Deirdre Bair has written about some of the most influential figures in 20th century culture—Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Anaïs Nin. Now she turns her expert eye to the one person whose teachings and writings are the most influential of all: psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. The founder of analytical psychology, Jung became the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1910. Jung had a professional relationship with Sigmund Freud until he broke with the elder father of psychoanalysis over his emphasis on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. As Freud's influence has waned over the years, Jung's ideas—the collective unconscious, the archetypal myths underpinning all societies, synchronicity, "new age" spirituality, and much more—have achieved an overwhelming ascendancy. Bair addresses the myths about Jung—accusations that he was an anti-Semite and a misogynist, and that he falsified data—with evidence from his own writings and from those of his colleagues and former patients. The result is a groundbreaking and accessible work that promises to be the definitive life of Carl Jung.

Author Biography: Deirdre Bair has been a literary journalist and university professor of comparative literature and culture. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York. She lives in Connecticut.