Erich Neumann (1905-1960)

The unexpected death of Erich Neumann in November 1960 came as a great shock to his friends and colleagues. A life equally full of achievement and promise had suddenly been interrupted, and analytical psychology had been deprived of a creative personality who had seemed destined to continue the work of C. G. Jung and add new vistas to the vision of the founder.

Even though cut short at what seemed to be the height of its creative power, the life work of Erich Neumann is impressive. He was perhaps less known in England than in any other country where analytical psychology had taken roots. This was probably owing to the fact that many of his essays have not yet been translated, and possibly also to temperamental differences: his more theoretical and philosophical approach created certain difficulties of understanding to the more clinically minded English psychologist. My personal belief is that his work, although not completed, will be realized more and more in its fundamental importance for psychology in general and analytical psychology in particular.

There is first of all his first great work, The Origins and History of Consciousness (German 1949, English 1954) (which had been preceded by the hitherto untranslated Depth Psychology and New Ethics). It is a bold undertaking to illustrate archetypal stages in the development of human consciousness by the interpretation of basic mythologems. He showed the intimate connection between the phases in the development of human consciousness and those of individual consciousness, and he developed a “psycho-history” which demonstrates the archetypal and “hierarchical” structure of the psyche.

This first great book, with its emphasis on“matriarchal” symbolism, foreshadowed Neumann's later and central interest in the psychology of the “Feminine”. In several essays of fundamental importance—but, with the exception of Amor and Psyche (German 1952, English 1956), not yet published in this country—there emerged gradually a coherent the