Turbulent Times, Creative Minds - A review by Ann Casement

Turbulent Times, Creative Minds

Edited: Erel Shalit and Murray Stein

This reviewer of Turbulent Times, Creative Minds was introduced to the work of Erich Neumann decades ago by his close friend, Gerhard Adler, who thought highly of him. 

In complete contrast, Michael Fordham was critical of Neumann’s thinking on the child and told this reviewer he doubted that Neumann had ever encountered an actual child – thereby enacting an actual experience of the opposites. In addition, the profound Jung thinker, Wolfgang Giegerich, has also written critically on Neumann. 

In order to experience Neumann’s thinking at first-hand, this reviewer participated in the 2015 conference held at Kibbutz Shefayim to mark the publication of the correspondence between Jung and Neumann edited by Martin Liebscher. The current skillfully edited book arising from that conference is an homage to the exceptional personal and professional relationship between Jung and Neumann, including in its pages masterly chapters by Lammers, Mendes-Flohr, Shalit and Stein. 

The book ranges over such vital topics as the New Ethic linked to the eternal problem of evil (Stein’s in-depth thinking is outstanding here), the ego-self axis, sibling rivalry, the German-Jewish experience, Eranos, religion, clinical issues and art. The Jung and Neumann families’ memories and contributions add noteworthy personal touches to this highly recommended volume. 

Ann Casement, 

Licensed Psychoanalyst/Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute

                             

This volume of essays by well-known Jungian analysts and scholars provides the most comprehensive comparison to date between the works of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann. Reflections are based on their extensive correspondence recently published, their differing cultural backgrounds, and the turbulent times surrounding their personal and professional relationship. Among the many specific subjects discussed are Jung and Neumann on art and religion, their views on the problem of evil, and clinical aspects of Neumann’s work. Also included are personal memories of both Jung and Neumann family members.

Sections:

I. The Correspondence (1933–1960)

II. Cultural Backgrounds

III. Troubled Times

IV. The Problem of Evil

V. Neumann and Eranos (1948–1960)

VI. On the Arts

VII. Clinical Contributions

VIII. On Religion

IX. On Synchronicity

X. “Memories from My (Grand)Father’s House”

Available on Amazon, Chiron and other book sellers.

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Jacob and Esau 

On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif (2nd printing)

by Erich Neumann

cover image by Meir Gur Arieh 

title page image by Jacob Steinhardt

Erich Neumann: The Roots of Jewish Consciousness

With the publication in 2015 of the important correspondence between C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann (edited by Martin Liebscher), there has been something of a Neumann renaissance. A major international conference was held in 2015 at Kibbutz Shefayim, with participants from more than 25 countries, and in 2016 a symposium was held at the Pacifica Institute in California. 
Neumann’s slim but brilliant book, Jacob and Esau: On the collective symbolism of the brother motif, was recently published by Chiron in collaboration with Recollections. 
A volume of essays by prominent Jungians, as well as members of the Jung and Neumann families, has also een published by Chiron/Recollections. It is edited by Erel Shalit and Murray Stein, Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: The relationship between Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung (1933-1960). 

Ann Conrad Lammers

Soon, in late 2018 or early 2019, Routledge will publish Neumann’s major treatise on The Roots of Jewish Consciousness in an impressive two-volume set (Volume 1 on the psychological significance of revelation, Volume 2 on Hasidism), edited by Ann Lammers, and translated by Mark Kyburz with Ann Lammers. This work, written between 1934 and 1945 but never published, is a treasure trove, a wealth of pearls. Although Neumann mined its themes in several of his Eranos lectures, the work as a whole holds a unique place in his opus.

Further announcements will be posted as the work of translation and editing progresses, but here is a taste of Neumann’s writing:

... for Hasidism the world consists of a great, diffusely distributed creative nothingness, whose points of concentration, in varying degrees of power, reshape and form this unformed energy and cause it to shine. These points of concentration are the world's individuals, created in the tzimtzum, having a smaller and greater circumference and varying energy charge. They can also diminish or increase the extent and intensity of their radiance, depending on the level they attain, that is, their ability to enter into contact with divine nothingness.

Read more about Erich Neumann's The Roots of Jewish Consciousness
Read more about Erich Neumann's Jacob and Esau: On the collective symbolism of the brother motif
Read more about Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: The relationship between Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung (1933-1960)

Cover painting by Mordecai Arnon

Cover image silhouette by Meir Gur Arieh

Etching by Jacob Steinhardt

The Jung - Neumann Letters – An Editor's Perspective

Official launch of

The Jung-Neumann Letters

An International Conference in Celebration of a Creative Relationship

Kibbutz Shefayim, April 24-26, 2015, Conference Website Trailer

Follow updates on FaceBook

You are invited to hear 

The story of the Jung Neumann Correspondence

directly from the Editor

Martin Liebscher will present

The Editor's Perspective

followed by a comparison of

The Jung-Neumann Letters and the Jung-Kirsch Letters

in which Martin Liebscher and Ann Lammers, editor of the Jung-Kirsch Letters, will present and discuss the two correspondences. The discussion will be moderated by Murray Stein. 

In his presentation Dr. Liebscher will introduce the main topics of the correspondence between Jung and Neumann. Whereas the letters of the pre-war years (1934-1940) were mainly concerned with Neumann’s attempt to engage Jung in a debate about his understanding of Judaism and Jewish mysticism, the correspondence after 1945 give an insight into the institutionalisation of Jungian psychology and the rivalries amongst Jung’s followers in Zurich which threatened to marginalise the works of outsiders like Neumann.

Following Martin Liebscher’s discussion of the Jung-Neumann and the Neumann-Kirsch relationships, Dr. Lammers will talk about James Kirsch’s discipleship with Jung and his somewhat prickly sibling relationship with Neumann. She will explore the contrasts between Kirsch’s and Neumann’s reactions to Jung during the 1930s, when Jung’s understanding, regarding both German nationalism and Judaism, was in a process of such rapid growth. Kirsch and Neumann served as two of Jung’s primary critics and teachers in this period, but with striking differences. Now that both correspondences are published, one sees how truly Jung respected these Jewish followers, while responding to each of them in profoundly individual ways. Although Jung certainly loved Kirsch as a friend and colleague, Neumann’s more forthright criticism may, paradoxically, have led Jung to trust him more fully.

Dr. Martin Liebscher is Senior Research Fellow at the German Department and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines at University College London, as well as Philemon Editor of the works of C.G. Jung. His publications include Thinking the Unconscious. Nineteenth Century German Thought (2010) and Libido und Wille zur Macht. C.G. Jungs Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche (2012). He is the editor of the correspondence between C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann (2015) and Jung’s ETH lectures.

Ann Conrad Lammers earned her Master of Divinity at The General Theological Seminary and her doctorate at Yale. After her first book, In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C. G. Jung (Paulist, 1994), she edited The Jung-White Letters (Routledge, 2007). She later edited and co-translated The Jung-Kirsch Letters (Routledge, 2011), whose German edition has recently appeared (Patmos, 2014). She is a Jungian psychotherapist in southern New Hampshire.

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 20% discount by Princeton University Press. After registration, a promotion code is sent to participants.

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