Joy, Inspiration, and Hope

Kast is a Zurich-based Jungian analyst, but who has an ability to incorporate material from other psychological and philosopical schools, unlike her more ideological colleagues in the Jungian world. She provides a robust psychological discussion of material that is generally relegated to spirituality. Especially good is the discussion of the shadow side of joy, what she calls "malicious joy". She engages sucessfully ideas from Ernest Bloch and Albert Camus, though her perfunctory Jungian interpretation of the Greek myth of Dionysus is obfuscating and distracting.