You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The papers in this volume are grouped into seven sections on the basis of their principal themes: psychic energy, the interrelationship between biology and psychology, the psyche, dream theory, “psychic reality”, the stages of life, and synchronicity. The volume contains seven essays that have never before appeared in translation, and one, the beautiful essay on “The Transcendent Function”, has never been published.
As the title implies, the scope of these papers is immense. Written between 1916 and 1952, they make one aware of the tenacity with which Jung has returned time after time to the consideration of such metapsychological speculations as:
(a) the problem of the causal versus the final interpretation of psychic events; (b) the nature of psychic energy, of libido, of psyche, of spirit; (c) the quality and function of the conscious, the unconscious, the ego, the dream, the symbol; (d) the relationship between physical and psychic processes, between external and internal reality. Many of the formulations that Jung constructs take him into uncharted territory, into areas which require an acquaintance with such fields of knowledge as microphysics and the philosophy of science.
The essay “On Psychic Energy” introduces the volume much as a programmatic dream introduces an analysis. In this most lucid essay, Jung defines his use of the concepts of libido, energy, force, and discusses the possibilities of measuring energy objectively and subjectively. The concept of energy has, perhaps, not been of much value to the student of behaviour; yet it seems to me that it might well be utilized in conceiving the process of deintegration. For, just as the atom is a potential source of energy, which can be released by breaking the state of balance, so perhaps the self could be regarded as such a potential source of energy. The energy available to an individual might then be related to the deintegration of the self and to the consequent tension of opposites and the constellation o