Jung – The Key
Teachings, Teach
Yourself
Written By Ruth Snowden
Hachette (Publications)
United Kingdom 2010
Reviewed by Christopher Leech
Carl Jung is one of the most renowned Psychologists, but one of the biggest strengths about Jung’s work is that although he looks at the basic biology and psychology, he also looks at the bigger picture, philosophy, religion, culture. I’m not here to bore you with the “blunt” details of this book but give you the greater feeling of understanding that I got from reading this book.
Psychology is the study of how the brain works, the way people think, my reason for reading this book is because I wanted to learn more about the way I think, and how I work and more importantly WHY I do and think these things. I didn’t expect to find all the answers but this book really opened my mind.
An Anatomy of Addiction
Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine
Written By Howard Markel
From acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist, and William Halsted, the equally young, path finding surgeon. Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern surgery.
The basics:
Imagine the human brain in two parts, conscious (what we think about actively, what am I going to eat for lunch) and the sub-conscious, (our dreams, why we have desires and feelings).
The mind is a powerful thing, and it does a lot more than you might think.
Jung liked to take people as individuals, we are all different and work in different ways, although there are common trends, for example people’s dreams are very often (not always) connected to things going on in our lives, addiction is another thing, something anyone is capable of and it has a generic definition, but it is completely different for every one of us.
Rather than just explain the contents of this book I’m just going to tell you how much I learned from it. It opened my eyes as to how things can be seen and how people can think. Philosophically, life is much greater and much more elaborate than anyone can understand, it’s easy to wonder why and try to work things out but ultimately we will never be able to guess what anyone else is thinking. Rather than trying to work out others, and spend time worrying about other people, the best place to start is with ourselves, to be able to understand anyone we must first understand our own vices and virtues, looking at the bigger picture.
You may not be able to understand yourself now, but perhaps reading this book, which is wonderfully simple to read, you will be able to work with yourself to work past any problem you may have.
In My Skin
Written By Kate Holden
Hachette (Publications)
United Kingdom 2010
A startling debut memoir about sex, work and smack. A bookish, piano-playing homebody, Holden grew up middle-class in Melbourne, Australia. At college, her heart was broken, and she discovered alcohol. She began reading (and dressing like) Annals Nin. She lived in a trendy neighbourhood, partied all the time and eventually tried heroin. Soon, her life narrowed to three activities: getting money for smack, scoring and shooting up. To finance her addiction, she stole money from the bookstore where she'd worked for years; after getting sacked, she began turning tricks, first on the street and then in a series of high-class brothels, which are legal in Australia.
After only a few months, Holden grew accustomed to using a pseudonym and having sex with eight men a night. The work was degrading, but it had some glamorous aspects, ranging from velvet dresses to the sensation of being "beautiful and desirable." She felt genuine affection for some of her clients, though she had the sense (most of the time) not to see them outside the brothel. Eventually, thanks to her mother and to methadone, she got clean and left the sex trade. Holden's prose is subtle and elegant. She has a knack for unusual, revealing phrases, like "baffled by weariness" or "the organized hauteur of the true professional." If memoirists must make a choice between simply recreating the past and editorializing about it, this writer chooses the former. Her descriptions of the brothels are vivid, but there is something disconcerting about her almost total refusal to interpret her years as a prostitute. Early on, she acknowledges the debate about whether sex work exploits or empowers women, but she never weighs in explicitly on either side. Too bad, since an analysis based on first-hand experience would be worth any number of distanced women's-studies treatises. Beautiful and discomfiting: The words sing, but the singer never reveals her innermost thoughts.