Marie-Louise von Franz on the puer aeternus... I'm reading it because my new analyst mentioned it to me, rather pointedly. The book is a bit embarrassing, because it is too much on the mark in many places. However, it is also brilliant, fascinating, intelligent as she always is. (Was: I would have loved to have known her.)
But I am simply moved to comment: near the beginning of chapter five, when she is starting to talk about the inferior function (i.e. thinking in feeling types, or the reverse) and about people trying, however clumsily, to use their inferior functions – she retails an increasingly hilarious satire of ineptitudes, told with her usual mordant rapid-fire style... it's really quite wonderful.
Now, you see: psychology can actually be quite funny....
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And the next day: the beginning of her book on projection is sinus-clearingly brilliant, electrically sharp, like a halogen light on something difficult. Though I confess not agreeing with every decision she makes...
And, peripherally, I remember something rather odd that I said in one of Tess Castleman's seminars in Küsnacht: that the importance of dreams in our lives is undeniable – because whatever their source, it is as though we all spent several hours, every single day of our lives, in a movie house where only surrealist and avant-garde films are shown; so of course their impact will be immense....
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