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The point of view from which this book is written gives it a particular interest: it is a first attempt to base a rationale of symbolism on some of the scientific aspects of anthropology and biology.
The well-informed reader will appreciate a valuable new perspective concerning the genesis of imagery. The author traces the way in which consciousness increased as men made the effort to structure their perceptions of the outside world and to convert them into an internal sense of symmetry and of spatial relationships.
In the wide framework of mythology, of historical and of social psychology, the book sheds light on the dialectical growth of the individual ego and of collective consciousness. It explains how the self-enclosed inner world aligned itself to imagery with collective significance. And this process leads to the present, in which abstract thought categorizes imagination and imagery.
For psychotherapists the value of the book will be, in general, that the study of images and imagery is related to other contemporary lines of research. It is, moreover, a study which backs up the value of active imagination by showing how an orderly