Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche

In the view of Jungian psychology, we are living today through a crucial transition: a period of reaction against cultural and religious forms that have become rigid and cut off from the creative wellspring of the collective unconscious. The hidden significance of this "psychic emergency" is that it spurs the development of human consciousness on toward a spiritual rebirth. In this book—the fourth and final volume in a series of collected essays—the eminent Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz uses her vast knowledge of myths, fairy tales, dreams, and visions to show how the collective psyche itself has pointed to ways of resolving the modern predicament. She discusses Mercurius, the darkly paradoxical figure from medieval alchemy; the visions of the Swiss mystic Niklaus von Flue; the "unknown visitor" motif in fairy tales; the Cosmic Man as image of the goal of human development; and many archetypal dreams of contemporary people. All of these can be seen as expressions of a collective urge in the West to reintegrate nature and the body, matter and spirit—and, ultimately, to help us find our way, individually and collectively, to a renewed unity of being and culture.