Man and His Symbols

The different sections in this book speak for themselves… Jung’s own chapter introduces the reader to the unconscious, to the archetypes and symbols that form its language and to the dreams by which it communicates. Dr. Henderson in the following chapter illustrates the appearance of several archetypal patterns in ancient mythology, folk legend, and primitive ritual. Dr. von Franz, in the chapter entitled “The Process of Individuation,” describes the process by which the conscious and the unconscious within the individual learn to know, respect, and accommodate one another. In a certain sense this chapter contains not only the crux of the whole book, but perhaps the essence of Jung’s philosophy of life: Man becomes whole, integrated, calm, fertile, and happy when (and only when) the process of individuation is complete, when the conscious and the unconscious have learned to live in peace and to compliment one another. Mrs. Jaffe, like Dr. Henderson, is concerned with demonstrating, in the familiar fabric of the conscious, man’s recurring interest in – almost obsession with – the symbols of the unconscious. They have for him a profoundly significant, almost a nourishing and sustaining, inner attraction – whether they occur in the myths and fairy tales that Dr. Henderson analyzes or in the visual arts, which, as Mrs, Jaffe shows, satisfy and delight us by a constant appeal to the unconscious.