Man and his Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung 1950 Free PDF book

Man and his Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung PDF

First published in 1950, this book was left unchanged in all subsequent printings 1; nor have any textual changes been made in this first paperbound. Delta, edition. This was so by design: I wished to keep the text in its original form in order that, unaltered, it should face all subsequent discoveries in the fields it covers or touches upon.Should there have been changes, the reader of a new edition would be unable to judge to what extent a book, heretical in 1950, could measure up to later developments. In 1950 it was generally assumed that the fundamentals of science were all known and that only details and decimals were left to fill in. In the same year, a cosmologist, certainly not of a conservative bent of mind, Fred Hoyle, wrote in the conclusion of his book,The Nature of the Universe: “Is it likely that any astonishing new developments are lying in wait for us? Is it possible that the cosmology of 500 years hence will extend as far beyond our present beliefs as our cosmology goes beyond that of Newton?” And he continued: “I doubt whether this will be so. I am prepared to believe that there will be many advances in the detailed understanding of matters that still baffle us.The historical-cosmological story of this book is based on the evidence of historical texts of many peoples around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material.If cosmic upheavals occurred in the historical past, why does not the human race remember them, and why was it necessary to carry on research to find out about them? I discuss this problem in Section “The Collective Amnesia.” The task I had to accomplish was not unlike that faced by a psychoanalyst who, out of disassociated memories and dreams, reconstructs a forgotten traumatic experience in the early life of an individual. In an analytical experiment on mankind, historical inscriptions and legendary motifs often play the same role as recollections (infantile memories) and dream in the analysis of a personality.