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(Paperback)
In what many consider to be psychologist Jung's most influential work, he used the study of one patient's mental imagery to embark on a search for the universalities of the human psyche in myth, dreams, and literature. His investigations led him to break with his teacher, Sigmund Freud, and to his redefining of the human libido as a psychic energy central to the psyche. This is an unabridged republication of the 1947 printing of the first English translation (1916). Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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December 21, 2004: This is the first book Jung wrote to establish himself as an independent thinker, rather than a student of Freud. Jung was to pursue, and wrestle with, some of the themes in this book for his entire working life; other themes and concepts that appear here he later revised or dropped. The book appears, heavily revised, in the Complete Works as 'Symbols of Transformation' but it is well worth exploring the earlier edition, infused with a confidence in progress and rational understanding of the psyche that the disasters of the First World War would subsequently put to shame. I think this book is a fine example of the unique combination of articulate 'scientistic' rationality and quasi-metaphysical wackiness that typifies Jung at his best. I enjoyed it.