What We Are Reading Today: ‘Two Essays on Analytical Psychology’

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“Two Essays on Analytical Psychology” is a behavioral science book written in 1966 by award-winning Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.

Volume seven of “The Collected Works” of Jung, the book is considered to contain two of his most influential essays.

It comprises two chapters or essays, “The Psychology of the Unconscious,” and “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious.

In “The Psychology of the Unconscious” Jung discusses going beyond merely addressing symptoms, drawing on his studies of the psyche through observing and analyzing the subconscious aspect of patterns and dreams.

“The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious” section of the book is divided into two subchapters in which he focuses on his Jungian methodology to actively engage with psychic and cognitive phenomena, while suggesting that “collective consciousness” is a byproduct of nature rather than nurture.

Jung is widely revered as the psychiatrist that introduced analytical psychology, and his ideas influenced a spectrum of fields of anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, and religion.

He was influenced by great minds such as those of Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, and German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant, and was a research scientist under Bleuler at the Burgholzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich.

Throughout his career and contributions, Jung received honorary doctorates from universities all around the world including Clark University in 1909, Harvard University in 1936, the University of Benares in 1937, the University of Oxford in 1938, the University of Geneva in 1945, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1955.