Answer to Job

Review.

Arguably C.G. Jung’s most controversial and emotional work, Answer to Job might also be appropriately titled “Confrontation with the God-Image.” But while it is, in many respects, a book rooted in Jung’s spiritual woundedness, it is also a beautiful book — in some ways, a paean to the whole of creation, why we are here, and why life matters.

I especially recommend this book because it might be understood, in some respects, as a foundation for a depth psychological ethic, which, in turn, fosters the development of imaginal ethics. Answer to Job may also appeal to readers who are wrestling with their own spiritual wounds.

In this one book, the only book Jung said he would not change, he returned to the lyrical style of poetry he had begun during the composition of The Red Book … He returned to a musical-poetical play with lyrical-inspired emotions, words, and images to characterize the qualitatively multivalent experience of the self, which sounded through him during the earthquake of Answer to Job as both blissful and wrathful, awful and rapturous, at once.

— Steven Herrmann^{footnote 1}