C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann: Conflict, Philia, and Finding the Other in Oneself

Steve Zemmelman has written an excellent review of Erich Neumann's recently published book Jacob and Esau: On the collective symbolism of the brother motif.

In his review, "C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann: Conflict, Philia, and Finding the Other in Oneself," he writes:

Jacob and Esau: On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif is a creative and highly psychological interpretation and extrapolation from the biblical story. The review locates the development of this essay within the relationship between Jung and Neumann, as well as Neumann's own development as a German Jew and analytical psychologist. It shows the origins, within his amplifications of the Jacob and Esau story, of many seminal concepts in Neumann's thinking that became his legacy within Jungian theory, including the ego-self axis and the work on integration of the shadow that was to become Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.

Read the review

Steve Zemmelman, MSW, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco who practices in San Francisco and Berkeley. He is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco. He has a passion for the value of exploring the intersection of spirituality and psychology, particularly the Jewish mystical tradition. He is the author of eighteen published papers, including “C. G. Jung and the Jewish Soul” in the Winter 2012 edition of JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE and “Containing a Jungian Light: The Books of Erel Shalit,” in the 2015 Eranos edition of Spring Journal. Correspondence:stevezemmelman@comcast.net.

Containing A Jungian Light: The Books of Erel Shalit - by Steve Zemmelman

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Steve Zemmelman's comprehensive review of five of my books, in the latest issue of Spring Journal (which is a particularly interesting issue; for content, see here).

I am deeply grateful to Steve for writing so beautifully - this comprehensive review is a poetic paper in itself.

Dr. Steve Zemmelman

Containing A Jungian Light: The Books of Erel Shalit

by Steve Zemmelman

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.

Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn

Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn.

Dance me to the end of love.

I was listening to these lyrics from a song by Leonard Cohen during the time I was reading Erel Shalit’s books for this review, and it struck me how well these poetic lines capture the essential tension between fragmentation and wholeness as they reference past, present and future. They orient the listener to limitation and in so doing suggest a depth of meaning that can only come from facing the inevitability of mortality and the potential for redemption through love. The tune in which the lyrics are embedded is a lamentation with a distinctly Jewish sensibility. It leaves me moved, tearful, despairing and hopeful, all at once. It is soulful, satisfying, and true. It seemed so fitting a soundtrack for a day in which Shalit’s work was so much pulsing through me.

Introduction

It has been my great pleasure over the past year to have studied the body of Erel Shalit’s written work. While at first it felt like an overwhelming task to creatively review a body of work by a highly regarded and prolific colleague, I approached the task I was invited to take on as a unique opportunity for learning and creative reflection.

The effort was more than amply rewarded. In his books one encounters a master interpreter of Jung’s many contributions to depth psychology illuminating a wide range of topics in ways that both present Jung’s foundational psychological thinking and amplify his mythopoetic approach to the soul. Jung’s work navigates between the empirical and the imaginal, engaging with each perspective as both an impetus for and a limitation to the other. Shalit’s work stands solidly in this territory, taking Jung’s original, creative thinking and building upon it, simultaneously enlarging it and nailing it down. While the density of his writing style can be challenging at times, requiring the reader to slow down and ponder the meaning of the words, more often Shalit’s words sing with a poetic, intuitive perspective that grips the reader and leaves him in a state of deep appreciation for the opportunity to contemplate an issue or problem from a new, more enriching, vista.

His books should find their way into many courses on Jungian psychology and analytic training programs as they offer both clear explications of basic concepts without falling into the trap of overly concretistic definitions, as well as thoughtful and scholarly interpretations and amplifications that illustrate and deepen the ideas being discussed. In addition, seasoned analysts can also learn much from these books, about themselves and their patients, and can make good use of these books in teaching this material to others.

• • • • •

In addition to his integration of Jewish knowledge into analytical psychology, Shalit writes as an Israeli deeply troubled by the polarizations in the Middle East, turning the lens of analytical psychology toward the forces and tensions that have shaped Israel from the time of its socialist pioneers in the early 20th century to the present. He makes extensive use of the concepts of projection and shadow in their many forms to call for more humane and just relations between Jews and Palestinians that echoes the call for integration of the shadow by his fellow countryman and first generation Jungian analyst, Erich Neumann, which one finds in his classic work, “Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.” One sees also in Shalit’s work a deep wrestling from the point of view of Joseph Henderson’s ideas about the cultural complex as links are drawn between the intrapsychic and social/cultural dimensions of life.

• • • • •

To read the full review, please do purchase the current issue, or enter a subscription to Spring Journal

If you are interested, you find my books on Amazon. You can also find several of them at the Fisher King Press online bookstore, where you can pay by credit card, PayPal, and your Amazon.com account. (That’s right, you can now pay for your Fisher King Press book orders from the website with your Amazon.com account.)

Forthcoming this fall: 

Erich Neumann: Jacob and Esau - On the collective symbolism of the brother motif

Edited and with an introduction by Erel Shalit

Translated by Mark Kyburz

Steve Zemmelman and Patricia Llosa lecturing at Bar Ilan

Steve Zemmelman and Patricia Llosa will deliver lectures, 

Monday April 27, 1-5pm, at Bar Ilan University, 

program for Jungian Psychotherapy.

Steve Zemmelman will present

The Initiatory Journey: Spirit of the Bear and the Soul of Man

The arc of human life progresses through a series of initiatory processes, creating and dissolving meaning as we move from birth and infantile dependence to maturity and death. These processes are highly charged moments when the individual is somewhere between what he or she once was and what he or she is becoming. This “betweenness” is the instant of transformation, whether in analysis or in life outside the consulting room. In such liminal experience, powerful and undefined energies reveal a portal into dimensions of subjectivity and encounters with figures in the unconscious that have the potential to change a life forever.

The Swiss psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, realized the central importance of initiation in the psychology of individuation, the cornerstone of his thinking. Through studies of the analytic process, as well as of development across the spans of geography and time, he was able to link the psychology of initiation to the objective psyche, social and cultural rites, and rituals. D.W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst, also informed our understanding of the psychology of initiation through his elaboration of the concepts of potential space, transitional objects, and their role in infant development and the creation of culture. Further explorations of the initiation process are found in other fields, most notably anthropology.

This program will focus on the meaning and process of initiatory experience through a talk and slide show based on a trip through the Arctic wilderness, an exploration of the archetypes of initiation and the natural life and mythology of the bear.

Steve Zemmelman, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst and member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Dr. Zemmelman is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and was a lecturer for many years in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. He has a private practice of analysis and psychotherapy in Berkeley and San Francisco, and is the author of a number of papers addressing the issue of initiation.

The Dream Voyage of Lilli Gettinger

New York Jungian analyst Patricia Llosa will present and discuss for the first time her discovery of a remarkable art work by a hitherto unknown artist. The Dream Voyage of Lilli Gettinger consists of 233 chronological dream images in pastel, with texts, drawn and written in the 1970s.

Gettinger, like Erich Neumann, was a native of Berlin who fled Europe to escape the threat of Nazi persecution. Her dream voyage engages the refugee experience, survivor guilt, and issues of identity. It extends the creative process into the realm of the therapeutic, addressing her family trauma and the collective trauma of Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Gettinger’s dazzling archetypal Dream Voyage engages the redemptive power of the feminine in healing trauma—which makes it especially resonant with Erich Neumann’s own explorations of the subject.

Patricia Llosa is an analyst in private practice, based in New York City. A native of Peru, she earned her undergraduate degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and did graduate work at The School of Visual Arts and the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association in New York. She is a member of Marion Woodman's BodySoul Rhythms Leadership Training Program and serves on the Marion Woodman Foundation Board. She worked as an administrator and educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the last 21 years, and is a member of NAAP’s Gradiva Awards Committee.

Don’t miss this historical event!

Jung Neumann Letters Conference Website

Analytical Psychology in Exile: 

The Correspondence of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann,

edited and with an introduction by Martin Liebscher,

will be published in the Philemon Series by Princeton University Press.

Conference attendees will be the very first to purchase and receive copies of the Correspondence,
at a special, large discount by Princeton University Press.

The Jung Neumann Letters Conference

International Advisory Board

Erel Shalit • Murray Stein • Batya Brosh • John Beebe • Riccardo Bernardini

Jerome Bernstein • Ann Casement • Angela Connolly • Tom Kirsch • Patricia Michan

Joerg Rasche • Nancy Swift Furlotti • Luigi Zoja • Liliana Wahba