Striving Toward Wholeness

By Barbara Hannah and Barbara Hnnaha

Book Overview

Barbara Hannah studies the psychic processes that move people to strive for wholeness of personality, an integration of all innate capacities. Since this inner drama manifests itself with special intensity in the lives of creative individuals, she has taken up the biographies and literary productions of five major English novelists--Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Webb, and Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte--along with one nonliterary artist: Branwell Bronte.

Not only do Stevenson, Webb, and the four Brontes take on fresh, unsuspected dimensions, but the concepts of analytical psychology are also broadened and deepened as Barbara Hannah indicates how contemporary people may gain insight from these examples in their own efforts to strive towards wholeness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888602139
• ISBN13: 9781888602135
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Chiron Publications
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Life Journey's Goal and how to head there

The goal of Jungian analysis is individuation or wholeness-a journey from the zero starting point towards the positive outcome (as opposed to therapy which addresses a problem to be fixed, a negative to be neutralized). In this lovely book, Barbara Hannah elucidates and illuminates this human process of becoming all that we can be (even the U.S. Army recognizes this process!!!). It is not without heartache. Per page 128: "All steps on the road towards the process of individuation are necessarily characterized by suffering, and this suffering is particularly important for women." The process involves the establishment of balance (reminiscent of the Greats of the past who developed The Golden Mean, The Middle Way, and The Middle Path). As she states on pages 183-4: "It is just as destructive to be possessed by good as by evil, either destroys the balance of the opposites...The ancient Greeks...said, `Exaggerate nothing, all good lies in right measure.'" But there are dangers on the way: p. 200: "for those who have experienced it, the inner world is an inexorable reality, more basically real and more uncompromising than the outer, which is all that most people see." p. 231: "no human being can identify with an archetype unpunished." p. 293: "panic...is always the only real danger in working with the unconscious." p. 300: "Somewhere we always resent the loss of freedom that love involves." p. 221: "If consciousness is to increase, if wholeness is to become more accessible, tradition must suffer some shattering setbacks." This is a wonderful book that points out the goal, the direction to get there, and the obstacles along the way. Bon Voyage!