Reading Plato through Jung: Why must the Third become the Fourth?

This book examines the Jungian imperative that the Third must become the  Fourth through the lens of Carl Jung’s complex reception of Plato.  While in psychoanalytic discourse the Third is typically viewed as an  agent that brings about healing, the author highlights that, in the case  of Jung, an early emphasis on the Third as the “transcendent function”  gave way to an increasing insistence on the importance of the Fourth.  And yet, he asks, why must “the Third become the Fourth”?
Paul  Bishop begins with a survey of work on Jung’s relation to Plato, before  turning to Jung’s readings of the Timaeus and Black Books, as well as  Goethe’s Faust II and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. He proceeds to unpick  Jung’s statements on the Third and the Fourth though a compelling  analysis of how Jung draws upon religious and alchemical traditions,  Pythagorean numerology, his own dream-like experiences and Plato’s  cosmology. This book will appeal to practitioners and to scholars  working in the history of ideas, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and  psychoanalytic theory.