Recommended reading for ACTION PHILOSOPHERS #3
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell

Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated from the German by A. A. Brill.
Do we here at ACTION PHILOSOPHERS hook you up or what? Not only do we tell you which books to read, but we also tell you how to get 'em for free ON-LINE! Please, no applause. Just throw money.

Like many incredible influential thinkers, Freud's popularity wasn't hurt at all by his ability to write rippingly good and entertaining books, including Dreams, which contains much of his own self-analysis, including the famed "Irma" dream adapted in this issue.

And Freud was no dummy: some of the earliest editions were illustrated with COMICS! Check it out at the Library of Congress site. Winsor McCay, eat your heart out!

Carl G. Jung (ed.) Man and His Symbols. New York: Anchor Books, 1964.
Toward the end of his life, Jung had a dream that he was giving a lecture to a bunch of common people who actually understood what the hell he was talking about. Apparently this was something of a novel experience for him, and he liked it. After waking up he threw together this lavishly illustrated collection of essays from him and his followers putting the precepts of analytical psychology down in simple terms for dumb-asses like you and me.

As condescending as that project may be, it works: this is a fun explication of the elements of the archetypes and the unconscious and illustrated (in FULL-COLOR!) on every page from art and photography from all of the world. Jung's own contribution, "Approaching the unconscious", forms the basis of the story in this issue.

Joseph Campbell. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
Campbell's last book, and the most straightforward explication of his application of Indian religious thought to the sacred symbols and stories of Western culture. Couldn't hurt to score as well the terrific Bollingen Commemorative Edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 2004.