Erich Neumann

Traced how consciousness itself was born.

Jung's most original follower, who showed that the growth of an individual mind retraces the whole history of human consciousness.

terms

Uroboros The Great Mother Centroversion Archetypes

techniques

Active Imagination Dream Analysis

The unconscious, like every living thing, changes and develops with the conscious mind.

— Erich Neumann

Who they were

Erich Neumann trained as a physician and philosopher in Berlin, fled Nazi Germany in 1934, and built his life's work in Tel Aviv, corresponding with Jung across the distance. His great claim was that the development of every individual mind repeats, in compressed form, the emergence of consciousness in humanity as a whole — beginning in the uroboros, the round wholeness before there is any 'I' at all, and passing through a series of hard separations from the Great Mother. He also insisted, against the tenor of his times, that morality built only on repressing the shadow produces the very evil it fears. He died at fifty-five, with much of his work unpublished.

Famous books

What they left on the shelf

The Origins and History of Consciousness

Erich Neumann

1949

The Origins and History of Consciousness Find this book

The Great Mother

Erich Neumann

1955

The Great Mother Find this book

Depth Psychology and a New Ethic

Erich Neumann

1949

Depth Psychology and a New Ethic Find this book

Terms they cared about

Ideas worth knowing

UroborosThe snake that eats its own tail — the round, undivided wholeness before there is any separate 'I'. The Great MotherThe archetype of origin — nourishing and devouring at once, the ground you must eventually leave. CentroversionThe psyche's built-in pull toward its own centre — the drive that keeps assembling a whole out of the parts. ArchetypesUniversal patterns — the Mother, the Hero, the Trickster — that recur across human imagination.

Their techniques

How the work was done

Active ImaginationEntering a daydream consciously and dialoguing with the images you find there. Dream AnalysisTreating dreams as coded messages from the deeper self, worth decoding slowly.

Their big idea

Analytical Psychology

Carl Jung held that beneath the personal mind lies a deeper layer shared across humanity, peopled by ancient images he called archetypes. Growing whole means facing the parts of ourselves we'd rather not see, the shadow, and slowly becoming who we truly are.

The approach they founded