What Inspires Gary Lachman?

We asked Gary Lachman, author of Jung the Mystic, what inspired him to write a new biography of legendary psychologist Carl Jung
I first read Jung in my early teens, around the same time as I was reading Hermann Hesse, Tolkien, Kerouac, Alan Watts, and other counterculture icons. I found his work inspiring and the idea of “becoming who you are” – that I also encountered in Nietzsche – was a guiding light that helped me over quite a few hurdles. However, over the years, while I still found Jung an important thinker, I also became increasingly exasperated with the obscurity of his writing. He had something important to say, but he seemed to have difficulty saying it clearly. I’ve found that the best way to understand what a thinker is saying is to write a book about it, and after writing biographical studies of Rudolf Steiner, P.D. Ouspensky, and Emaunel Swedenborg – all of whom share common concerns with Jung – I thought it was time to tackle Jung. I had recently written about him in my Politics and the Occult and welcomed the chance to do a full length study.