ABSTRACT
Jung’s well-known reticence to disclose the clinical details of his analytic practice led him to draw upon literature to demonstrate his hypotheses about the structure, nature, and function of the psyche. Thus Jung became, or so Paul Bishop maintains, a practitioner of literary criticism as well as a formulator of psychology, and he may fruitfully be read as both. More important, Bishop thinks our grasp of Jung will be enhanced by reading him as part of the German literary tradition, from Goethe’s Faust and Hölderlin’s Hyperion to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Jung’s analysis of the poet Hölderlin through his poetry is tracked in Bishop’s contribution to this volume. For the psychotherapist, the narrative reveals the story of a young man whose development is arrested by a fateful longing for childhood’s carefree and blissful unity with nature. But for the scholar of Germanistik, Jung is participating in a noble tradition of literary analysis and discussion. Bishop’s contributions to the developing field of Jungian studies encourage dialogue between the Jungian analyst and the academic student of Jung.
