Living Psyche: A Jungian Analysis in Pictures Psychotherapy

The picture on the front 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 one is an allusion to the Greater Personality behind the ego. The theme continues of paradisaical 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 complaint that, despite 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.