Inner City Books on Jungian Psychology

From www.innercitybooks.net A graphic of cover art from Creating a Life, by James Hollis, along with this text: "The list of Inner City Books audiobooks continues to expand! Audiobooks sound good to us! Starting with these popular titles, audiobooks are convenient, great for long trips, and can be a boon to those with vision impairment. Bullet list of 10 titles currently available as audiobooks: Swamplands of the Soul, The Eden Project, Under Saturn's Shadow, Addiction to Perfection, The Call of Destiny, Transformation of the God-Image, Descent to the Goddess, Close Relationships, Creating a Life, Skin Deep. Visit us at www.innercitybooks.net to see our full catalogue of print books and ebooks, too!

Our list of audiobooks is growing steadily!

Is your favourite on the list yet?

Available on Amazon, Apple, Audible, or wherever you buy your studio books.

Convenient, may lead to multitasking, and require no dusting.

We have plenty of ebooks too! Now priced at $10 each.

#jungian

It goes in cycles. You move into that new life, and it's tremendously exciting for years. Then all of a sudden it isn't the least bit interesting. I think a lot of people get burned out for this reason. They try to do the thing that was interesting to them twelve years ago. They start running faster and faster, thinking that surely it will be interesting but it's not. They're running like plastic dolls. I've seen dreams where the Great Mother comes in, holds up her hand, and the energy from her hand zaps the doll. The image disintegrates. Then the ego has to find out what the new life is. That can cost you your marriage, it can cost you your job, it can cost you your church. It's terrifying, but it's the only way to grow. Sometimes you have to give all to find all. It sounds simple. T.S. Eliot says it's "A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)." By Jungian, Marion Woodman from her book, 'Conscious Femininity'.

Jungian, Marion Woodman on life's cycles.

If I am constantly thinking about a relationship, I can inhibit the possibility of a feeling realisation, and therefore the intellect sometimes has to detach and to let other forms of life come up. For the divine mystery one has to give up the narrow wish of only intellectual understanding, and where other forms of realisation should come about in the soul the intellect should take a back place for a while and keep to its own realm of operation. By Marie-Louise von Franz from, 'The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales'.

On why the intellect should sometimes take a back seat in our approach to relationships.

No one has seen what the unconscious is; it is a concept, not an ectoplasmic reality somewhere in space. If something comes into my mind from my unconscious, a moment later it can fall below the threshold of consciousness: I know the man is Mr. So-and-So, a minute later I have forgotten the name, and afterwards I may remember it again. Therefore, one can assume that what is unconscious is that which is not associated with ego consciousness. If you observe a content which then disappears for a short time into the unconscious, it is not altered when it comes up again, but if you forget something for a long time, it does not return in the same form; it autonomously evolves or regresses in the other sphere, and therefore one can speak of the unconscious as being a sphere, or entity, in itself. 1/2

It is really something like a liquid in which the contents are transformed; you can even see when a content comes up in bad shape and can tell how long it has been repressed and therefore become suspect. Severe repressions may appear in a dream as an evil-smelling corpse in a cemetery, one which has had to be dug up. Something has been repressed for so long that it has disintegrated and decayed in the earth. Indirectly, therefore, you can say that the unconscious psyche is a reality of its own. By Marie-Louise von Franz from, 'The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales'. 2/2

Jungian, Marie-Louise von Franz with an excellent passage on the unconscious.

If you are overwhelmed by an unconscious content and cannot speak of it, then do not try to talk about it in the outer world but let it first express itself to you. Then you are not overwhelmed by unknown emotion, which is always a dynamic fact flowing towards something. The primitive unconscious impulse would be to follow that secret tendency of the emotion where it wants to lead. If it is hate, it carries you involuntarily towards the hated object; if it is love, it is the same thing, to mention only two common emotions. If you try to express the emotion first toward its object, there is great danger of being overwhelmed. Say someone is furious but intends to express the fact decently, yet with one word comes the flow, and though one may have determined to say little, the whole avalanche descends! In the moment of affect one says much more and gets more and more involved, and in the end one believes what one doubted at the beginning. — Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

Marie-Louise von Franz with some practical advice on how not to be overwhelmed by the unconscious.

The chief sign of the pursuit of perfection is obsession. Obsession occurs when all the psychic energy, which ought to be distributed among the various parts of the personality in an attempt to harmonise them, is focused on one area of the personality to the exclusion of everything else. Obsession is always a fixation—a freezing-over of the personality so that it becomes not a living being but something fixed, like a piece of sculpture, locked into a complex. There is always something catatonic about it, behind which is fear that can accelerate into blind terror so that the person may become like a wild animal caught in the glare of headlights, unable to move. 1/2

Perfection is something very like that when applied to human life. . . . Addiction to perfection is at root a suicidal addiction. The addict is simulating not life but death. Almost inevitably a woman addicted to perfection will view herself as a work of art, and her real terror is that the work of art, being so absolutely precious, may in one instant be destroyed. She has to treat herself as a rare piece of Ming porcelain or what Keats described as a "still unravished bride of quietness", a "foster-child of silence and slow time". — Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection 2/2

The more I see the heavily Botoxed, animal-frozen-in-the-headlights look now so prevalent in our culture, the more I'm reminded of Jungian, Marion Woodman's words from her book, 'Addiction to Perfection'.

Every content of the unconscious with which one is not properly related tends to obsess one for it gets at us from behind. If you can talk to it you get into relationship with it. You can either be possessed by a content constellated in the unconscious, or you can have a relationship to it. The more one suppresses it, the more one is affected by it. If we don't actively offer the unconscious a means of expression, it comes out in destructive, undermining, involuntary fantasy material. People who are possessed and spun up in a cocoon about the people they ought to relate to are caught in the most amazing assumptions, which they neither doubt nor make quite clear to themselves because they seem to be completely evident. 1/2

They are sure of everything and never say, "Why do I assume such a thing?" The obsession becomes a complete semi-conscious conviction. That happens when fantasy material has found a wrong mode of expression, e.g., in accusations against neighbours and friends, and it is never checked. It skulks at the back of the mind of such a person and amplifies itself. Little irrelevant instances are picked up and built into a paranoic system and every item adds a bit more–e.g., the Swiss Government has decided so and so, or the postman's ring means this or that—everything is one more sign. Even the minds of so-called normal people are filled with unchecked assumptions which are not related to conscious reality. If you ask them about this you will meet a completely erratic block and discover a crazy idea. — Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales 2/2

Evergreen wisdom from Marie-Louise von Franz.

There’s no shortage of conversation about what’s troubling men, but few dive into that terrain with the depth and insight of James Hollis. While rage merchants fan the flames and offer quick fixes, Hollis brings something far more valuable--clarity, wisdom, and a path toward genuine healing.

"Complexes are autonomous, just as if they were other people. They disturb our memory and interfere with our will; they come and go according to their own laws; they obsess consciousness and influence our speech and actions. They are saints; they are sinners. They can't be destroyed, but with insight their energy can be harnessed." From Daryl Sharp's WHO AM I REALLY? Personality, Soul and Individuation. Inner City Books

The psyche uses depression to get our attention, to show that something is profoundly wrong. Once we understand its therapeutic value and follow its Ariadne string through our private labyrinth, then depression can even seem a friend of sorts.~James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul

The more we are enmeshed with others, the less differentiated, the less individuated we are; the less individuated, the less we serve the greater purposes of the cosmos for which we were so mysteriously generated.~James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul

A photo of an older Daryl Sharp, with text: "On Daryl's birthday, we remember his favourite sayings: 'Follow your energy where it leads. 'Do the work that is in front of you. And above all... 'Live your nonsense!'"

January 2nd is Daryl Sharp's birthday.

A good time to think of him and reflect on what he accomplished. After his analytical training in Zurich, he and Marion Woodman and Fraser Boa arrived in a Toronto that was already thirsty for Jungian ideas, analysis and training.

The rest is (our) history.

Thank you, @merriam-webster.com !

We'll take it, and wish everyone the same.

Inner City Books logo -- a burgundy square with a white circle containing text "Inner City Books" surrounding a square divided diagonally into 4 equal pieces with a small circle in the centre. Visit us at www.innercitybooks.net!

We'd like to thank everyone who read our books this year, whether you've just found us or been one of our loyal supporters since the beginning...

Wishing you happy creative adventures & a rich inner life in 2026!

The mission Daryl Sharp started in 1980 continues. You're going to love what's next.

That episode almost killed me from second-hand embarrassment. And I was still a kid!

Photo of Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal (Montreal) It's in Montréal, not Québec City.

Came to say the same thing.

Dude used an anagram-generating software. Such a hack.

Losing one's grip on reality can happen collectively as well. Regressive ideological possession demonstrates how whole groups of people with some childish fantasy of bringing heaven to earth can lose their grip on reality and kill off their surroundings in the process.~Marie-Louise von Franz

Thank you ❤️

Not bragging -- it's merely an observation and occasion for gratitude.

I see Inner City Books on the "best reads of 2025" lists of people I respect and admire.

Some of these books were published in the 1980s! And one in 2025.

It's true, our books don't go out of date.

Thank you, loyal readers! ❤️

Where the serotonin store at

Bwahahaha -- Strength to you AND all your groups.

Sunday morning typo

Now that is a rrrrrrresonant quotation. ❤️
Love that you've decided to focus on keeping the radii going.

Strength to you abs all your groups!

This is a great entry level book if you are wanting to tackle Jung's concepts in the Collected Works. Stays close to the classic Jungian tradition, AND you'll love the stealthy disguise.

It's Daryl Sharp's Pocket Jung!

innercitybooks.net/bookshop/aut...

Thank you for your service!

Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers - Title 148 Intriguing revelations from Marie-Louise von Franz's final words on synchronicity and numbers  A special delivery from Jung's postman: Our newest …

"Our newest title takes you inside fascinating conversations among Marie-Louise von Franz herself and her colleagues, and their work at the newly-founded Marie-Louise von Franz Institute for Studies in Synchronicity (MLFI) in Zurich from 1994 to 1998."

innercitybooks.net/bookshop/aut...

#Jungian

Carl Jung on Life and Death “The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

Carl Jung on life and death www.themarginalian.org/2012/03/13/m...

We are reminded by ancient counsel that we should be aware of getting what we want. Depth psychology echoes this: we could be getting simply what the complex wants, what the unconscious history wants, what the unlived life wants.”~ James Hollis, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵

📌 Our new project! *Jolande Jacobi* was one of Jung’s most prominent women followers, who played a prominent role in disseminating his work. She was a prime mover behind the founding of the Jung Institute in Zurich. Her correspondence with Jung, spanning decades, is one of his major correspondences.

Thank you! I'd love to hear your impressions of it.