ABSTRACT
To strengthen and deepen what she found useful from her years of Freudian consultation and to find a more hopeful therapy for her patients’ suffering, Betsy Cohen turned to Jungian analytic training. Despite her best efforts, she could not find a way through her reading of Jung to build a solid foundation from which to address the repetitive forms of self-defeat she encountered in her patients. She was frustrated with the too conceptual terms in which Jung described his therapies. Finally, she was directed to the writings of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Torah scholar Avivah Zornberg. With them, she found a spiritual home from which she could read Jung’s writing on complexes in a more interpersonally related way. Her dilemma is by no means unique, for many readers are confounded by Jung’s deliberate ambiguity of expression and the multiple definitions he gives us for his basic concepts. We stumble through The Collected Works, eventually finding a way to uncover his deeper meanings by shining the light of yet another author’s mind. Thus, we can settle into a personal way of reading with renewed confidence and a greater sense of ourselves as readers of Jung and of life.
