Fathers and Mothers

"How are we to protect our children from ourselves?" asked Carl Gustav Jung. In one of its senses, this question is all around us, as in the agitated discussion of child abuse. But this stimulating collection of Jungian essays tackles the question from a less familiar, and often surprising, angle. Here we have the distinctively Jungian themes: the (hidden) longing for the archetype, looking for it within (and in our favorite myths and fairy tales), and embracing the dark so that we may receive the light. These themes are spelled out in fascinating ways: from a magisterial height (by Jung, Erich Neumann, James Hillman, Augusto Vitale, Robert Bly, and Patricia Berry), and in the concrete detail of case-studies (by Marion Woodman, Jackie Schectman, and Mary Watkins) and literature (Ursula Le Guin).