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The Students' Association in Zürich have performed a valuable service in translating and making available this significant essay of Jung's, never before published either in German or in English.
It was written in 1916 and is noteworthy in containing an account of the transforming effect of symbolic activity, a description of the technique of active imagination, and a statement of the type of case, i.e. depressive states, in which he was using it at that time.
The concept of the transcendent function was taken up later in Psychological Types when it was merging into the study of those states of integration which he later defined in terms of the self; this part of the essay is therefore mainly of historical interest. The discussion of active imagination, however, makes interesting reading today. It is true that Two Essays on Analytical Psychology also describes the initiation of the process which Jung later investigated at length, and which formed one of the stimuli for his study of alchemy; it is also true that he published pictures and case material in The Secret of the Golden Flower, whilst The Development of Personality contains case material and indirect descriptions in terms of individuation; the concise statement in the present small essay has, however, a directness and clarity which his more sophisticated formulations tended to obscure. It will be subjected to careful scrutiny by all analytical psychologists and in addition be a useful introduction to those interested in this aspect of Jung's psychological investigations.