ABSTRACT
The word Jungian is bandied about freely, as if it communicates something that as Jungians we immediately understand. For instance, we might say that a particular movie or book is Jungian. I was told some time ago, for example, that Saul Bellow’s (1998) novel, The Dean’s December, had an alchemical subtext and therefore would be of interest to me as a Jungian. I read this novel about a Chicago college dean who was critical of Chicago politics and who at the time was visiting his dying mother-in-law in Bucharest. It was a wonderful story with remarkable parallels between the corruption in Chicago and communist Bucharest. However, it was for me a real stretch to say that this novel was either alchemical or Jungian. So what do we mean when we use the term Jungian? This has been a lifelong question for me, and it features in the title of my book, The Jungians (2000).
