Lectures on Jung's Typology (Seminar Series)

Rating:
Summary: von Franz masterful; Hillman ...
Review: If one has "read a little" of Jung's typology but has not ventured yet, or has ventured only partially, into Jung's seminal work Psychological Types, this book by von Franz and Hillman is a very good tutorial to get some of the concepts organized in ones head a little better. The book is divided into two sections. Both sections are transcripts of lectures given at the Jungian institute in Zurich. The first section is by von Franz and covers the Inferior Function. Hillman's half covers the Feeling Function. Although von Franz's section is focused on the development of the psychological type that is one's weaker type (ie: "inferior"), her exposition does cover all of the types. Each of von Franz's lectures is followed by a question and answer section as recorded during the seminars (Hillman's are not). One can say only that von Franz is masterful in her explanations. If one has read any of Jung's own seminars from the 1920's and 30's, von Franz's echo these here. Without overstating it, von Franz truly was closest to Jung in depth of understanding and ability at expression, perhaps better in the latter regard. She was primarilty a "thinking" type and it shows in her thoroughly thought out and well presented arguments. Hillman is another matter. Perhaps it is his disadvantage that his text follows von Franz's, but he does not rise to the same level, at least not for me. He must be a feeling-type as his arguments undulate choppily, taking a sideroad here, a back alley there, a forward lob somewhere else. He uses almost no examples, preferring to "define" as he goes along and seems to expect the reader to nod in agreement. Too much patience is expected of one, I'm afraid, and I didn't finish reading his part. Sorry. Von Franz' section is certainly worth the price alone, however. But feeling-types may prefer Hillman.