his own first-hand observance with the paranormal and because of that experience why he believed there are events that overstep space, time and the process of cause and effect.

As an avid Dreamworker myself, I loved how Jung discusses the importance of giving shape to our secret inner expressions, creative energies or archetypes that emerge from the unconscious especially through dreams. In this book, Jung relates experiencing archetypes within is a process the individual goes through that is similar to an ancient alchemical process.

I think many readers will find his description of the process of disorientation and loss of footing from a strong and rigid ego-based life to a Self or soul based-life through the process of individuation and working with the unconscious is a natural process as a huge relief through understanding the process better.

Personally, I found his book exceptional and as someone interested in dreamwork and Jungian psychology this book was an important foundational reading for my own future work in this field. Anyone who struggles with established expectations in terms of vocation will enjoy reading about how Jung said that varied subjects actually corresponds to out natural inner dichotomy. Anyone interested in ancestor work will enjoy reading about his validation of the importance of that work to bring inner harmony within a person. One of the most important phrases in the book I found and need to continue to ponder myself in doing inner psychological work was the idea that "questions and demands which destiny required of me did not come from the outside."

Jamieson Haverkampf
Author of Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent and current Dream Group Leader student at The Haden Institute
Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent
Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent

More than any other work in his oeuvre, Carl Jung's biography, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' (1961) takes the reader inside the mind of the eminent Swiss psychologist. Jung was both a self-admitted gnostic and an introvert, and this very personal account of his life, which he was completing at the time of his death, is correspondingly subjective in tone.

Jung had a difficult but remarkable childhood, to which he devotes a substantial portion of the text. Both blessed and plagued by heretical visions which he was unprepared to understand or interpret (among them: God defecating on a cathedral; an enormous cyclopean phallus enthroned in a subterranean chamber), Jung also found himself unable to seek advice from his father, a country parson suffering from a crisis of faith, or his mother, whom Jung believed to have a weird and "uncanny" "second personality" which only emerged at night. In time, the awkward young Carl came to believe that he had a guiding "second personality" of his own, which he perceived to belong to a mature and intellectually accomplished man of 18th century Europe (as an adult, Jung would adopt another "psychic being," whom he called "Philemon," as his personal "daimon," mentor, and guide). Already tending temperamentally towards remove from others, these experiences only acerbated Jung's boyhood sense of rural backwardness, loneliness, and social isolation.

Due to both its subjective nature and the enormous scope of Jung's experiences and speculative beliefs, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' is the sort of book that hardline scientists and skeptics may scoff at, especially since Jung is largely concerned with discovering the liminal crossroads where objective truth, physical law, spirituality, and human psychology converge. Throughout his life, he also placed a tremendous value on the meaning of personal and collective dreams, both those he considered merely informational as well as those he considered prophetic and of a collective nature.

Throughout the volume, anecdotes abound of seances, extrasensory perception, automatic writing, "poltergeist" phenomena, "meaningful coincidences," alchemy, visitations from the dead, unidentified flying objects (which Jung, who never claimed to actually glimpse one, did not believe to be vehicles from other planets, though he didn't absolutely rule out the possibility), alternate dimensions, the Holy Grail, and, in one bizarre episode, a seemingly endless parade of merry-making phantom boys who pass by his lakeside home in the dead of night. Though Jung interprets this particular "haunting" in terms of local history, it's remarkable that he, who believes "the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays," doesn't consider the trooping fairies of Celtic and Germanic folklore as any equally likely explanation.

In another incident, he and companion, while traveling in Italy, spend hours admiring the interior of a cathedral, only to discover later that the mosaics they found so unforgettably beautiful did not exist, and never had existed.

As unlikely a collection of first or secondhand experiences as the anecdotes may represent, Jung never allows his narrative to lose its tight focus or relate these incidences to his larger theme: the nature, development, and evolution of human consciousness. However, in genuine gnostic fashion, he is quick to remind his readership that human perception is always ultimately subjective, and that, while "facts" certainly exist, no man can claim to know what the absolute truth is about any facet of reality.

'Memories, Dreams, Reflections,' which was completed from notes after Jung's death by associate Aniela Jaffe, does not pretend to be a work of science (and, appropriately, is not an official volume in Jung's Collected Works), and is in fact far more concerned with ethics, spirituality, faith, and consciousness. One of the book's greatest achievements is its narrative power, which never flags, no matter how potentially obtuse the point is that its author is attempting to make. Throughout, Jung's tone is also uniformly humble and sincere, and his conviction in his beliefs, electrifying.

Jung's ultimate message for mankind and mankind's future is clear: "Man's task...is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

Despite the billing, this is not exactly a traditional autobiography (though Jung's childhood, early adulthood and personal life are discussed). There are 12 chapters, a retrospect and an appendix (including letters and "Seven Sermons to the Dead") in this book. Most of the text was written by his biographer Aniela Jaffé through conversations with Jung. Jaffe also functioned as an editor who was accused of censoring some of Jung's more controversial ideas on Christianity. While the focus is on Jung it is not a full recounting of Jung's life story. Some reviewers have commented that Jung's family life isn't discussed much. There are many things we still do not know about the enigma that was Dr. Jung. At the time Jung's family wanted to keep his private life away from the public. With the release of The Red Book, we can go even deeper into Jung's experiences and beliefs than is provided in this text. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is ultimately a very interesting exploration of Jung's psyche. Jung draws on a variety of mythological and mystery traditions to support his therapeutic ideas and practices. The book has remained in print since 1963. For an intro to Jung, I would recommend Modern Man in Search of a Soul or Man and His Symbols instead. Film fans may appreciate, "A Dangerous Method" directed by David Cronenberg, which describes the turbulent relationships between Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein (a former patient of Jung's, a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts).

Buy this book.