Man
and His Symbols – Carl Jung (1968)
Carl Jung was a genius who explored
the human psyche in ways that we are still dealing with and trying to process
today. However, he rarely wrote for
anything other than scholastic and scientific journals, which means that the
average person really cannot get a full grasp of his ideas except through the
writings of others, who cannot help but distort them a bit. His one-time co-worker and eventual
intellectual nemesis, Sigmund Freud, is much more well-known and his ideas are
more widely disseminated, even though most of his ideas have been discredited
for decades. People still think Freud is
the authority on the mind and consciousness.
Carl
Jung’s ideas and work are so dense, so full of meaning and information about
how humans think and dream and live, that it is a shame he is now known more
widely. This book, which he wrote on the
urging of his assistants to write something that spoke directly to an
interested lay-person, explains how and why he developed his ideas about
symbols, dreams, archetypes and more.
How many symbols can you spot? |
Often
humorous and full of personal anecdotes which directly relate to what he is
describing, this book was finished just before his death in 1961. For someone who is interested in how humans
think, why we think the things we do, why we have so many universal mind
experiences, this book is excellent! It
is packed with illustrations, footnotes, and asides, each one helping to
illustrate the points Dr. Jung is making.
It really feels like he is talking directly to the reader.
The insights into Jungian psychology
have helped me connect dreams, thoughts and experience with past readings. It is like getting a tour of our mental
underground! Very cool stuff.
( To read a chapter from this book titled The Function of Dreams in .pdf format click here: http://peyser.sewanee.edu/Sites/276%20Pseudopsychology/readings%20provided/Quiz%202/Jung%20Function%20of%20dreams&.pdf )
( To read a chapter from this book titled The Function of Dreams in .pdf format click here: http://peyser.sewanee.edu/Sites/276%20Pseudopsychology/readings%20provided/Quiz%202/Jung%20Function%20of%20dreams&.pdf )
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