Product Description

Essays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" and "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious," with their original versions in an appendix.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55653 in Books
• Published on: 1981-08-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 470 pages

Review
American Journal of Psychotherapy : This book must be considered a fundamental work among Jung's writings and deserves to be read by Jungians and non-Jungians alike.

Review
This book must be considered a fundamental work among Jung's writings and deserves to be read by Jungians and non-Jungians alike.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

Know your denizens
Jung's books are not easy reads, but they are almost invariably eye-openers. I recommend first reading his student's works (von Franz, Barbara Hanna, Joland Jacobi), his "Man and His Symbols," & (especially with respect to this book) Joseph Campbell & Jean Shinoda Bolen. It helps a lot to understand mythology when exploring the collective unconscious. Jung goes to great lengths to show how the denizens of the collective unconscious (archetypes--universal images~Plato's view) map onto very different cultures throughout time & space--appearing in art, dreams, visions, etc. Bolen uses Greek goddesses & gods to depict these. Jung disliked neologisms (creating new words) instead he transplanted them from other disciplines to map into his psychological theories & constructs--thus, "archetypes" & "complexes"--paralleling General Systems Theory (cf. biologist von Bertalanfy's works). "Complex" comes from mathematics' complex numbers. Jung knew & conversed with physicist Pauli, Kabbalah professor Scholem, & many other famous, high-caliber scholars. It is important to realize, when reading this book, the important differences between archetypes of the collective unconscious & complexes of the personal unconscious--though they have the same names! Thus, the mother archetype is the pure image of motherhood--with both positive & negative aspects. But, each person has an actual, individual mother (or lack thereof--absent mother). The interaction or combination of these two forms one's mother complex. As in math, it has a rational part (actual mother) & an imaginary part (archetype). In math, the imaginary part is multiplied by i, the square root of minus 1--which cannot exist, yet mathematicians use it creatively! So does Jung. Even modern works by "post-Jungians" often confuse or confound these two. The Anima/animus is particularly prone to this confusion. Unfortunately, Jung added to this confusion IMHO by calling the anima soul & the animus spirit. The anima/animus use gender & projection to enable people attune to the Self, the overarching archetype (others are essentially subsets). It is the image of wholeness &, thus, the object of psychological individuation--not integration. Jung says one cannot integrate the entire unconscious--that is beyond human capability. This is more subtle than it seems--esp. regarding western mystics' unio mystica (union with God) & eastern enlightenment. Jung attempts to assist people evolve, ~the U.S. Army: "be all you can be," rather than a thin veneer of civilization--p. 269 "Outwardly people are more or less civilized, but inwardly they are still primitives." Further, p. 322 "The view that we can simply turn our back on evil & in this way eschew it belongs to the long list of antiquated naiveté's. This is sheer ostrich policy & does not affect the reality of evil in the slightest." Therefore, Jung includes the negative aspects of both archetypes & complexes. Finally, as scientific psychologist, Jung notes that p. 269 "We should never forget that in any psychological discussion we are not saying anything about the psyche, but that the psyche is always speaking about itself."

Symbols, Dreams, Mandalas, The Unconscious
It's a book of essays on a theme, like most of his other books. Here's an attempt to describe the whole theory in a few paragraphs. Jung suggests the existence of a 3-layered psyche consisting of (1) the conscious (active part of the mind), (2) the personal unconscious (thinking over which we have little or no control), and (3) the collective unconscious (unevolved, animal-instinctive mental activity). The collective unconscious is "collective" in the sense that humans resemble each other the most at the lowest, biological levels. "The body's carbon is simply carbon" (pg. 173). We inherit the collective unconscious from the common pool of human characteristics, like morphological aspects of the body such as arms, legs, etc.

The "archetypes" originate in the collective unconscious and are the psychological equivalents of Platonic Forms. (I realized about halfway through the book that archetype-figures also appear in the personal unconscious, where they're called "complexes"). The most important archetypes appear to be the Shadow (the inferior aspects of the self which we hide from others), the Anima/Animus (our object(s) of desire), and the Wise Old Man (e.g., teacher, medicine man). He also discusses a Mother archetype and a Child archetype and indicates the existence of numerous others. Identifying strongly with an archetype leads to psychosis.

The heart of the book is in the first essay, but the rest is useful in fleshing out descriptions and giving examples. The collective Anima archetype, for instance, can be found among movie stars and in the general pop culture. Devils and tricksters often represent the Shadow archetype. Tolkien's Gandalf is a good instance of the Wise Old Man. It's not so easy to identify a particular individual's Anima complex or Shadow complex.

A few things bothered me about the book. For one, Jung indicates that the "Primitive mentality differs from the civilized chiefly in that the conscious mind is far less developed in scope ... The Primitive cannot assert that he thinks; it is rather that something thinks in him" (pg. 153). This is a dubious kind of distinction between civilized and uncivilized states of mind that seems to have gone out of fashion over the decades. Also, I couldn't tell from this book what methodology Jung used to determine the significance of dream symbols. Does every dream about climbing a tree represent the psyche climbing the "World Tree" toward higher states of consciousness? Do snakes always represent the unconscious? Is every old woman in a dream an example of the Mother archetype? Etc.

One of the more interesting and also frustrating essays describes a case study of a woman who paints mandalas over a period of 16-plus years. Why mandalas? Jung says the mandala represents the Self, and painting them is useful for determining the contents of the psyche. He discusses the first dozen or so in detail (reprinted in color), but then glosses over the rest, which came into his hands after the patient had died from cancer!

An Essential Work by Jung.
This work, along with _Modern Man in Search of a Soul_, is one of the best places to start if you are new to reading Jung. It is also the companion piece and predecessor to _Aion_, which is another spectacular and groundbreaking work. If you want to read _Aion_, it would make sense for you to read this one first, since it is part 1 of volume nine, while _Aion_ is part two. Overall, I would say that both parts 1 and 2 of volume nine are absolutely essential reading for any Jungian, and if you're going to buy one, go ahead and buy both.

As for the actual content of _The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious_, I would describe it as an overview and recapitulation of many of Jung's key concepts. As the title implies, the main concepts are archetypal images (as revealed in to people in dreams) and the collective unconscious. These are trademark Jungian concepts, and Jung devoted a large portion of his writings to explaining what he meant by Archetypes and the collective unconscious. If I could explain it to you right here I would, but Jung spends a the first two hundred pages of this book simply explaining and defining "archetype" and "collective unconscious". These are key concepts in understanding the human mind, and may help unlock the mysteries of conscious existence; it is by no means superfluous to devote such rigorous study to these ideas. _The Archetypes and the Collcetive Unconscious_ is NOT a narrowly focused, specialized, or jargonistic work. It deals with ideas that are central to understanding the human psyche or soul, and applies universally to all of mankind.

There is also a pictorial section of the book in which Jung actually shows examples, in the form of paintings, of archetypal images that were seen by his patients in their dreams and subsequently drawn by the patients themselves. Some of these paintings are very artistic, and there are uncanny similarities among many of them. This pictorial section occurs about 200 pages in. After the pictures, Jung goes into a detailed explanation of each one, which I found to be somewhat tiresome, especially considering many of the paintings were extremely similar. Overall, the final, brief, section of the book in which the paintings are described is quite boring, and I would recommend that the reader simply look at the paintings and forego the final explanations, which are extremely redundant. In other words, read the first two hundred pages, look at the pictures, stop, and then move on to _Aion_. The weakness of this final section is not enough to justify removing a star from my ratings, however, simply because of the utter profundity and potency of the first 200 pages, which represents the majority of the book anyway. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Jung's writings consist of essays not more that 100 pages long each. You will find that most of his complete works contain numerous profound and insightful essays, occasionally laced with the odd, specialized, highly esoteric essays. When you come across one of these rare but unreadable essays the best idea is to just skip it rather than get bogged down. This is not to take anything away from Jung and his great, prophetic works; I am just trying to give you the heads up on how to avoid some of the rough patches.