Tchalaï Unger (1934-2005) was an exceptional French polymath of Hungarian Gypsy ancestry who worked as an entertainment journalist and Eriksonian-Transpersonal therapist. She is reported to have been a student of Jacques Lacan and mentor to Alejandro Jodorowsky. She is most well known within the Tarot community as the creator of Le Véritable Tarot Tzigane (The Authentic Gypsy Tarot) and Le Tarot des Chamanes (The Tarot of the Shamans) and as the author of Tarot: Why, How, and How Far? that was published in 1982 as the Little White Book accompanying Paul Marteau’s Ancient Tarot of Marseilles published by Grimaud. According to Jean-Claude Flornoy, along with Jean Assens and Jodorowsky, she “was one of those who restored the reputation of the Tarot at the end of the 20th Century.” An excellent collection of research and translations of her work can be found here.
Unger’s booklet (attached below) contains information concerning subjective methods of assessment including emotional reactions to the imagery, historical symbolism, and interpretive frameworks, and objective methods of observation focused on the concrete content of the cards “without letting conditioned answers intervene.”
According to Unger,
... no book contains the Tarot, but the Tarot is contained in the whole of itself.
