This is another Jungian therapist who specializes in men and mid-life crisis. He is himself a man who has had a mid-life crisis that led him to become a Jungian therapist.
This work is less woo-woo than other Jungian reads (see The owl was a baker's daughter for example) but readily navigates the space between the thing, its name and its image. So ghosts then, which are invisible forces that overpower the living as well as complexes and (mis)beliefs about the world or the self that condition action.
What do we make of these ghosts? Four scenarios are possible: we let them possess us, we fight them, we treat them or we outgrow them. So The Exorcist, Ghostbusters, The Sixth Sense or Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice being the preferred scenario according to Jungian theory).
Beetlejuice is a fun way to think about Jungian psychoanalysis, though I'd argue that all those movies you listed are about individuation, actually. Ghostbusters may even be better than Beetlejuice for a "holistic view" of such a journey, as opposed to one that focuses on a particular aspect. I think a lot of narratives involving ghosts can be viewed this way, especially if they feature some kind of character development as opposed to being a kind of "just so" story.
Hollis is a good intro to Jungian ideas, especially for people tackling with some of the modern everyday struggles he focuses on, like mid-life crises, traditional masculinity, infidelity/divorce, depression/anhedonia, etc. He's very accessible, and his books would be the kind of thing I'd give to a friend or family member who is new to but open to such thinking, especially if they're of his generation or is close to someone who is (e.g. their children).
For better or worse, these weren't my own struggles, nor those of people close to me, and so among modern Jungian popularizers, I found the Hollis I've read to be less affecting than something like the aforementioned The owl was a baker's daughter and much less powerful than works like The Problem of the Puer Aeternus [Can't tag this for some reason] . I'm not all that into "woo" either, but I think the strict positivist, "science-only" view advocated by one end of this massive self-help/pop-psych sector by people like Maté––who is at least not the worst such example––is contributing more to the problem than the solution for a lot of people. This is basically how I first came to thinkers like Jung, "in anger," so to speak. Personally, I found such knowledge to be valuable, akin to some of the best philosophy I've read.
Yes, I did overreach when picking the movies; but I remember as a child being shocked by how the terrible Beetlejuice was still the same yet reduced to a very ordinary ghost at the end of the movie. He went from chaos incarnate to a simple annoyance. That change felt like the overcoming Hollis speaks about: the ghost is now part of the landscape, not an anomaly anymore.
True that Woodman is stronger, but I got out of it with no clear picture, only fragments (it may be a good thing, who knows). Hollis provides more context, sets the stage so to say (and I got crazy dreams while reading it).
Thank you for the Puer Aeternus reference. I keep going around Jung, at some point I will read him directly. Meanwhile, I am happy to explore secondhand Jung.
I really liked the movie analogy, though! This is heavy stuff, and having a novel and lighthearted way of expressing the concepts is welcome, even if it's not totally perfect. Hashing it out is part of the fun.
Like anything else, but especially when it comes to something as personal as psychology, sometimes you're just at the right place in your life and journey. These ideas are weird and mind-bending and can be uncomfortable, but that's probably also why they've lasted as long as they have.
Jung is hard to approach since his output is prodigious and he never really tried to popularize his work. While he is lucky to have had a number of followers that are also gifted expositors, they usually gloss over subtleties, which are often important, especially for something as intricate and multi-faceted as individuation. In the same way, "Become who you are" is an expression of a similar spirit, but in my view, what Nietzsche means by this is very different from what Jung means by it. Jung is very influenced by Nietzsche––he famously ran a five-year seminar just analyzing Thus spake Zarathustra: a book for all & none ––but individuation is ultimately a sort of radical rejection of the Nietzschean approach, maybe even stronger than his rejection of Freud's. Not that you have to dive directly in, but this was a particular concept where I felt going deeper was worth it.
The Problem of the Puer Aeternus is really great. It's a little old-fashioned, but as it is a transcription of a lecture series, it is a popularization, and von Franz is one of the clearer expositors of Jung's inner circle. It also helps that her specialty is myths and fairytales––the main case study there is about The Little Prince and de Saint-Exupéry––which are more familiar than something like schizophrenia or alchemy. Definite recommend if you have a Puer Aeternus in your life, or can recognize yourself in him.