[mark137]

Hey Stephen, thanks for your reply!

So I did read a number of Biographies on Jung back in the 1980s, but don’t remember which ones they were, other than a couple of them were female disciples (probably the right word, students? patients?) of his.  They were very interesting.  One book I found insightful is called Invisible Partners by John Sanford.   I thought I read somewhere that Jung felt that one cannot very well analyse one’s own dreams (is that right?), and since there’s no chance of me talking to a Jungian analyst, I kind of ignored dream interpretation.  It seems like one has to be well versed in various mythological themes to be any good at it.  Campbell said something like “Be careful in casting out the devil in you, that you don’t cast out the best part of you,” which seemed to me to be a kind of warning.  I’d like very much to read A Dilettante Among Symbols, might make me feel better about myself 🙂

I like your advice to start a discussion.  I doubt very much I have much interesting to say on Jung that hasn’t been said a thousand times before by thousands of people.  My favorite books of his are Anima and Animus, Psychological Types, and Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.  His work on Alchemy and Synchronicity are pretty much out of my league.

I do like your suggestion on science fiction and fantasy.  Although I’ve read LeGuin’s Earthsea trilogy and books like The Sword of Shannara, The Lord of the Rings is the only fantasy novel that really appeals to me.  However, I don’t think I’d have too much to say about it, as I don’t really agree with Tolkien’s cosmology, athough I like very much the beginning of The Silmarillion.   It was Gandalf and Galadriel (the first fictional, indeed, any, person that I fell in love with) that I liked best about the book.  (The first time I read it, in high school 1976, I was about to put the book down when Gandalf fell, but I looked ahead and saw that he came back, causing me to finish the tale.)

But I am intrigued with starting a thread on the Dune series.  That book puts all the other science fiction books I’ve read to shame!  There are so many interesting ideas in it!

My other area of interest is in the spiritual uses of psychedelic drugs.  Might that be a topic to find a home on this website?

Mark