尽管少数人不喜欢，这本书依然作为一个总体的开门介绍阐述人类从无意识中摆脱了出来，朝着意识层面去进化

top1 Amazon review,only 1 star,whatever it's a great book !

摘抄亚马逊排名第一的评论，尽管少数人不喜欢，这本书依然作为一个总体的开门介绍阐述了人类从无意识中摆脱了出来，意识层面去进化。这为人的无意识的历史研究提高了很重要的依据，哲学心理学了解无意识领域研究必备。

After 150 pages of this it was clear to me, as Robert Cialdini, influence expert, often notes, we are prone to revere experts and people with distinguished titles. I greatly suspect that, like myself, many of you reading this book in the last one or two years are doing so because of the laudatory recommendation of Jordan Peterson.

(You may also be reading this book because it promises to summarize the gigantic canon of Jung.)

Well, that it might, but is there any more worth to reading this? really I must say: no, no more than that.

Here is really big problem. Are you fascinated with what ancient people thought? Or, are you seeking insight and knowledge into the way of our own lives now in this modern time?

If you want to know how the world was conceived of across myriad cultures in the pre-historic and pre-scientific eras then by all means read this book with pleasure, go read all of Jung’s books, and then I suppose you might also go read Petersen’s torturously meandering Maps of Meaning , and you might as well go and read the pre-Cambrian Mind and all of Joseph Campbell’s stuff too. Go ahead, enjoy.

The point is there’s an ocean of mythological content that can keep you busy trying to grasp the underlying structure of your own consciousness until you die of old age. But really, is this valid, scientific, verifiable information that defines how we as human beings evolve on top of our underlying subconscious structures? Or, is it rather a compendium of all the fanciful notions which prescientific man used to account for the phenomenon of life? Do you have an uroborus (self devouring serpent) lying deep inside your soul (alongside your Bruce Springsteen archetype, your love of Jerry Seinfeld, and the anguish of your Mom’s pushy insistence you do your homework ...do you?)

Personally I do not need to know what the Sumerians, The Vikings, the ancient Hebrews, Or for that matter all the other obscure dead cultural groups and societies mentioned in by hyper-intellectual communities of European 19th century believed and thought. I’m not impressed with their alienating use of vocabulary we no longer need.

It is really similar to listening to hours upon hours of classical music. It may well be beautiful or inspiring if that’s your thing but it’s of no more validity musically then today’s blues jazz rock or other more contemporary ways of expressing truth in art. For this reason I consider this book an excessive indulgence which only a academic professional could ever enjoy. There is nothing of assured relevance to you in this book. Hooey.

Gaining a strong grasp of human deep psychology is indeed a worthwhile endeavor, one must gain insight into one’s own character, emotional structures, obsessions,fears, blockages, and inner drives. However, there are psychological texts available now which will take you directly to these topics in a much more effective and efficient way.

Even the simplest books on transactional analysis, such as “I’m OK you’re OK”, will give you a far better handle to hold onto in working out issues of how you came to be who you are, why you are still the way you are, and what you can do about the things you may be struggling with. Of course there are many many other examples, I’m just bringing up one among many.

Arthur Schopenhauer, in my opinion the greatest of all philosophers because he was able to validate everything he said, despised Hegel, for the reason that everything Hegel said was purely Imaginative and frivolous without resting his points upon any logical structure or systematic proof. We might even be able to say that Arthur Schopenhauer met the Fennyman Test, which is that if you can’t explain what you’re talking about in clear and simple language you don’t know what your talking about. Schopenhauer was able to do this.

Writers on the topic of myth, collective unconscious, and so forth are not able to do this. There is no convincing proof that such a thing as a collective unconscious even exists. We can say that people feel similar things because we all share similar vulnerabilities, but the symbols in which we we experience these are not necessarily common, at all.

Symbols and universals is indeed a compelling and even beautiful notion, and perhaps has some grain of truth to it, but if you read it as though you were reading a Truth about the underlying structure of human consciousness is to be a mislead or awed by intellectual superheroes. I’m not willing to give myself over to the influence of these people.

So again. Read this if you like metaphorical psychodrama. But do not get confused into thinking that this is a valid deconstruction of the deepest eternal truths about us.

Metaphor is art. Science is not metaphorical. If only Freud hadnt harpooned himself on sexuality....he would have been the greatest psychologist ever, unfortunately he got stuck on this and lost the forrest through the trees, I suppose a problem of the times he lived in..