I made a comment in a recent post which piqued many people’s interest…
Just don’t read Jung, unless you have a pathological need to not get real.
To explain a bit more…
It is not so much that Jung’s writings are so bad, or are not useful. It is rather that the act of allowing your mind to invest in Jung’s work, and he wrote an awful lot, will very likely block you from ever making much real change in your life.
By trying to articulate with such elaboration the psychological journey that the individual travels, from immaturity to adulthood, Jung commits two most heinous crimes.
Firstly, he creates the sense of their being a linear pathway that one can traverse that will take you to a place of psychological maturity and fulfilment. All you have to do is walk along, integrating your shadow, facing your past, blah, blah, blah.
Er, no. Deep psychological change is actually dialectical in nature. You are thrown from pillar to post, from one belief to its opposite. Your mind cannot plan its way through. This is what makes the process of change real.
Secondarily, by investing so much time in studying Jung’s writings, you risk your mind becoming so fascinated by his model of the inner journey that it never dares to take a step outside the path that he articulates. This, again, is an avoidance of the underlying dialectical nature of development.
Carl Jung is by no means the only offender in this realm. Another bit hitter is the dreadful Ken Wilbur.
Once again, it is not that Wilbur’s writings are so bad, or entirely without value. It is simply that if you’re going to read his stuff you need to be aware of the underlying issue with investing in a model of how development proceeds. All models fail. And indeed must fail. Or development is actually not possible.
If you feel an intellectual need to invest time in reading guys like Jung or Wilbur, fair enough. But just be aware of the risks.
It seems to me that a major reason that both authors fall into the trap you mention is that they were operating within the context of the modern scientific paradigm; which always seeks to explain any phenomena in linear models that are formulaically reproducible. Jung was of course a prominent figure in the emerging field of psychoanalysis, which sought to be scientifically respectable, and Wilber fancies himself a scientist of sorts. I am not saying it is the only factor, but it does seem like a big one. It also appears that older 'sciences' were much broader in scope with more room for their own flaws built within them.
There's a lot to say in response. The most important is this question: Which authors, living or dead, do you think offer the best ROI to readers inclined to metabolize what they read in ways that help them reclaim their time and energy to live the lives they want?