What Is Wrong with Jung?

By Don McGowan

In this detailed and systematic critique of the theories of psychologist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Don McGowan exposes the many flaws in Jungian analysis and methodology. Beginning with Jung's interpretation of religion and his attempts to draw parallels between mythology and his patients' dreams, McGowan finds a consistent lack of rigor, a highly selective use of evidence, and a tendency toward broad generalization, which ignores important cultural distinctions.Jung's popular theory of the collective unconscious is especially criticized as an example of over-interpretation and a failure to examine the diversity of cultural evidence. His proposed archetypes, derived from a narrow and rather biased study of Indo-European cultures, may reflect nothing more than patterns of cultural conditioning, argues McGowan, and not some universal substructure of the human mind, as Jung suggests.In Jung's ideas about the "blond beast" and other "innate" characteristics of various races, McGowan detects disturbing echoes of Alfred Rosenberg, the German Nazi Party's chief ideologist; and his attitude toward women, by today's standards, is decidedly sexist - all of which makes his continuing popularity in the politically correct 1990's difficult to understand.Despite these fundamental problems in Jungian analysis, McGowan points out that some of Jung's ideas have enduring scientific value. Jung's contrasting categories of extraversion and introversion, and his thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting personality types are based on empirical observations.What Is Wrong With Jung? is the only critique of Jung's work that does not attempt to promote another school of psychological analysis in place of the Jungian approach. McGowan's objective, thorough, and very readable presentation will be of interest to critics and advocates of Jung alike.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879758597
• ISBN13: 9780879758592
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Intellectual muscle as a means of survival

Don McGowan is becoming the eminence grise of Intellectual Muscle movement while remaining its enfant terrible -still capable of confounding his audience with new twists and turns in his work. McGowan's work has always been analytical, but in recent years his work morphed from the analysis of Jung toward the psychological, specifically Freudian, kind. For some time now, he has recycled the texts of Jung into muscular pieces that resemble sculpted post modern works that often boggle the mind and eye. The strength of McGowan's work resides in his ability to compress radical and imense ideas into puny pieces of magma, one that the viewer wants to hold, yet cannot due to weight and temperature considerations. Against all odds, McGowan's journey concludes with seemingly random thoughts twisted and turned back to which it began, with only an elbow to the guy who wrote the bad review in '01.

The sweet aroma of a work of art !

The seminal critique of Jung's work. Quite simply a hilarious analysis of one of the most overrated thinkers of our society.McGowan hits hard and often, but always with unique panache that will invariably leave readers gasping for more. If you only have time to read one book about Jung, this has to be it.McGowan avoids the pitfalls that all too often accompany a treatise of this magnitude by injecting some badly needed levity and perspective to the subject. Bravo I say!

Improves with age!

McGowan is an inventor, academic, public servant, mentor, cultural hero, eminence gris and grand visionary whose critically acclaimed account of Jung has improved with the test of time making it the de rigueur bible on the subject.Like a fine wine McGowan's arguments improve with age. In the 20th century McGowan's truly significant attainments became lost in the mass of the inconsequential and reached the few that were capable of comprehending his genius.McGowan's arguments have hitherto reasserted their relevance in the Internet Age. We are used to people who excel in one era. McGowan excels in all of them.It's localism plus globalism. It's smart typewriters and information workers and electronic banking. It's the push for decentralization. At one end it's the space shuttle - at the other the search for individual identity. It's flex-time and robots and the rising militancy of mankind. It's the combined impact of all these forces converging on and shattering our traditional industrial way of life. Above all, it's the acceleration of change, itself, which marks our moment in history.So buy the book!

McGowan hits hard...and well

This is certainly a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in the works of Yung. The subject matter is analysed in a logical and reader-friendly fashion. Add McGowan's great sense of humor and you have yourself one fantastic book.

Excellent!

I found that this book is an exceptional reference on Jong. It is much more insightful than Steven Nerdelyi's book on a similar subject.