Article: An unlikeable man, but was he great? Stephen Frosh wonders if we are better off for Jungian notions of the 'collective unconscious', 'archetypes' and the like Jung: A Biography by Deirdre Bair Little, Brown, pounds 25, 880 pp pounds 23 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870 155 7222

WRITING THE biography of an unlikeable man cannot be an easy task, especially when the unlikeable subject is often seen as the archetype of the "wise old man". Carl Gustav Jung was one of those 20th- century characters who attracted disciples and enemies in equal measure, and perhaps for some of the same reasons: his charismatic, domineering self-centredness, his intense inner life which he insisted on seeing as having universal significance, and his capacity to swirl together ideas and images from far and wide, creating the impression that something profound was in the making.

But was it? He might have paved the way for the "Age of Aquarius" and "New Age" psychologies; he might have made ...

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