Beck’s new book “The Quest For Wisdom In Plato and Carl Jung: A Comparative Study of the Healers of the Soul” was published this spring.

Beck said the idea for the book came quickly but getting it on paper was quite a challenge. Time constraints made it hard for her to write the book. Beck said she received a grant to live with nuns at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. It was there she wrote the first draft of the book. She enjoyed her time there so much that Beck said she has returned to the college for the past five summers.

The book takes a look at Back’s favorite thinkers and how their teachings relate to today.

“(Plato) wants you to get it,” she said. “He says ‘look, this is what I lived through and this is how it compares to you.’ I think that’s why I like him so much. He creates new archetypes.”

Beck said growing up as a preacher’s daughter she learned to have compassion for other people at an early age, giving her a perspective on faith and reason. She said faith and reason is a dominant theme in Jung’s teachings.

“I didn’t study with Jung scholars,” she said. “I just read and researched on my own.”

Dr. Paul Bube, Lyon College's W. Lewis McColgan Professor of Religion, wrote the foreword for Beck’s book.

“The first time I heard the names 'Jung' and 'Plato' in the same sentence was in a graduate seminar I took with Morton Kelsey almost 30 years ago. His comments on the relationships between the ideas of these two great thinkers were highly suggestive and provocative,” Bube wrote. “However, to my knowledge no one had ever attempted a systematic analysis of those relationships — until now. Martha Beck’s book addresses this long omission by bringing the major ideas of these two important thinkers into dialogue with each in a way that not only highlights important similarities, but also lead to new understandings of the deeper insights of each thinker.

“Dr. Beck’s understanding of Jung and her appreciation of the narrative and dramatic dimensions of Plato’s dialogues allow her to explore the psychological and social underpinnings of Plato’s philosophy in a way that is amazingly fresh and relevant for the 21^st century,” he continued. “In particular, what Dr. Beck has found in these two thinkers is a comprehensive model of liberal education that has much to say to anyone engaged in teaching today.”

Beck has already had several books published and has two more drafts she is currently working on. She said she hopes to have five more books published in the next five years.

This summer, Beck will travel to Greece to tutor students at the University of Athens, where several scholars have read and admired her work.

“It is an honor for the Greeks to like my work,” she said. “It’s hard for me to believe it happened and it’s about to happen again this summer.”