ABSTRACT
The Dutch have been pioneers in the development of phenomenological psychology, but much of their work is known only to scholars in the field, and even then only some of it is available in English. Professor Mook’s discussion of Dutch contributions to the phenomenology of play and play therapy is thus an introduction for most of us to literature of which we may have only heard. The sense of easy affinity that Jungians might have in relation to these Dutch phenomenological studies on play is anticipated and felt by Mook. However, being especially sensitive to the epistemological traditions in which Jungian and phenomenological thought are situated, she does not blur significant differences between them. She draws on the phenomenological hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer to to find a rigorous way of maintaining the tensions between the radically descriptive style that has been the hallmark of Dutch phenomenology and the symbolic interpretations of analytical psychologists such as Dora Kalff. But she also points to a phenomenological hermeneutic approach that accommodates Jungian theory and interpretation while submitting them to hermeneutic epistemological criteria.
