Anxiety and the Postmodern Condition

Turbulent Times, Creative Minds Edited: Erel Shalit and Murray Stein This reviewer of  Turbulent Times, Creative Minds  was introduced to the work of Erich Neumann decades ago by his close friend, Gerhard Adler, who thought highly of him.  In complete contrast, Michael Fordham was critical of Neumann’s thinking on the child and told this reviewer he doubted that Neumann had ever encountered an  actual  child – thereby enacting an actual experience of the opposites. In addition, the profound Jung thinker, Wolfgang Giegerich, has also written critically on Neumann.  In order to experience Neumann’s thinking at first-hand, this reviewer participated in the 2015 conference held at Kibbutz Shefayim to mark the publication of the correspondence between Jung and Neumann edited by Martin Liebscher. The current skillfully edited book arising from that conference is an  homage  to the exceptional personal and professional relationship between Jung and Neumann, including in its

Erel Shalit: Imitation and the Archetypal Adult

In  The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey , I mention five pathologies that I relate to the idea of the Archetypal Adult. In this brief presentation I mention an additional one, which Jung speaks about – imitation. In the Red Book he writes, “The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship.” In  Two Essays in Analytical Psychology  he writes, "The human being has one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility from the collective point of view, is immeasurably detrimental from the standpoint of individuality; the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology can never dispense with imitation, for without it the organization of the masses, that of the state and of society, is quite simply impossible. Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and moral contagion."              Imitation is a shadow-side of the self. The Self means authenticity, and in its w