Growing Up Jung: Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks

Canadian journalist Toub writes "The Other Half," a biweekly column for Toronto’s Globe and Mail about male-female interactions, psychology, and human behavior. Toub grew up in a tract housing suburb of Denver with two Jungian psychologists for parents, so he has particular childhood memories of dream interpretations, free associations, and describing shapes in the plaster of the ceiling. His New Age parents brought him into contact with the post-Jungian Arnold Mindell: "I like to refer to him as my parents’ ‘former guru.’ " In Toub’s family, self-reflection was a highly valued trait, and throughout this engaging and illuminating memoir he interweaves his own autobiographical reflections with the writings of Arnold, Freud, and Jung. Where Jung found connections between physiology and the psyche, Mindell linked psychology and quantum physics, and regarded one’s life and the environment as a manifestation of the unconscious. With such concepts permeating pages on "Synchronicity and the Meaning of Love," "The Oedipus Complex," and "Getting Laid the Jungian Way," Toub writes with wit, humor, and a penetrating honesty as he examines his family life, his relationships with various women and his marriage, along with sexual fantasies, masturbation, the I Ching, and meditation. (Aug.)