Living Psyche: A Jungian Analysis in Pictures Psychotherapy

by Edward F. Edinger

The picture featured on the cover is entitled "The Bungalow in My Home Town with the Great House in the Back- Flowering Trees." Dr. Edinger's comment reads, "The great house behind the modest on is an allusion to the Greater Personality behind the ego. The theme continues of paradisial containment in good Mother Nature. This represents a numinous nature-experience, a healing encounter with the original source of one's being. It is reminiscent of Jung's earliest memory: I am lying in a pram, in the shadow of a tree. It is a fine warm summer day, the sky blue, and golden sunlight darting through the green leaves. The hood of the pram has been left up. I have just awakened to the glorious beauty of the day, and have a sense of indescribable we-being. I see the sun Glittering through the leaves and blossoms of the bushes. Everything is wholly wonderful, colorful and splendid." (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 6) The paintings in this book provide a rare opportunity to experience the work of an artist and the reality of the living psyche. The patient/artist began analysis at the age of 36 with the chief complain that, in spite of a successful career in the arts, he had lost his sense of purpose in life and was on the verge of despair. The pictures were done over a period of five years during the course of Jungian analysis. They touch on all the major themes of the analysis and constitute a remarkable record of analytic experience that ranged from the heights to the depths, from the infernal to the sublime.

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Edward F. Edinger was a medical psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and American writer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. The patient is an artist who has the technical skills to paint his inner world, which is then interpreted, on an archetypal level, by the analyst. The book would be a very effective alternative memoir if there were considerably more personal details offered by the patient. The reduction of one rating star is because most of the paintings are reproduced in black and white and are difficult to make out. The Living Psyche was published in 1990; so much more would be available today with the advances in on-demand colour printing.

[William Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice quick read. It promotes the ever-necessary clarification of the Jungian theory of psychoanalysis.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might one of the most important books about Jungian psychology. The best case study in the field (analytical psychology)I have ever read.