Ages of Anxiety: Auden Reading Jung in Times of War

by Craig E. Stephenson

Overview

Craig E. Stephenson’s Ages of Anxiety examines how W. H. Auden in his Pulitzer Prize winning poem, The Age of Anxiety, used C. G. Jung’s psychological types to structure and explore his responses to war and the rise of fascism.

This newly revised edition of Stephenson’s 2015 Zürich Lecture Series tracks Auden’s notion of the poet’s responsibilities and of the importance of the symbolic life in a time of conflict. The book tracks how Auden’s poem inspired Leonard Bernstein’s second symphony and how three choreographers (Jerome Robbins, John Neumeier, Liam Scarlett) created dances set to this work, with Jung’s psychology running through all these creative extrapolations like a common thread. In this expanded edition, Stephenson considers how the contemporary essayists Scott Stossel and Roberto Calasso employ Auden’s poem as touchstones for their own explorations of the meaning of anxiety in our time.

Ages of Anxiety will be of interest to analytical psychologists, literary historians, performing arts historians, mental health practitioners, as well as the common reader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041030638
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/25/2025
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Craig E. Stephenson is a graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute Zürich, the Institute for Psychodrama, Zürich, and the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. His most recent book, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C. G. Jung (Routledge, 2023) won the NAAP’s Gradiva Award.

Table of Contents

1.  Auden, War Poet 2. Auden’s Use of Jung’s Typology 3. Creative Extrapolations: Bernstein, Robbins, Neumeier and Scarlett 4. The Anxiety of Individuation: Stossel and Dr. W. 5 In the Secular Night: Anxiety in Auden’s Cosmology

Editorial Reviews

'This is one of the most brilliant and original works by a Jungian analyst that I have read in the past decade: an astute and penetrating analysis and insightful extension of the meaning of W. H. Auden’s poem, The Age of Anxiety.'

Steven Herrmann, author of William James and C. G. Jung: Doorways to the Self.

 

'An original and profound study of how war shaped Auden as a poet: how he used Jung’s psychology to understand the turmoil and dread provoked by war, to organize morally and aesthetically the responses of the individual psyche and society to fascism and to probe the poet’s responsibilities in time of war.'

Ruth Padel, author of Darwin: A Life in Poems, In and Out of the Mind, and On Migration.

 

'In the current time of mounting political tensions, with dark echoes of escalating intolerance, Stephenson gives us an erudite and reflective reconsideration of one of the twentieth century’s most gifted poets. The central but subtle use of Jung’s view of the psyche, especially his typology, are shown to be woven through The Age of Anxiety, informing its deepest vision. Stephenson’s own creative brilliance manifests through the lightness of his touch.'

Joe Cambray, author of Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe.

From the Publisher