Psychology of the Unconscious

2016 Reprint of 1922 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The book illustrates a theoretical divergence between Jung and Freud on the nature of the libido, and its publication led to a break in the friendship between the two men, both stating that the other was unable to admit he could possibly be wrong. According to Jung, his work is an "extended commentary on a practical analysis of the prodromal stages of schizophrenia" (Jung, [1956] 1967: xxv). The analysis is of the Miller Fantasies. These are fantasies of Miss Frank Miller, an American woman Jung did not know, whose writings he had encountered in the work of Théodore Flournoy. In "Psychology of the Unconscious," Jung seeks a symbolic meaning and purpose behind a given set of symptoms, placing them within the larger context of the psyche. The text examines the fantasies of a patient whose poetic and vivid mental images helped Jung redefine libido as psychic energy, arising from the unconscious and manifesting itself consciously in symbolic form. Jung's commentary on his patient's fantasies offers a complex study of symbolic psychiatry and foreshadows his development of the theory of collective unconscious and its constituents, the archetypes.