Jung and the Story of Our Time

“The fascination of Jung is inescapable and van der Post has given us an excellent book—eloquent, learned and most impressive in its evocation of a devilishly provocative man.”—The Nation
 
That Laurens van der Post should have chosen to write about Jung will come as no surprise to the millions of people who saw the three television programs that he devoted to the story of Jung's life and work. Indeed, part of the compulsion for putting the experience of his extraordinarily fruitful friendship with Jung into book form was precisely that the limitations of a single film sequence left him with the insistent feeling of a challenge only partially met.
 
To present Jung as he knew him, not Jung the psychologist but rather Jung the man, the discoverer and explorer of a new dimension in the human spirit, was the task which Laurens van der Post set himself and which has taken his special gifts to accomplish.

Laurens van der Post was born in Africa in 1906. Most of his adult life was spent divided between Africa and England. His professions of writer and farmer were interrupted by ten years in the army, behind enemy lines in Abyssinia, the Western Desert, and the Far East, where he was taken prisoner by the Japanese while commanding a small guerrilla unit. He went straight from prison back to active service in Java. He was awarded the CBE for his services in the field.