The Origins and History of Consciousness

By E. Neumann. 2020

464 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1e04d7e2aff7be0675a20ab95c92200a880d3c91

Citations in the corpus

• The Meaning of Meaning (2007, unknown): “But the most complex and fascinating story is a meta-narrative – a story that describes the process that transforms stories (Jung, 1952; Neumann, 1954; Peterson, 1999a).”