On the Psychology of the Unconscious

Carl Jung

Jan 1952 · Newcomb Livraria Press

About this ebook

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.

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 2023 translation with an Afterword by the Translator, a philosophic index of Jung's terminology and a timeline of his life and works.

About the author

A massively influential Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and built the modern concepts of Therapy. His concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes were influential in understanding human psychology. Jung’s theories on personality, including the notions of introversion and extraversion, have left a lasting mark on psychology and psychotherapy to this day.