Product Description

Together for the first time in one paperback volume are two of Jung's major late works, in the version published in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, as rendered by Jung's official translator. "The Undiscovered Self" (1957) integrates many of Jung's lifelong social and psychological concerns and addresses the uneasy relation between the individual and mass society. The survival of civilization, he maintains, depends on individual awareness of both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the human psyche. The exploration of the unconscious, in particular, leads to self-knowledge and with it recognition of the duality of human natureits potential for evil as well as for good. Jung believes that it is this self-knowledge that enables the individual to resist the collective power of mass society and the state and to cope with their possible threats. Jung's reflections on self-knowledge and the exploration of the unconscious carry over into his essay "Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams," completed shortly before his death in 1961. (It is the original version of his introduction to the symposium Man and His Symbols, conceived as a popular presentation of Jungian ideas.) Describing dreams as communications from the unconscious--as expressions of aspects of the individual that have been neglected or unrealized--Jung explains how the symbols that occur in dreams compensate for repressed emotions and intuitions. In a world dehumanized, in Jung's view, by scientific "progress" and the loss of emotional participation in natural events, symbols recall our original nature, its instincts and peculiar way of thinking. This essay brings together Jung's fully evolved thoughts on the analysis of dreams and the healing of the rift between consciousness and the unconscious, in the context of his system of psychology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34892 in Books
• Published on: 1990-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 158 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780691018942
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

Jung on the Philosophy of History
This 1957 essay is Jung's major statement on the "Big Picture". In Jung's view, the person who does not know him or herself, who does not understand his or her strengths as an individual, will necessarily fall victim to mass-mentality. Mass-mentality is the Unconscious played out on the global scale, and if left to its own devices, it will continue to produce tragedies similar in scale to what the human race experienced in the two world wars. The antidote, Jung argues, is self-knowledge. This is not philosophical self-knowledge, but rather psychological self-knowledge - a reckoning with one's animal instincts, one's shadow, one's dreams and fantasies. Ultimately, Jung says self-knowledge must involve a spiritual experience - an experience of tradition religious truths as relevant in one's own life. Only this kind of experience will protect a person from the trap of mass-mentality; moreover, the development of culture and perhaps even the survival of the race depend on such individuals who can resist mass-mentality when it is strongest. For Jung, the hope of the human race and the world at large depended ultimately on the inner work individuals do in their most intimate inner world. For Jung, the personal is the political, but in a much more profound way than that in which anyone else has ever used that phrase.

The power to stand against the World
_In this book Jung correctly predicted that Communism had to collapse from within. No one else saw that coming. Why should they? For, as he points out, the mass state had all the force of the big battalions on their side- politics, science, and technology were their natural allies. And yet they collapsed.

_Should we rejoice in this? Why? Jung points out that the West is every bit as materialistic as our former Communist opponents. Our spiritual base is gone- in the place of true religion we have aging cults that serve the status quo. There is no inner power there. Every place Jung uses the term Communist, you can substitute Corporate and you have the same animal. That is because both are hierarchical structures where the individual counts for nothing. Indeed, the self-knowledge or individualization that would produce true men and women capable of standing up to the hierarchy is actively discouraged. They are trapped in the illusion of statistical man and of the organization- neither of which really exist. Only a few at the top can exercise the power of a true individual, and even they are usually no more than mouthpieces for the undeveloped masses and their unconscious drives.

_The hope for Jung lies in true religion. The freedom and autonomy of the individual depends on deep inner experience of a metaphysical nature. This is not "faith"; it is direct knowing. Even the deepest faith may melt away with time and circumstances- but not direct experience. It is only this that gives the individual the power to stand up to mass tyranny- and to the World itself. When you haven't made this breakthrough (which requires deep introspection, effort, and, yes, suffering) then other things get deified and charged with demonic energy- money, work, political influence...

_The shallow, rootless mass-man and his organizations are always going to lose, eventually, to the man with deep religious connection to the Macrocosm. Jung the Gnostic, Jung the Christian, Jung the Alchemist, Jung the Magician saw this. The individuated man has the cosmic correspondence within himself.

BEST INTRO TO JUNG
The only book by Carl Jung that I could read (as opposed to study), and easily understand and appreciate. Although written at the time of the cold war, his thoughts on the individual, religion and the state are as relevant today and truly timeless. I recommend The Undiscovered Self as the best introduction to one of the greatest psychologists and philosophers of the 20th century.