Getting to Know You

Back with another installment from Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts. This time, I read Getting to Know You by Daryl Sharp, published 34 years ago. A note to the reader sets the context:

“The content of this book grew out of a seminar based on C.G. Jung’s essay Marriage as a Psychological Relationship.

“Those taking part in the five two-hour sessions included several professional therapists, a real-estate agent, two housewives, a postman, an advertising executive, a restaurant owner, two college professors, a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest—thirteen in all, six women and seven men. Their ages ranged from twenty-eight to sixty-three.”

Getting to Know You is essentially a cleaned-up transcript of those five sessions. In each one, Daryl Sharp reads a paragraph from Jung’s essay and discusses it with the participants. Repeat, repeat. As you might guess, the range of perspectives and experience in the group led to a few tense exchanges. You almost feel like you’re in the room.

Sharp also covers many of Jung’s most influential concepts in passing. One benefit of reading several Jung-adjacent texts is seeing how different people articulate the same ideas, which helps deepen understanding.

One important reminder for me came with the allusion to projection: “To the extent that we’re still unconscious of ourselves, so we are limited in our ability to relate psychologically to another person.

“Let me put it another way: whatever aspects of ourselves we’re not conscious of, we’re apt to see in someone else. The question is, are we then relating to that person at all, or to an unconscious side of ourselves? If we don’t see the reality of the other person, we’re trapped in a narcissistic bubble.”

Later, Sharp invites participants to do something James Hollis often suggests: think of someone you don’t like, and ask yourself what it is about that person you can’t stand. Then reflect on yourself with a critical eye and see if you can recognize something of what they are, or what they’ve done, in yourself.

It takes a critical eye, an open mind, and a side of brutal honesty to do that.

Another strong reminder comes when Sharp talks about complexes. Here, I’ll quote at length:

“I think the most important thing to understand about complexes is that they determine how we feel and what we do—they deny us freedom of choice. We’re not the master, or mistress, in our own house.

“Complexes interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance; they produce disturbances of memory and blockages in the flow of associations; they appear and disappear according to their own laws; they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech and action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like independent beings.

“Jung describes a complex as a bundle of energy associated with an idea, a mental image. Behind an effect, and that means any emotional reaction, you can be sure there’s a complex.

“Jung said that complexes are like islands in the psyche, split off from the ego-mainland. When you’re emotional, caught up in a complex, you’re on an island, so to speak, cut off from rational ego resources. The complex is in charge of what you say and do. When the storm dies down you swim ashore and lick your wounds, wondering what came over you. And sometimes you can’t even remember what happened! It’s like you had another personality that suddenly came alive. That’s called dissociation.”

Overall, it was a quick read. It took two sittings. There are better books in this series, but the participants’ remarks made this one enjoyable.