Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is less complicated than most of Jung's other writings and really explains the man Carl Jung. I highly recommend the book to anyone studying Jung. I would also recommend the book an Encounter With A Prophet.
Rating:
Summary: the power...
Review: This is a warning to anyone who reads this book. Yes, the book is excellent. Yes, it contains invaluable thoughts from Jung. Yes, it is a must read for any Jungian or anyone else for that matter. However, there is something that should be taken special note of. If, when reading the first few chapters on his early years, you find yourself identifying very closely with his experiences, beware. It is well known that many people experience synchronicities while reading this book. Example: a person may have a dream, and the next day find that very dream explained in the book, wherever that person left off reading the day before. These synchronicities can have a very large effect. If you are one who finds yourself identifying with jung's thoughts and feelings to a high degree, you may experience more than just dreams. The book becomes an integral part of your life. It won't let you skip around or stop reading it for too long. You will be bound to the book to finish it in order. When you reach the 10th and 11th chapters in which he describes his afterlife experiences and thoughts, be extremely careful. You may enter into that same "shadow of the valley of death" while you are reading this part. This is not a book to be taken lightly. It gives you knowledge coupled with experience, not just knowledge. Do not bother opening it unless you want to embark on a serious psychic journey, which will result in increased wisdom and understanding through many unforseen experiences. I highly recommend this book for anyone who DOES want to go through this. I'm glad i did.
Rating:
Summary: A Phenominal autobiography!
Review: This is far and away one of the best autobiographies I have ever read. It's clearly written, engaging, and fascinating. Really gives you a ton of perspective on the man and his ideas, how brilliant he really was. He details the paths he took the choices he made, and offers a million anecdotes about patients and how they led to his theories. Important to anyone who enjoys religious studies, psych (duh), anthropology, and history. Just wow. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Story about the inner life...
Review: This is not a typical biography. Rather than the usual record one might expect about an individuals life, that is, chronological time, events of significance, famous personages met and their influence, etc, Jung records momentous aspects about his inner life, his life long and extraordinary relationship with the unconscious. As he states from the beginning, this book is a reflection concerning his self-realisation of the unconscious and its manifestations. In old age, he realised that so-called outward memories, the temporal existence of the senses, had faded, and what remained were memories of his inner life, which manifested in dreams and visions. He found that he could only write his life in terms of a personal myth, because he believed 'autobiography', as a form of truthful expression, was at best, unreliable. Memory, in other words, cannot be trusted. Thus, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, is a personal 'story' about a man's journey of spiritual enlightenment and self-realisation, the process of the unconscious finding expression in the outer world.Jung's inner life was certainly extraordinary. From an early age, the sheer power of the unconscious made itself known to him in terrible visions. Jung must have been an unusually grounded child in order to withstand the psychic forces that pushed their way into his consciousness at such a young age. He survived these onslaughts, I believe, because he didn't resist them, but chose to grapple with the images, follow his instincts and, along with the violence of these images, came also a knowingness and feeling of safeness, that he was, even at a young age, following what he was meant to do. It is no wonder he became a psychiatrist, a "doctor of the soul" as he calls it; because by helping others through their personal journeys of realisation, he came to better understand his own. At the end of Jung's life he maintained that he was not a mystic, a wise man or a sage. He admits that he drank from the stream of knowledge and life, but was not the stream itself. But what is a mystic in the traditional sense of this term? A mystic is one who, through meditation, prayer or other means, achieves direct intuitive experience of the divine. A mystic experiences these 'other realities' and brings their experiences back, in some cases, to share with the rest of us. To the mystic these experiences are real. Taking this definition at face value, Memories, Dreams and Reflections is a record of one man's intuitive experience with the divine. Jung made it his life's mission to express these experiences in such a way as to make them real, and to then formulate them into a psychological method, in the hope of helping others lost and searching for meaning in their lives. Jung was most assuredly a mystic. His writings tell us that there is something greater than ourselves within us, and our task is to grapple and understand this power, that he has chosen to call the unconscious; and by better understanding this greater part of ourselves, we can become more human. This is a wonderful story about the inner life of a man, a mystic and original thinker.
Rating:
Summary: My companion book for over 25 years now
Review: This is to me the most important book I have ever read in my entire life so far. It has been my companion book for over 25 years now. The first time I read this book was a Brazilian 1975 Edition. A memorable translation. I did the mistake of lending it to someone else and I have never had it back. Then, three years ago, I found that Brazilian Edition and I bought it. I read it over and over, particularly when I needed someone to teach me something really important to my life. Then, I decided to taste the English (American) Translation. I bought this one. I wasn't disappointed. The translation seems to be very carefully done. But although it is a good edition it misses few paragraphs and letters if compared to the Brazilian edition I have. Was this English translation "censored" in any sense ? I doubt that. I simply think the translator just "missed" some pages of the original (in German) edition. I hope one day I will be able and have the opportunity to read the original in German to find out what Jung really meant by writing this monumental book. Oh, by the way, I have never read any of Jung's "scientific" books. This is by far everything I had to have to face Life and people and myself confidently. Jung is by far the wisest soul of the 20th Century. By all means, buy this book and read it! You will understand what Life is all about. I would give it 10 stars if I could.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely, straightforward, eye- and mind-opening book.
Review: To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone talks about Jung (especially since the New Age laid claim to him) but no one
ever reads him. If you want to know what the fuss is about
without slogging through the 20-volume collected works, read
this lovely, short, simple and important book. Jung talks
about his astonishing life and experiences (including
dreams, visions, hauntings and other aspects usually talked about obscurely and mystically if at all) as simply and honestly as if he were sitting in your living room smoking his pipe.
Rating: 
Summary: hogwash
Review: We know now what we didn't back in the '60s and '70s: this 'autobiography' is more creative writing than historical fact, and it wasn't written by Jung but by one of the many disciples assigned the task of creating a mystique of sainthood around a deeply troubled individual. The carefully crafted presence of Wise Old Man Jung is artful, a mix of hero-worship, hagiography, and new age religion. More recent scholarship paints a different picture: a monumental temper (often violent, directed against clients); sexual relationships with psychiatric inpatients; bizarre family relationships. The motto: don't believe everything you read from the 'autobiography' shelf, and don't get conned into this pseudo-psychology.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect introduction to Jung
Review: When a friend introduced this book to me almost 20 years ago, it launched for me, a deep personal interest in the works of Carl Jung. I think this is an excellent book to start out with because it is Jung's telling of his life's story. Jung explains his early questions about God, his deep curiosity with the human mind, his work with psychotherapy and dreams analysis, and his fascination with the unconscious--which would eventually put him on the path to his life's work. Through this book, you can see how Jung developed his ideas and you can get a feeling of the passion that he experienced as he made his discoveries. This sense of development is especially helpful because it will lay down a solid foundation for later readings of his other works (such as his collection of lectures that were published in the Bollingen series). It will also help when you're reading other books about Jung that are not written by Jung. For the past 20 years or so, it has become quite popular to toss around the word 'Jungian'... almost making it a junk adjective like 'psychic' or 'cosmic'... There is a fair amount of misunderstanding about Jung's work. Even within the Jung Institute, you'll find some differences of opinion. For these reasons, the best place to start is with what Jung *actually* said. Also, if you have a basic knowledge of psychological terminology, this book is fairly easy reading.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Genius
Review: When I first started reading this book, I was highly naïve as to what my possible reactions could be. I never realized that this book would spark an internal flame within me, causing me to yearn for more knowledge and a broader insight into many subjects. It even lead me to come to many realizations about myself and my actions that I could never explain, but turned out to be so true and conclusive.
The extremely difficult vocabulary content did not discourage me one bit, it just made my curiosity grow. Jung amazed me with the beauty of his language choice and writing style and further astonished me with this extensive knowledge on so many various subjects and interesting way of interpreting them. Jung constantly referred to literary works and ideas of other authors and always stressed his references. This was perfect because this was the first book that I've ever willingly read from cover to cover in the psychology field, and it gave me an idea of other books like this one that I could read on topics that I liked and could hand-pick.
The book was most interesting knowing that it was written in autobiography-style and at the end of Jung's life, thus giving myself (the reader) his life-experienced and life-proven philosophies. It was a very difficult read but it was well worth it. I could honestly say that sometimes I just couldn't put it down; and no other book has been able to do that for me.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Genius
Review: When I first started reading this book, I was highly naïve as to what my possible reactions could be. I never realized that this book would spark an internal flame within me, causing me to yearn for more knowledge and a broader insight into many subjects. It even lead me to come to many realizations about myself and my actions that I could never explain, but turned out to be so true and conclusive.
The extremely difficult vocabulary content did not discourage me one bit, it just made my curiosity grow. Jung amazed me with the beauty of his language choice and writing style and further astonished me with this extensive knowledge on so many various subjects and interesting way of interpreting them. Jung constantly referred to literary works and ideas of other authors and always stressed his references. This was perfect because this was the first book that I've ever willingly read from cover to cover in the psychology field, and it gave me an idea of other books like this one that I could read on topics that I liked and could hand-pick.
The book was most interesting knowing that it was written in autobiography-style and at the end of Jung's life, thus giving myself (the reader) his life-experienced and life-proven philosophies. It was a very difficult read but it was well worth it. I could honestly say that sometimes I just couldn't put it down; and no other book has been able to do that for me.
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