From Library Journal
A revisionist biography by Noll, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Walter Kendrick
The Aryan Christ doesn't pretend to be a biography; it skims across Jung's early years to focus on that crucial month in 1913, and it largely ignores his life after about 1930. In part, Noll does for Jung what Frank Sulloway did for Sigmund Freud in Freud: Biologist of the Mind (1979): he places Jung's dreams and theories in the context not of biology but of contemporary mythological studies, showing how virtually all his supposed revelations can be found in books by once-popular authorities like Friedrich Creuzer and Franz Cumont.

Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Noll's primary thesis is that Jung considered himself a god, that he went through an actual ritual of self-deification, that he believed he was on a mission to save the soul of the world and that his disciples were sent to him to perform service in his new religion, thereby fulfilling their own special destiny. This central point is well worth pondering.

From Booklist
From its inception at the turn of the century, psychology has always appeared to its critics as more a religion than a science. In this particularly vitriolic work, Noll, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, seeks to remove any guise of science from Jungian psychology. Noll brands Jung and his followers as little more than pagan spiritualists and polygamists, employing a veneer of science to add respectability to their rituals. He laments the paucity of Jung's papers available to scholars, noting that Jung's estate has virtually sealed all letters, diaries, and other papers belonging to Jung, his wife, his lovers, and his collaborator, J. J. Honegger. Moreover, he attacks Memories, Dreams, Reflections, widely believed to be autobiographical, as a heavily sanitized fraud composed by Aniela Jaffe, Jung's assistant, and editors at Pantheon Press. Drawing on letters and diaries from Jung's colleagues and patients, Noll recounts in vivid detail numerous episodes of adultery, paganism, and mysticism, including seances and the trances that revealed to Jung his status as a new-age religious prophet, the "Aryan Christ." This serious work of scholarship may cause widespread controversy for it is quite accessible to the lay reader. Ted Leventhal

From Kirkus Reviews
A fascinating, carefully researched study of the origins of Carl Jung's highly original, influential version of human psychology, and a work likely to generate intense debate. Noll's (History of Science/Harvard) goal here seems to be to deepen and expand arguments put forth in his previous work (The Jung Cult, not reviewed) that Jung didn't so much intend to develop a new form of psychoanalysis as to create a new pagan religion, one that was a unique (and alarming) blend of ``German mysticism, Hellenistic paganism, and Gnosticism,'' colored by Jung's growing anti-Semitism. Noll focuses primarily on the first two decades of the century, the period that saw Jung aggressively shape his revolutionary theories and break with Freud (he had been Freud's chosen successor). He traces in great detail Jung's fascination with the many arcane schools of mysticism current in northern Europe at that time, uncovering groups, books, and some bizarre would-be prophets, and he demonstrates the ways in which Jung incorporated their teachings into his theories. He also stresses the importance of a little-known incident in 1913 during which Jung, after repeatedly inducing a trancelike state, imagined that ``his head changed into a lion and he became a god.'' This occurrence, Noll argues, is a central event in Jung's life, validating for the Swiss thinker the idea that he was a pagan savior, sent to summon Aryan culture back from the failed religion of Christianity (``a Jewish religion,'' Noll describes Jung's view, ``that was cruelly imposed on the pagan peoples of Europe''). All of this is bound to be intensely controversial, and Noll doesn't help his case by a sometimes scattershot approach. Still, there is much here that's hard to refute, and the image of Jung that emerges from this thoughtful study is deeply disturbing. (For another view of Jung, see Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung, p. TKTK.) Surely not the final word, but nonetheless an important, angry work of historical revisionism. (photo insert, not seen) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, stands as one of the two most famous and influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped our perception of the world; his theories of myths and archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial and impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as the all-too-human man he really was, a genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age.The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jung's life--a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930s. It contains never-before-published revelations ab! out his life and the lives of his most intimate followers--details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jung's family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America. Richard Noll traces the influence on Jung's ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jung's idealization of "primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents ! a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick--whose story is fully told here for the first time--the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement. As Richard Noll writes, "Jung is more interesting . . . because of his humanity, not his semidivinity." In giving a complete portrait of this twentieth-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with implications for all of our lives.

From the Inside Flap
Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, stands as one of the two most famous and influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped our perception of the world; his theories of myths and archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial and impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as the all-too-human man he really was, a genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age.

The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jung's life--a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930s. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life and the lives of his most intimate followers--details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jung's family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America.

Richard Noll traces the influence on Jung's ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jung's idealization of "primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick--whose story is fully told here for the first time--the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement.

As Richard Noll writes, "Jung is more interesting . . . because of his humanity, not his semidivinity."  In giving a complete portrait of this twentieth-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with implications for all of our lives.

About the Author
Richard Noll, a clinical psychologist, is Lecturer in the History of Science at Harvard University. He is a former resident fellow of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. His previous book, The Jung Cult, won the 1994 Best Book in Psychology Award from the Association of American Publishers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jung's life - a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930's. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life and the lives of his most intimate followers - details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jung's family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America. Richard Noll traces the influence on Jung's ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jung's idealization of "primitive man" has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick - whose story is fully told here for the first time - the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

According to Noll (The Jung Cult), one of the most potent concepts of 20th-century psychologythe collective unconsciousexists "only on the shelves of Jung's personal library." Only Freud has been more influential in psychology, and now both have been exposed as more imaginative than scientific in promoting what was psychoanalysis to one and analytical psychology to the other. Both effected what many accepted as cures. "Patients became apostles," Noll charges. "Analysis became initiation." And to the charismatic Jung, who turned away from what he derided as Freud's Jewish psychology to a mystical Germanic neo-paganism that involved trance states, occultism and pre-Christian sun worship, "Cures became secondary to conversions." In his professional talks and publications, Noll contends, Jung (1875-1961) employed pseudoscientific terms to conceal the fact that he was offering his initiates a half-baked post-Christian religion with himself as its Christ. Those who find that Jungian prescriptions work for them will be reluctant to concede that the Swiss master was "a hierophant who presided over his own mysteries." But Noll, a clinical psychologist and historian of science, has marshaled persuasive documents to suggest that one of the shapers of 20th-century thought was a charlatan. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Sept.) FYI: For another take on Jung, see Frank McLynn's Carl Gustav Jung, published by St. Martin's/Dunne, reviewed in Forecasts June 2.

Library Journal

A revisionist biography by Noll, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Kirkus Reviews

A fascinating, carefully researched study of the origins of Carl Jung's highly original, influential version of human psychology, and a work likely to generate intense debate.

Noll's (History of Science/Harvard) goal here seems to be to deepen and expand arguments put forth in his previous work (The Jung Cult, not reviewed) that Jung didn't so much intend to develop a new form of psychoanalysis as to create a new pagan religion, one that was a unique (and alarming) blend of "German mysticism, Hellenistic paganism, and Gnosticism," colored by Jung's growing anti-Semitism. Noll focuses primarily on the first two decades of the century, the period that saw Jung aggressively shape his revolutionary theories and break with Freud (he had been Freud's chosen successor). He traces in great detail Jung's fascination with the many arcane schools of mysticism current in northern Europe at that time, uncovering groups, books, and some bizarre would-be prophets, and he demonstrates the ways in which Jung incorporated their teachings into his theories. He also stresses the importance of a little-known incident in 1913 during which Jung, after repeatedly inducing a trancelike state, imagined that "his head changed into a lion and he became a god." This occurrence, Noll argues, is a central event in Jung's life, validating for the Swiss thinker the idea that he was a pagan savior, sent to summon Aryan culture back from the failed religion of Christianity ("a Jewish religion," Noll describes Jung's view, "that was cruelly imposed on the pagan peoples of Europe"). All of this is bound to be intensely controversial, and Noll doesn't help his case by a sometimes scattershot approach. Still, there is much here that's hard to refute, and the image of Jung that emerges from this thoughtful study is deeply disturbing. (For another view of Jung, see Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung, p. TKTK.)

Surely not the final word, but nonetheless an important, angry work of historical revisionism.