Book Description

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (Über die Psychologie des Unbewußten) is a critical work documenting Jung's divergence from Freud. Published in 1912 in German, this translation brings his earliest thoughts on the nature of the Unconscious to the modern reader. This is one of Jung’s pivotal works, marking a turning point in his relationship with Freud. Here, Jung introduces the concept of the collective unconscious, differentiating his views from Freud’s personal unconscious theory. Jung critiques Freud’s narrow focus on sexuality, proposing that the unconscious is not merely a repository of repressed desires but also a storehouse of universal, archetypal symbols shared across humanity. This essay laid the foundation for Jung’s analytical psychology, which emphasizes the role of symbolic and archetypal imagery in understanding the human psyche. In this treatise Jung introduced the concept of the personal and collective unconscious, the latter being a reservoir of universal memories, patterns and symbols shared by all human beings. He also began to explore the role of symbols in mediating between the conscious and unconscious realms, and shifted the understanding of libido from Freud's primarily sexual energy perspective to a broader life force. Although the fully developed concept of archetypes would come later, Jung touched on these primordial, universally recognized symbols that reside in the collective unconscious. This essay, with its emphasis on both individual and shared unconscious content, marked a significant departure from Freud's theories and heralded the basic concepts that would later become central to Jung's analytical psychology. This edition is a new translation with an Afterword by the Translator, a philosophic index of Jung's terminology and a timeline of his life and works.