Wednesday 30 July 2014

The Psychology of C. G. Jung, by Jolande Jacobi


This book is a good summary of some of Jung's views on psychology. I am sharing it mainly because I do like Jolande Jacobi, which was a co-worker of Jung himself. In all fairness this isn't one of the best writings from Jolande, but it is the first book I read that was entirely written by her. I first got in contact with her work (or better said with her contributions on Jung's works) when I read the book called Man and His Symbols, which one of the chapters was written by her, and it was by far the best written chapter and definitely the easiest one to understand. I simply liked the way she managed to express complicated psychological things in a very simple and touchable way. Well, Jung's psychology is definitely not as complicated as Freud's, but still... From Jung's students/co-workes she is certainly my favorite one. I think she is even better than Marie Luise von Franz, which seems to be the most famous one. Well, maybe not in knowledge but at least in how she manage to pass the message in simple terms. Anyway, if you already study Jung's views on psychology this book might not add much. However, if you are interested in a place to have a first start this is definitely a good summary of the main points. It doesn't go very deep in any of them, but nevertheless it's worth reading to get in touch with a bit of the wonders of the psychological views of Carl Gustav Jung.

Friday 18 July 2014

Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman


This was the first book I've read from Emma Goldman. She was an anarchist activist that lived in US like a century ago. The book is very powerful in the sense that she makes very strong speeches in favor of workers freedom and a lot on feminism also. This is not a very philosophical book, it's more of an activist guideline, but still with a lot of interesting theory about anarchism and feminism in a simplified way. I quite like specially a few things she says about the horrors of marriage and about free love as the only possible form of love. I've got to say I absolutely love this anarchist approach to life. It is more poetical, beautiful, light than our stupid moral rules about how people should behave and do stuff. Well, anyway, this was definitely a nice book to read. I didn't learned much new, but is always good to be in contact with people who are enthusiastic about good stuff, such as Emma was. It's also a very good report of early days of feminist movements and so on. Thanks for that Emma.