Secret Raven (Studies in Jungian Psychology) by Daryl Sharp

Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #1

by Daryl Sharp

A concise illustration of the meaning and purpose of neurosis, with particular attention to puer psychology, anima and shadow, the mother complex, individuation, dream symbolism, midlife and the artistic personality. The focus here is on the life of Franz Kafka, but the psychology is relevant to anyone in a dilemma, and especially men.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published December 31, 1980

About the author

Daryl Leonard Merle Sharp is a Jungian analyst and publisher. He lives in Toronto, Canada and has two sons and two daughters.

He earned two Bachelor degrees, one in mathematics and physics and the other in journalism, at Carleton University in Canada, and a Masters degree in literature and philosophy from the University of Sussex in England. Sharp entered training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich in 1974, along with other members of the so-called "Canadian mafia," which included Fraser Boa, Marion Woodman and John Dourley.

Upon graduating in 1978, Sharp returned to Canada to begin an analytic practice and tour North America on the Jungian lecture circuit. Together with Marion Woodman and Fraser Boa, Sharp co-founded the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts in Toronto in 1982 (followed by a training program for analysts in 2000).

In 1980, Sharp also began his major labour of love: Inner City Books, still the world's only publishing house dealing exclusively with the work of Jungian analysts. Sharp's first publication was his diploma thesis, The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation in the Life of Franz Kafka. Many others followed, including multiple publications by analysts such as Marion Woodman, Edward F. Edinger, James Hollis and J. Gary Sparks, and especially Marie-Louise von Franz, who graciously agreed to act as honorary patron of Inner City Books.

Sharp himself is the author of more than 30 titles, mainly designed to introduce and explain Jungian concepts to lay audiences. Personality Types and Digesting Jung are available as free eBooks on Inner City Books' website.}

Reviews

[Kimia RayatSanati · Rating 2 out of 5]

غالباً توصیه به افرادی که قصد آشنایی با روان‌شناسی یونگی رو دارند، به دلیل پیچیدگی‌هاش، اینه که از مطالعه‌ی آثار ساده‌تری شروع کنند که بر اساس روان‌شناسی یونگی و توسط افرادی که یونگ رو به خوبی شناختند نوشته شده‌. دلیل انتخاب این کتاب برای من، همین مساله بود.
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آقای داریل شارپ، نویسنده‌ی کتاب پیش رو، روان‌درمانگرتحلیلی یونگی است، که با دقت و جزئیات قابل توجهی زندگی شخصی فرانتس کافکا رو بر اساس یادداشت‌های شخصی‌اش، تحلیل خواب‌هاش و اطلاعاتی که از منابع بیرونی درباره‌ی او موجود بوده (از جمله زندگی‌نامه‌ای که دوست صمیمی او درباره‌اش نوشته) زیر ذره‌بین می‌بره.
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مطالعه‌ی این کتاب به لحاظ محتوا بی شک سودمند بود، و در عین حال دنبال کردن متن گاهی بسیار زجرآور! به نظر من نگارش و فرم متن قربانی شناخت عمیق نویسنده از دیدگاه یونگ و کوشش بسیارش در کشف و شناخت کافکا شده. این مساله به هیچ وجه نقص ترجمه نبود. شاید مخاطب کتاب می‌بایست افرادی با شناخت کافی درباره موضوع باشند، همون‌طور که یک سخنرانی علمی برای افراد متخصص در اون حوزه، خارج از فهم نیست. به طور مثال پرداختن بسیار مفصل به اسطوره‌شناسی در تحلیل خواب‌های کافکا، اشاره به داستان های اساطیری فراوانی که مخاطب عامه با اغلبشون هیچگونه آشنایی نداشته، دنبال کردن مسیر کتاب رو دشوار و ملال‌آور می‌کنه.
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مطلب دیگه درباره‌ی کافکا ست، جایی که آقای شارپ نتونست من رو قانع کنه و این سوال من بدون پاسخ باقی موند که آیا با مطالعه‌ی یادداشت‌های شخصی، خواب‌ها و آثار ادبی که کافکا به عنوان یک نویسنده خلق کرده، حق داریم وضعیت روانی‌اش رو تحلیل و بررسی کنیم؟ آیا این یک حدس و گمان پرخطا نیست؟

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 2 out of 5]

All works of psychoanalysis, especially of the Jungian variety such as this, are extraordinary works of hermeneutic gymnastics. But the symbolic web woven here ends up portraying a tapestry which is purely fictive. What it loses touch upon in all of its discussion of shadow selves and ego-ideals is the "reality" that moves subversively beneath these terms and eludes them - that is, the reality that Kafka was a writer. He himself wrote "I am literature, and nothing besides," and such a claim should be taken seriously (it is not even brought up in this text). Sharp interprets Kafka's writing as his attempt at working out his neurosis, coming to a psychic stability between the fractured aspects of his psyche. And though writing was cathartic for Kafka, it was also not just a symptom of his problem, but was his very affliction itself. The exigency of writing tore him to pieces, and yet it made him who he was to have been as well - a name and a voiceless voice, detached and alienated from any life. What this work fails to note is that Kafka failed to "be cured," but in a perverse sense was "cured" of himself, of the trappings of an always already fractured and broken egoity beyond repair (identity being the impossible, the absolute idea), by his affliction which came to replace who he had been, who he hated, casting this self into the abyss of the neutralizing night from whence he wrote and experienced the ecstacy, the beatitude, of expiating himself of the vitriol of his life.

Hope? No hope. Only a hopeless hope, knowing without knowing that he could hope for nothing, and yet revelling in this failure as the very success of his distorted destiny. The secret raven was not "his" shadow self, but rather the shadow of literature, which haunts writing - the voice which compells, demands to be written, to speak, so that all may disappear into the void that it invokes. The shadow haunting language, accompanying us all, and yet no-one. Kafka was religious, as Sharp correctly notes, though without God - his religiousity was that of writing, being bound to the exigency of effacement, compelled to bear withness to the vacuous space that the absence of God presents us with as our own burden.

An interesting read, but totally off base in its flights of Jungian analysis. This, of course, is not very different from the deluge of literary criticism surrounding Kafka's name. Though this at least appears to find its roots in his life and his diaries, it neglects to relaize that these diaries too are writing - they are just as bound up to the fictioning and absolution so sacred to Kafka as were his fictions. Kafka is but a name here, as he must always be. A no-one, a name devoid of life, signifying only an obscure trace, a secret, which eludes the work and the text like a raven in flight in the depths of midnight.

[Arun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jungian analysis of Kafka's inner life. His lifelong conflict between inability to live a provisional life while also devoting time for his artistic calling, is explained using concepts of puer aeternus that seem to have caused his lifelong neurosis. As per the author, while Kafka was unable to integrate his anima with his ego complex (ultimate way to escape the puer personality and grow into an adult) until the very end of his life (which by the way was cruelly cut short due to poor health), he avoided complete psychological destruction mainly due to his writing and a constant undercurrent of hope, that finally resulted in spiritual denouement - experience of the reality of the psyche shortly before his death. One point deducted for overreach of retroactive explanation drawn from Kafka’s diaries.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is always something interesting when you read from a renowned author.
It's about the Kafka dairy and the interpretation of inner life
How Kafka was torn between his life, job and his father's factory.
He lived an unlived life and only wanted to become a full time writer.His personal life was disastrous because of his archetype. There is a conflict between inner and outer life and about his married life.
I never read his book, I should coz unless i read his book then only i may correlate his dairy information with the character depicted in his published books.
Average read!

[Bohemian Book Lover · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always wanted to understand the enigma of  Franz Kafka's personal torments and conflicts psychologically. This book was incredibly insightful and poignant in its analysis and treatment of Kafka's psyche.

Written by one of my favourite Jungian writers, Daryl Sharp, the book delves into Kafka's neurotic conflicts and eventual transformation through the lens of Analytical/Depth/Jungian Psychology (of which I'm passionate about).

The author does not deal with Kafka's literary art/works per se. Nonetheless , he does mention stories and novels that help cast light on certain aspects of Kafka's neurotic personality and proclivities.

There is, however, a generous amount of extracts from diary entries which I loved; especially since they reveal so much personal thoughts and core emotions that occupied Kafka's inner life. Special mention are the two or three dreams that Kafka recorded in his diary which the author interprets through Jungian Dream Analysis. I found these interpretations extremely fascinating.

Though I knew the basic details of Kafka's life and death, the book revealed to me at the end one I didn't know. What I discovered  was quite poignant for me personally and left a bittersweet impression long after I finished the book.