Reviews for Depth psychology and a new ethic

The average rating for Depth psychology and a new ethic based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-14 00:00:00 Rozetta Bridgforth At the core of the argument is a claim: If we accept a psychoanalytic account of the unconscious (in this case a Jungian one), then both personal and social ethics need to address unconscious as well as conscious actions and their consequences. In itself, I find this claim provocative and worth considering. Unfortunately, Neumann's argument doesn't really do much to support it. His sketch of change in societies' ethics, which takes up much of the book, is far too general and occasionally really racist, which is especially unfortunate as this is so clearly a post-Holocaust book in many respects (written in Israel, but published in German, in 1949!) To make matters worse, his "new ethic" boils down to "wholeness rather than perfection", which isn't a terrible formulation, but the only examples he gives are why it's sometimes not just okay, but a positive good, to cheat on your wife. Oh dear.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-06 00:00:00 Jeremy Oleson Valuable resource for understanding the underpinnings of our Western duality-based ethical system, which of course is problematic. The problem is the facility with which individuals and the collective can easily split their psyches into opposites (good-evil, light-dark, pleasure-pain, etc). What is the remedy? The Jungian system of coniunctio, or the integration of the opposites in the personality. Easier said than done, but Neumann brilliantly captures the theoretical talking points of this necessary shift.