What is a Jungian Thriller?

It’s a mystery/thriller driven not by the conventions of the genre, but by the world of Jungian thought—or both.

It’s a story that has one foot planted firmly in both worlds: the real and the analytical. To me, there’s an otherness to Jung’s writings and approach to reality. It’s a different realm. Some would argue that Jung is a heretic. Others would say Analytic Psychology is a religion, a cult. Jung has been called a prophet, a charlatan, a liberator of women, a misogynist, a healer and a con-artist, to name a few. I can only speak for myself. When I submerge myself in his teachings, I float in a netherworld of perceptions that parallel my own personal world. They help me translate everyday experience. I feel more authentic.

Have I lost you? Okay, let’s get lost together.

Jungian thought is—in my limited understanding of it—a cosmology of thinking, seen and unseen, that tears the curtain of reality as we know it and creates an opening to the mystery of life. Now I’ve really confused you.

And because it’s mysterious, I approach it with a certain amount of awe. To name just three, there are concepts like:

• the shadow,
• the archetypes,
• and the animus…

that allow us to drill down into a character’s thinking and uncover whole kingdoms on fire and burning out of control at that person’s connection with the real world.

Sound too surreal? I’ll try to simplify.

They say all good writing begins with character. In this novel, I’ve chosen a man named Gar Moody, a former special agent who has left law enforcement because of a personal tragedy. In an effort to heal himself, perhaps, he has ended up a Jungian therapist practicing in Los Angeles—that mythical Hades on the West coast—a dangerous and beautiful place where anything can happen. And somehow his old history with law enforcement and his new training in Jungian psychology collide at the intersection of those two worlds: his patients. Someone starts kidnapping them.

I hope you enjoy Animus. It’s a rattling good tale that careens along the boundaries of the thriller and enough Jung to intrigue. Or maybe it’s none of what I’ve said here. Maybe it’s just a genre book—a sexy and suspenseful one, at that—and as I learn more about Jung, future books will become what I’ve imagined.

You be the judge. Read the book and visit my blog to help me launch this conversation.