This non-partisan approach to Carl Jung’s psychology may be one of the first signs that understanding and fruitful interchange among schools is now possible.
Wolfgang Hochheimer, an eclectic in his outlook as practising analyst and Director of the Institute for Pedagogical Psychology of the School of Education in Berlin, brings twenty years of experience to his description of Jungian therapy. A uniquely wide view of human psychology is presented here, not mainly in a comparative treatment, but by means of a sympathetic and clarifying framework combined with Jung’s own remarks culled from the whole of his great opus great opus of writings. Jung’s concern with establishing a psychology of normality is made evident. The prevailing misconception that psychotherapy and analysis are limited to the treatment of pathology has given «psychology» and particularly depth psychology a bad name among uninformed laymen. Jung’s researches began in pathology but one of his primary contributions to the science was his use of therapy as an educational instrument and as a technique for the discovery of the deeper motivations behind man’s rational and irrational activities. As Dr. Hochheimer writes, the so-called illness of many people is often only their thirst to understand a meaning in life. As a guide to Jung’s empirical research into «experiences hitherto neglected, generally unkown or not admitted to scientific psychology,» Dr. Hochheimer, as «outsider» rather than disciple, is able to put many misconceptions about this approach into clear perspective.
Over the sixty years of exploration covered by Jung’s writings, the psychiatric community has largely mistrusted his revolutionary insights or dismissed him as a «mystic.» As Dr. Edward Whitmont comments in his Introduction, «The fear of the ‘mystic’ may well be the fear of the ‘mystery’ of the a priori initial layer of the psyche, the fear of losing ground already gained if one admits this mystery on its own terms or admits mystification by what one fails to understand and cannot easily integrate into the familiar frame of reference. Innovators have always met with vehement rejection, perhaps in direct proportion to the magnitude of their discoveries.»

WOLFGANG HOCHHEIMER was born in Berlin, received most of his training in that city and has lectured and practiced there for almost thirty years. He is at present professor of psychology at the School of Education, as well as directing its Institut für Pädagogische Psychologie and maintaining a private analytic practice. His published articles cover a prodigious range of psychological explorations, and he is editor of the psychoana- lytic journal Psyche.