The Origins and History of Consciousness, Vol. 42

The first of Erich Neumann's works to be translated into English, this eloquent book draws on a full range of world mythology to show that individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as has human consciousness as a whole. Neumann, one of Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness.

The New York Times

A welcome source of information for all those who are touched by the relationship between man and his myths.

Erich Neumann, born in Berlin in 1905, lived in Tel Aviv from 1934 until his death in 1960. Among his other works in Princeton's Bollingen series are "Fear of the Feminine, Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine, The Great Mother," and "The Acrchtypal World of Henry Moore."