New From Inner City Books May 2013

EROS NATURALLY: Jungian Notes from Underground with Sett In My Ways: A Badger’s Tail
Daryl Sharp (Toronto)

ISBN 9781894574419. Sewn. Index. 112 pp. 2013. $25.00

Eros, Naturally is a romp with gravitas. It is another “Jungian romance” by the author who created the genre, starting with Chicken Little: The Inside Story(1993) and continuing through over a dozen more tomes. No other writer has so adroitly interwoven Logos and Eros, thinking and feeling. In this new book, Sharp’s wit and analytic knowledge are counterpointed by Badger, an alter-ego who lives in the basement.

Sharp has learned well from his mentors—Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, Edward F. Edinger, and the bevy of writers he calls collectively “the modern European Mind.” As the Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett of the Jungian literary community, his prose is wry, succinct and resonates on many levels. Eros, Naturally is no exception—serious fun, whimsical- and informative, a real page-turner.

Eros, Naturally amuses its readers with its wit and surprises its readers with its candor and amazes with its insights into the human predicament. It introduces us to Badger, who leaves his basement sett to take us on frolics in time and place—Toronto in the 1950s, Paris and London in the 60s, then Zurich, San Francisco, Jamaica,, etc. Back in Toronto in the 2010s, he discovers that “every badger has an inner badgerette.” Not every reader will agree with the author’s enthusiasms in music and films, but all will enjoy the play of wit and revel in the wit at play, especially the self-selected epitaph, “He was kind and generous; he loved women “ An endearing diarist in the tradition of Stephen Leacock and Samuel Pepys.
—John Robert Colombo, author and anthologist, Toronto.

Eros, Naturally is Sharp’s latest entertaining admixture of mind-science and subject-driven fiction. His approach to psychic well-being, his “Jungian romances,” will interest more people in self-discovery than any of the many academic tomes on the subject. —R. J., San Francisco Times.

Free shipping for online purchases by individuals

I am pleased to inform you that Inner City Books now offers free shipping for individual orders placed directly on our website's shopping cart. The process is simple, and these credit cards are

accepted: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. Have a look and fill the gaps in your collection of Inner City titles: www.innercitybooks.net

Our online shopping cart is for individuals onIy. Booksellers should continue to order via phone, fax or email.

Thank you, Daryl Sharp

New titles for Fall 2012

135. CLINICAL CHAOS: The Strange Attractors of Childhood Trauma. John R. Van Eenwyk (Olympia, WA) 2013 192 pp. $30/£15

THE TALKING CURE: Psychotherapy, Past, Present and Future.
3 vols. $25 each, or all 3 for $50/£25 (when ordered directly from Inner City Books).

Anthony Stevens (Corfu, Greece)

136. Volume One: What Is Psychotherapy? Psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud; Analytical Psychology and C.G. Jung.

2013 128 pp. $25/£12

137. Volume Two: Warring Egos, Bad Breasts, and the  Analysis of Children: Anna Freud and Melanie Klein; Object Relations Theory (Fairbairn, Winnicott, Balint, Guntrip;    Attachment Theory (John Bowlby).

2013 128 pp. $25/£12

138. Volume Three: Jung Revisited, Research and Evolutionary Psychotherapy—the New Paradigm.

2013 128 pp. $25/£12

See www.innercitybooks.net for descriptions. All titles available November. 2012. Advance orders welcome.

FREE E-BOOKS FROM INNER CITY BOOKS

Inner City Books is pleased to let you know that these titles are available in PDF format to download FREE from our website:

• Chicken Little: The Inside Story (Book One of The Brillig Trilogy)
• C.G. Jung lexicon: A Primer of Terms and Concepts
• Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey
• Personality Types: Jung’s Model of Typology.
• Live Your Nonsense: Halfway to Dawn with Eros
• Not the Big Sleep: On having fun, seriously

Find them at www.innercitybooks.net/freedownloads.html

Advance reviews of new book by Daryl Sharp

MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP: Growing Up Puer
(Another Jungian Romance) by Daryl Sharp (128 pp., $25.00).

Advance Reviews:

“Sharp’s latest is miles ahead. It is very substantial, from quasi-erotic scenes and the angst of being a writer, to the deeper reaches of Jungian psychology. The writing has a strength and integrity to it that comes from experience, years of writing and wisdom. Sharp has a special gift for making Jung fun all along the way.”—A. N. Review of Books, Toronto.

“Miles to Go… captures the reader from the get-go. Includes balanced reflections on Jung’s relationship with Sabina Spielrein, and fine thoughts on the value of introversion. It is serious fun throughout, a rich tome that will enchant and inform all who take it in hand.”—Indianapolis Beaver.

“Another solid and sane entry into the chaos of our time from one of the co-founders of Jungian psychology in Canada. Sharp’s perspicacity and wit keep the reader glued to his prose. Another gem from the treasure house of the fair north, as we have come to expect. A must read for anyone interested in the cutting edge of Jungian psychology.”—New Age Yoni.

SPECIAL OFFER: Individual advance orders: $20 + postage until Dec. 31, 2012. Check or VISA. See sidebar at right for how to order. Printed copies available in August, 2012.

PLEASE NOTE: In order to survive in our niche market, we are obliged to raise prices on some titles, effective January 1, 2013.  So now is the time to order at current prices! Thank you, we love our readers and their feedback.

~~~

TWO BOOK REVIEWS:

Growing up through falling apart

Review by Roy MacSkimming of The Survival Papers: Anatomy of a Midlife Crisis (title 35; $25), and Dear Gladys: The Survival Papers, Book 2 (title 37; $25) by Daryl Sharp, in The Toronto Star, August 1989.

To discover what Jung was driving at, we can plough through all 20 volumes of the Princeton University Press edition of his collected works—a heavy trip indeed—or we can read The Survival Papers.

    In these two short but extraordinarily pithy volumes, Daryl Sharp has fashioned an introduction to Jung's thought that is infinitely fresher and more readable than a conventional beginner's guide.

    Sharp brings Jung's ideas into limpid and meaningful focus by showing them at work in the successful treatment of a specific midlife crisis. The patient: a fic­tionalized but fairly typical guy called Norman, who arrives one day in Sharp's consulting room so distraught he immedi­ately spills tea on his pants.

    Norman is married to Nancy. Norman sincerely believes he and Nancy have a good marriage, a solid middle-class family life. He can't conceive of existence without her and the kids. So why is he falling part—"on his knees," as Sharp puts it?

    The only encouraging thing about Norman's dilemma is that he's asking that very question. According to The Survival Papers, hitting a midlife crisis is as normal as apple pie and potentially a lot healthier, for it provides the stimulus to find meaning in what would otherwise be pointless suffering. And surviving the crisis is a matter ­of asking the right questions.

    Norman is stuck in a serious conflict between his illusions and his reality. He loves Nancy, idealizes their romantic past. Yet in the here and now, she's cold and dismissive toward him, while keeping him on the hook emotionally. She babies him and has a lover on the side. Norman has lovers too, mostly on his sales trips away from home, but they mean little compared to his obsession with what Nancy thinks and feels about him. He lets her define his worth, submitting helplessly to the re­wards and punishments she metes out. No wonder he's miserable.

    It's tempting to dismiss Norman as a spineless yuppie wimp, not worthy of a walk-on in thirtysomething. But Sharp won't let us get away with such conde­scension. Even Norman is capable of growing up. With the aid of his dreams, those messengers from the unconscious, he can get beyond his persona, meet his anima, shake hands with his shadow, withdraw his projections, do battle with his mother complex and accomplish all the other tasks on the hero's journey. Poor old Norman, after all, is Everyman.

    Sometimes, though, we fear he won't pull through. The highs and lows of Nor­man's journey toward individuation are the stuff of drama, his territorial gains and retreats on the battlefield of self-knowledge a form of trench warfare against an invisible and cunning enemy.

    Sharp wears his learning lightly and with self-deprecating humor. To illustrate the personality type that Jung called intui­tive, for instance, and simultaneously to show the difference between introversion and extraversion, Sharp gives us this de­scription of his friend Arnold:

    “Arnold is always coming up with some­thing new. The Arnolds of this world, if introverted, build better mousetraps. As extraverts, they sell them to cats."

    In following Norman’s process, Sharp succeeds marvelously in doing something few of his psychoanalytic colleagues would care or dare to: demystifying the profession. He readily admits he doesn't have all the answers for Norman and only serves as a guide in suggesting where to look for them. By acknowledging his own human­ity—frankly identifying with Norman's traumas, because he's been there too­—Sharp undercuts the awe in which people hold their therapists.

On Divination and Synchronicity

Review by Mary Williams of On Divination and Synchron­icity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance, by Marie-Louise von Franz (title 3; $25), in The Journal of Analytical Psychology, Fall 2001.

In this series of lectures the author calls on ­ancient divination practices of primitives, on the use of oracles in ancient Greece and elsewhere, but particularly on Chinese thinking, to show how modem mathema­tics and quantum physics have sophisti­cated such ideas, and, of course, Jung with his theory of synchronicity.

    Following her interest in numerology, von Franz shows how most methods of divination depend on the archetypal nature of the natural integers. She discusses the patterns made with them, as in geomancy, astrology, the I Ching, etc., and the appropriate time which isolates the living moment in which the apparent miracle occurs, that is, when an outside event coincides with the inner meaning.

    Attention is also given to divinatory techniques which do not depend on number as, for instance, throwing bones or entrails on the ground and reading tea leaves. I agree with the author's experience that such chaotic patterns are catalysts to help crystallize what the person already knows intuitively.

    The reader is then introduced to the collective unconscious as a field of force in which the archetypes are the excited points in it. The network of relationships between archetypes points to the meaning­ful connections between them. The order of revelation in time is also crucial, and may account for precognitive experiences. The unconscious mind knows which arche­type is constellated, and the outcome.

    This short book has a big range, its scholarship mediated by its clarity of style and the progression of the lectures. A fine introduction to the subject, as we would expect from this author.

Teaser

Eros = Sophia Becoming

Excerpt from a book in progress,  Miles To Go Before I Sleep,  by Daryl Sharp.

Feeling derelict and dissolute, I spent a pleasant evening with my close friend Rebecca, talking of our lives and sealing wax. Rebecca is happily married, and ours is a chaste friendship that my inner woman Rachel indulges herself by imagining that she (Rachel) is Sophia, famed consort of God and King Solomon.

Now, Rebecca is as beautiful as any movie star who ever walked the red carpet on Oscar night. We desire without physical intimacy. I  romance her to pieces by holding hands and massaging her feet. We are happy sharing a bottle of wine, listening to Dave Brubeck or Dinah Washington, or just staring at the wall. We laugh a lot. We don’t cuddle but I massage her feet. She responds with an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.  

Rebecca is my confidante; I can tell her anything . We supervise each others’ clients, and she gives me sound counsel regarding my presumptive paramours. I am in awe of Rebecca/Sophia. She is highly intuitive and so apprehends things that entirely escape my notice; thus I take her thoughts and advice very seriously. (She is after all known as Wisdom in the Bible).[1] It is erotic and sensuous just being together without a bedroom agenda. Call it a trystNot. I am romantically passionate about my friend Rebecca but not lustful. It is a higher clime of love making.

    Rebecca personifies for me the essence of the feminine: her looks, her smell, her touch, her walk, her talk. Now, she is a real woman onto whom I project Sophia, and so she (Rebecca) becomes that, and so my anima cloaks herself in that wonder, which manifests in me as a loving interlocutor with no thoughts of undressing her. And the funny thing is, after a few hours with my under-cover loverNot, I feel as if we are lovers. I wish every man might experience this – carnal love subsumed by a soulful connection. Of course, it takes some restraint and psychological awareness on both sides. But that’s what Sophia is all about.

    Now, I don’t know about Rebecca’s intimate life, but Sophia does not shrink from consummating relationships when appropriate. Indeed, it is between the sheets that Sophia really shines, for she gives and receives with equal ardor; and further, she is monogamous but not possessive, receptive without being devouring; always helpful, thoughtful and affectionate. She is fun to be with, and, with apologies to dogs, she is in fact a man’s best friend.

    My relationship with Rebecca/Sophia is Eros requited and undiluted by acrimony or sentimentality.

    More: Sophia is the gentlest and most forgiving of creatures. She includes in herself all the earlier stages of a man’s anima development (Eve, mother; Helen, sexuality; Mary, spiritual). She is indeed wise beyond her years and said to have been co-existent with God at the Creation, a possibly apocryphal fact that has enticed feminists to call God She. Well, I won’t go there, but simply note that Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, and the modern goddess cult owes much to the Gnostic belief that Sophia was a fourth member left out of the Trinity by the early patriarchal Church Fathers. This was formally, if belatedly,  recognized by the Catholic Church in a 1950 Papal Bull by Pope Pius XII proclaiming the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.” Jung applauded this momentous event as symbolically signifying “the recognition and acknowledgment of matter.”[2] In his autobiography, Jung is more explicit:

The new dogma affirms that Mary as the Bride is united with the son in the heavenly bridal chamber, and as Sophis (Wisdom) she is united with the Godhead. Thus the feminine principle is brought into immediate proximity with the masculine Trinity.[3]

And thus more grounds for seeing God as She, for those who have had quite enough of the nasty or indifferent side of Yaweh, who did not stop the Holocaust or multiple wars killing women and children.

    Now, men, you don’t need my Rebecca to celebrate Sophia. Turn to your own beloved and listen to her instead of taking your pleasure in haste. Find out who she is besides lover, mother, house keeper. She will reward you ten-fold with wisdom you cannot otherwise acquire. See Sophia in your partner and she will become that numinous personification of the feminine.

---

[1] See esp. Proverbs 8:22-31.

[2] “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, par. 197.

[3] Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 202n.

TEASER

Excerpt from the work in progress, MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP, by Daryl Sharp

Preface

Two of my esteemed Jungian colleagues, Mario Jacoby and James Hillman, died this year (2011). I am now one of the few surviving second-tier Jungian acolytes who endeavor to keep Jung’s message alive in our hectic extraverted collective culture, where ambition and electronic toys are valued more than character development. I despair that Jung’s ideas will ever crack the mainstream, though I am heartened to see several videos of him on YouTube.

    And so I wonder, after writing twenty books, what more do I have to say? This is the question that keeps me awake night and day.

    I was recently alerted to my mortality by a week’s stay in hospital. I was experiencing extreme fatigue and difficulty breathing. My doctor sent me to emergency where my symptoms were immediately recognized as CHF (congestive heart failure). They put me on oxygen for a week and an intravenous diuretic to drain the fluids from my lungs and heart. I was x-rayed, MRI’d, echocardiogrammed and ultrasounded. They took my blood pressure every twenty minutes, drew blood from my arms three times a day, and constantly monitored my vital organs with space-age body patches. Every day they asked me if I knew who and where I was.

    I didn’t mind the inactivity and incarceration; it was in fact a welcome holiday away from my lonely turret and business concerns. I enjoyed the attention and Razr flirted outrageously with the nurses. Of course, I had to cancel my planned Christmas vacation at a semi-nude Jamaican resort (Hedonism II), but what the hell. Every twelve-hour change in shift brought a new nurse more lovely than the last—East Indian, Pakistani, Thai, Phillippina, Russky and more. They did everything to make me comfortable but hop into bed with me. Never mind, I was catheterized and wasn’t up to much except trying to sleep between tests. There was nothing to complain about except the food. However hard they try—and I think they do—every hospital serves unpalatable gruel. The soup is generally good, also the fruit. It’s hard to kill a banana.

    But seriously, it finally got me thinking. What am I here for?

    This new “Jungian romance” may or may not be an answer.

__________________________________________________________

RECENT BOOKS BY DARYL SHARP

The Eros Trilogy:

1. Live Your Nonsense: Halfway to Dawn with Eros (A Jungian Perspective on Individuation) $25
2. Trampled to Death by Geese: More Eros, and a Lot More Nonsense (A Jungian analyst's whimsical perspective on the inner life) $25
3. Hijacked by Eros: A Jungian analyst's picaresque adventures in the pleroma. $25

See www.innercitybooks.net for details and reviews

_________________________________

Watch for:

• The Psychology of Astrology: New Moon Rising and Other Numinous Constellations (Frith Luton)
• Miles To Go Before I Sleep: Growing Up Puer (Daryl Sharp)

_________________________________

Press Release: Two New Inner City TItles

INNER CITY BOOKS is proud to add TWO NEW TITLES to its substantial, acclaimed canon of Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts:

125. AN AMERICAN JUNGIAN: In Honor of Edward F. Edinger
(Ed. George R. Elder and Dianne D. Cordic). Illustrated.
ISBN 978-1-894574-26-6. 288 pages. Sewn. Index. $35/£20

This extraordinary compilation brings together essays and reviews by Dr. Edinger together with appreciations by others of his work and interviews with him. None of it has previously been published in book form.

Edward F. Edinger was such a significant presence in the worldwide Jungian community that this volume can only begin to assess his greatness as an interpreter of Jung’s work and his dedication to the significance of Analytical psychology—but it well illustrates his worth.

Contents include:

• Bibliography of Edinger books and electronic media
• An American Jungian: Transcript of the acclaimed video,"A Conversation with Edinger," by Lawrence W. Jaffe
• A Guide to the Writings of Edward F. Edinger, by Robin Robertson
• Edinger Essays and Reviews:




An Outline of Analytical Psychology

Paracelsus and the Age of Aquarius

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Naturalist of the Soul

Individuation: A Myth for Modern Man

The Question of a Jungian Community

Archetypal Patterns in Schizophrenia

Tributes to M. Esther Harding, Eleanor Bertine, Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz

The Psyche and Global Unrest

* * * * *

126. JUNG UNCORKED: Rare Vintages from the Cellar of Analytical Psychology—Book Four
Decanted with Commentaries by Daryl Sharp (Toronto)
ISBN 978-1-894574-27-3. 160 pages. Sewn. Index. $25/£15

This volume concludes the author’s adventurous Uncorked series (see titles 120, 121, 123) explicating various essays in C. G. Jung’s Collected Works. Each chapter presents spirited passages from an essay in one volume of Jung’s CW, with experiential commentaries on their psychological and contemporary relevance.

Contents:

• 9ii The Shadow
• 10 The Undiscovered Self
• 11 Yoga and the West 39
• 12 Religious Ideas in Alchemy 48
• 13 The Philosophical Tree 55
• 14 The Components of the Coniunctio 62
• 15 In Memory of Sigmund Freud 75
• 16 Principles of Practical Psychotherapy 87
• 17 The Development of Personality 108
• 18 Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams 115

Click for information on ordering books.
INNER CITY BOOKS
Box 1271, Station Q,
Toronto, ON M4T 2P4, Canada
Tel. (416) 927-0355
FAX (416) 924-1814
email: info@innercitybooks.net
www.innercitybooks.net

Jung Uncorked & The Other Side of Illness

Inner City Books has added two new titles to their extensive list of publications of Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analyst.
Jung Uncorked Book Three: Rare Vintages from the Cellar of Analytical Psychology

Decanted with commentaries by DARYL SHARP

ISBN 9781894574242. (Book 3) Index 128 pp. 2008. $25.00

C.G. Jung died in 1961 at the age of 86, but his legacy lives on. His writings are like fine, full-bodied wines-they mature with age, as do we all if we pay sufficient attention to ourselves.

This book continues the acclaimed series explicating different essays in Jung's Collected Works (CW) together with the author's experiential commentaries on their psychological significance and contemporary relevance. The selections here are of course just the tip of the wine cellar, so to speak, that is Jung's legacy and, by extension, the backdrop to the attitude toward the psyche that generally informs the modern practice of analytical psychology.

Jung Uncorked now comprises three Books. In order to cover Jung's wide range of interests, the chapters in each book deal with one essay from each volume of the Collected Works, sequentially from CW 1 to CW 18. Book One explicates and comments on essays from CW volumes 1-9i. Book Two does the same with CW volumes 9ii to 18. Book Three begins anew, with these contents:

1) Cryptomnesia, 2) On the Doctrine of Complexes, 3) On Psychological Understanding, 4) Freud and Jung: Contrasts, 5) The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother, 6) Psychological Types, 7) The Synthetic or Constructive Method, 8) The Stages of Life, 9i) Concerning Rebirth

Daryl Sharp is a Zurich-trained analyst, publisher of Inner City Books, and author of many other titles in this general Series. He lives and practices in Toronto, Canada.

Title 123 in the Series: STUDIES IN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY BY JUNGIAN ANALYSTS

* * * * *

Body and Soul: The Other Side of Illness - 2nd Edition

by Albert Kreinheder

ISBN 9781894574259. Index. 128 pp. 2008. $25.00

Informed by the author's personal experience of cancer, arthritis and tuberculosis over many years, Body and Soul is unique, unlike anything Inner City has ever published. Unusual in both style and tone, it is essentially a feeling-intuitive approach to physical illness, dramatically illustrating the symbolic attitude, individuation and active imagination with the body.

Body and Soul reflects a life well and truly lived in relation to the Self. It is deceptively simple and straight from the heart: no nonsense, no footnotes.

From the Foreword by William O. Walcott:

"Amazingly, in this day of psychobabble passing for science, Kreinheder has written a supremely readable book (many chapters read like prose poetry) about the body and the psyche without it being 'psychological.' He understood that the essence of human experience is not psychological and rational; it is something ineffable and immediate, passionate and painful, spiritual and profane, that must be both endured and celebrated.

"This book is a last testament of a dying man, a man with profound insight-but it is about life and living."

Albert Kreinheder, Ph.D., was a Jungian analyst in Los Angeles for more than 25 years. He studied English literature at Syracuse University (B.A. and M.A.) and received a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Claremont Graduate School. Over the years he served the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles as Director of Training, Chairman of the Certifying Board and President. He died of cancer in 1990, at the age of 76.

Title No. 124 in the Series: STUDIES IN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY BY JUNGIAN ANALYSTS

Donkeys, Elephants & Jungian Psychology Unplugged

What better way of celebrating the end of a republican era than by paying tribute to the Elephant!

Jungian Psychology Unplugged: My Life as an Elephant by Daryl Sharp

"This warm, humorous, entertaining and beautifully written book gives an overview of Jungian Psychology . . . That's right, warm, humorous, entertaining, beautifully written, and a psychology book.

"My Life as an Elephant is comprised of six chapters. Chapter one addresses Jung's Basic model of Psychological Types. Chapter two deals with 'Getting to know Yourself' and explains the basics of archetypes and complexes, persona, shadow . . . Chapter three, 'The Unknown Other' is about projection and identification, including the challenges involved with intimacy and relationships. Chapter four deals with the 'Anatomy of a Midlife Crisis' which is most often fueled by the need to develop a relationship with one's self, or with the unexpressed aspects of our personalities that have not been honored and given a voice earlier in life. In chapter five Daryl Sharp writes about the analytical experience, including his own, which I found most refreshing. All to often, one will pick up a psychology or self-help book in hopes of finding a recipe to improve one's life. That's not what happens in Jungian Psychology Unplugged: My life as an Elephant. Instead, in vulnerable fashion, Daryl Sharp shares some of his more personal moments during the period when he was seeking council. The author well knows that another person's recipe is worthless when it comes to finding one's self and living an authentic life, and he doesn't pretend to be an authority and try to prove otherwise. Chapter six is about Psychological Development, the process of becoming more conscious by developing a relationship to one's soul. Sharp addresses the need to be true to our vocations, our true callings in life, and venerates those who have the courage to do just this--listening and being true to one's inner voice. I highly recommend this publication to anyone interested in living an authentic life, not just those who have an interest in Jung or psychology." Review by Mel Mathews

Inner city Books FREE DOWNLOADS

There are three titles by DARYL SHARP to download FOR FREE on the Inner City Books website:

www.innercitybooks.net

The titles are:

JUNG LEXICON: A Primer of Terms and Concepts

CHICKENLITTLE: The Inside Story

DIGESTING JUNG Food for the Journey 

Forthcoming Title

Greetings all,

Watch for JUNG UNCORKED, Book 3, available Jan. 2009.

Daryl

The Story Behind Inner City Books

By Daryl Sharp, Publisher and General Editor

In 1980 I was 44 years old. I had returned to Toronto two years earlier from the Jung Institute in Zurich and I had a thriving practice. I had so much energy I thought I might explode. Theoretically it's possible. E = m x c2 (squared). If you have no place to put your energy it could build up inside until poof! - a burst of flame and at the speed of light you're toast.

For some time I had been trying to interest publishers in my Diploma thesis on Franz Kafka (The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation). I had high hopes. After all, the 100th anniversary of his birth was coming up, and then the 60th anniversary of his death. But there were no takers. I was frustrated. My friends and colleagues Marion Woodman and Fraser Boa, who had trained with me in Zurich, finally said, "Why not do it yourself, you have the tools."

It was true. I had worked for many publishers before going to pieces and becoming an analyst. I knew what was involved in making and marketing a book. Yes, I thought, why not! Only I didn't fancy being a one-shot vanity press, so I decided to invite manuscripts from other analysts. Marion immediately offered her Diploma thesis on obesity and anorexia, The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter.

Then I called Marie-Louise von Franz at her home in Kusnacht, at 9 a.m., just when I knew she'd be coming in from the garden. I told her I was starting a publishing house and was interested in some of her unpublished seminars, which I just happened to have in mimeographed form, namely: Redemption Motifs in Fairy Tales, On Divination and Synchronicity and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology.

Dr. von Franz was very pleased. What is more, she graciously agreed to be Honorary Patron of Inner City Books. So, I now had a place to put my energy, and other analysts responded. Close on the heels of Woodman and von Franz came Sylvia Brinton Perera (Descent to the Goddess), James A. Hall (Jungian Dream Interpretation), Nathan Schwartz-Salant (Narcissism and Character Transformation) and Edward F. Edinger (The Creation of Consciousness). These early gems and later books by the same authors continue to be the backbone of Inner City Books.

In the beginning I did not expect publishing to be a profitable enterprise. I thought it would have to be subsidized by my practice. As it happened, however, there was a ready and eager market. Sales flourished and readers clamored for more. Never mind the phenomenal success of Marion Woodman's several books. I did not foresee that offers would fall from the sky from publishers in other countries.

Every morning at 8 a.m. I walk down to the post office to collect what's in the box. Typologically I think of myself as an introvert. I relate to the world subjectively, in terms of what's going on in me. I am quite happy working alone in a corner. But my extraverted shadow survives on what's in the box.

Inner City Books might have become faceless. It has not. We are three people: myself, Senior Editor Vicki Cowan and Editorial Assistant Scott Lewis. Everything is contained in my Victorian house in downtown Toronto: analytic practice on the first floor, publishing offices on the second, bedroooms on the third, books in the basement and garage. We have no plans to expand our base of operations.

We now have more than 100 authoritative works on many themes, all promoting the understanding and practical application of Jungian psychology. The only complaint we regularly hear is that we publish books faster than people can read them.

Well, we tried to slow down. In 1997 we published only two titles, instead of the previous four or five a year. But in 1998 we were back to four, including the wonderful biography of Jung by Marie-Louise von Franz, long out of print. In 1999, we published five books, including a Cumulative Index of the first 80 titles.... so it looks like we will continue to do what is right in front of us - and let our readers catch up when they can.

The loss in 1998 of both Dr. von Franz and Dr. Edinger was a severe blow to us personally as well as to the world-wide Jungian community. We have been consoled by the fact that new, unpublished manuscripts by them have since become available. We feel fortunate indeed to be in a position to keep their spirits and their work alive, to the benefit of everyone who seeks to become psychologically conscious.