Functioning Transcendent (P)
The Transcendent is a reality that functions in all our lives all the time: call it God, the unknown, or the holy. It is not some obscure out-of-reach "Other" available only to those with specialized knowledge or a phenomenon spoken about only in a church, temple, or mosque. The Transcendent is both beyond us, yet nearer to us than our own heartbeat. In our daily lives, the Transcendent is often experienced addressing us through our compulsions, perversions, and ordinary struggles. We find it touching us through our most shameful problems and bidding us to realize our most hidden promise. Jungian analyst Ann Ulanov shows us how the Transcendent appears in her clinical work, how to work with it in dreams and symptoms, and how it informs encounters between analyst and analysis. She demonstrates the spiritual aspect of analysis in her case observations dealing with fatness and the female, masochistic suffering, parental relationships, follow-up treatment in patient/therapist sex, and the resolution of suicidal temptations. The Functioning Transcendent: A Study In Analytical Psychology is an important contribution to the on-going national dialog about the nature and meaning of the transcendental spiritual experience and will be of intense interest to those interested in the contribution of Jungian psychology to this phenomena.  --Midwest Book Review