The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

How do fairy-tale plots help us understand the structure of the psyche? Why do figures of the mother or the trickster reappear again and again in myths and legends from different eras and peoples? In this fundamental edition, Jung clearly yet deeply explains how the collective unconscious works and what patterns lie behind the recurring images.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) — a Swiss psychologist, psychotherapist, philosopher, sociologist, and cultural scholar, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century; a student of Sigmund Freud, the creator of analytical psychology and psychotherapy, and the founder and president of the Swiss Society of Practical Psychology.

This volume is the most complete collection of Jung’s lectures, articles, and essays devoted to archetypes and the collective unconscious. In addition to classic texts such as “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious” and “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” it includes the lectures “On Rebirth” and “On the Psychology of the Trickster Image,” articles “Psychological Aspects of Kora,” “Phenomenology of Spirit in Fairy Tales,” “Consciousness, the Unconscious, and Individuation,” and other works. The book also features extensive illustrative material with mandalas, which the famous psychoanalyst uses to show the empirical side of the individuation process.