Century of Insight

Derry Macdiarmid was a Jungian analyst and NHS consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist. This book is based on a course of lectures given to junior psychiatrists at Guy's Hospital and is the story of the discovery or making conscious of the unconscious mind and the body of knowledge that he calls Psychodynamic Enlightenment or the Enlightenment of the Mind. The agenda includes what is going on inside us, what is unconsciously going on between people and the unconscious process of development and growth. The book is in four parts: origins in anthropology and sociology, pioneers reaching back to Freud, Jung and Adler but also including the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The tone is playful and perceptive with many asides and observations about the characters he is writing about. We learn that Jung set fire to his farts on family camping expeditions as well as the tensions of his ménage à trois and his work on the God complex. Interestingly, Macdiarmid comments that Freud sent both Jung and Adler away, but he would have been a far greater leader if he had been able to assimilate them. However, this would have been the equivalent of Judaism assimilating Jesus and Muhammad. I very much enjoyed the chapter on Kierkegaard and felt I understood him better after Macdiarmuid's explanations.

The third part features chapters on eight psychoanalysts who contributed to the development of the discipline. Some are better known than others: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, William Fairbairn (Father of Sir Nicolas), Michael Balint, Donald Winnicott, Karen Horney, Salvador Minuchin and John Layard. Macdiarmid knew many of them well, so these explanations are interspersed with personal anecdotes. From this part he draws a number of conclusions, including that 'all internal conflict is between sub-personalities using different consciences, conflicting visions of good, and incompatible value systems.' The underlying theme throughout the book is that life is about finding our capacity to love. In this respect, dreams are as important as rationality. MacDiarmid sums all this up in the final chapter on dream, imagination and emotion. Following the tradition of John McMurray, he sees religion as celebrating with those you love. He also encourages readers to take courage and let our dream life and imagination live us. He ends with a number of profound insights concluding that we learn to love through remorse, and that the battle between good and evil is in fact a battle between generosity and anxiety. The author died before he was able to revise the manuscript, so his parting shot just three days before his death is to encourage the reader to start a dream book tomorrow morning. Psychologists and psychiatrists will find much to interest and intrigue them in this stimulating text.