I have finished Freud in the interim and have now moved onto another classic psychoanalyst, one of Freud's own correspondents, Carl Gustav Jung (C.G. Jung or just plain ol' Jung). The book is simply, Dreams by C.G. Jung. It is a much shorter text than Freud but should not be considered inferior to Freud's. Jung has done an amazing amount of work to compile this book, "For many years I have carefully analysed [sic] about 2,000 dreams per annum, thus I have acquired a certain experience in this matter" (Jung, Dreams v).
I have not read very much of Jung yet, but at my point in the book, all Jung has done was introduce Freud and most of his ideas. Among them are dream-material and the censorship of that material in dreams through symbolism and the like. He also goes onto the idea of wish fulfillment. The overview Jung provides is very concise and isn't bloated with the various examples that Freud had in his book. Sure, Jung did not want to copy Freud entirely, but it's interesting to note that Jung, so far, has been able to make major points in such a short span of text.
Jung has also touched upon numbers, which I found quite ridiculous in Freud's text (everything he did to manipulate the numbers seemed random and spontaneous). Jung, on the other hand, is a little clearer on the topic of numbers. He openly admits that analyzing numbers can go too far, "It is difficult to say where the borderline of play [with number analysis] begins" i.e: he acknowledges that he, himself is not sure that his analyses are not out of scope or wildly illogical (Jung 17).
So far, I'm taking a liking to Jung (well...more than Freud...Jung is still rather difficult to read) since he has been concise so far and hasn't been extravagant with his examples.
1 comment:
That was a good transition between books. Great introduction of the new book, but there wasn't really much context in this post like there were in the previous posts, but I also understand that you have just started this new book and there's usually not much to say about the beginning of a book since it is mostly introduction. As I've said when we started this whole blogging project, the topic you have chosen is a difficult one due to the fact that many of the topics about it have already been covered, so I'm afraid you fall into repetition, so think about that when you post, I'm am sure you are intelligent enough to pull it off.
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