Psychology of the Unconscious

Paperback

$27.99

Psychology of the Unconscious

$27.99

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★★★★★ Trusted by hundreds of readers worldwide

The Book That Ended a Friendship

Psychology of the Unconscious, published in 1912 as Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, is the book that severed Carl Jung's relationship with Sigmund Freud. In it, Jung began to articulate the ideas that would define his life's work: the collective unconscious, the archetypes, and a conception of libido as psychic energy far broader than Freud's sexual definition. Freud read it as a betrayal. Jung considered it the beginning of his real thinking.

What the Book Contains

Jung takes as his starting point the fantasies of a young American woman, "Miss Frank Miller," and uses her imagery as a launching pad for a vast comparative study of myth, religion, and symbol. He draws on Hindu mythology, Gnostic texts, medieval alchemy, classical literature, and ethnographic material to argue that the unconscious mind produces symbols with a universal structure. The book is wild, digressive, and brilliant. It reads like a man thinking at full speed, making connections across every field he has ever studied.

The Hinkle Translation

This edition uses Beatrice Hinkle's 1916 translation, the first English version of the text and the one Jung himself authorized. Jung later revised the book substantially, retitling it Symbols of Transformation, but many readers prefer the Hinkle version for its rawness and energy. You get Jung before he had smoothed out the rough edges.