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Though ‘The myth of meaning’ is probably the only correct translation of the German title ‘Der Mythos vom Sinn’, it is oddly flat and ambiguous in comparison with the original. Mythos, the Greek for myth, evokes a German humanism rooted in Greek culture and philosophy. Sinn has all the flavour of its associated undertones and overtones such as sense (‘it makes sense’), mind, significance, it has also something to do with hermeneutics, with what is to be found—there it is akin to the English ‘meaning’. It is, as far as we know, the prerogative of man to experience meaning (or Sinn), to have an organ through which he can, perhaps must, make the world meaningful.
Aniela Jaffe's deep understanding of Jung, both as a person and as a psychologist, is well-known since she has recorded and edited his memoirs. Her latest contribution is this slender book, in which she has succeeded in extracting from Jung's published work, and from some previously unpublished letters, whatever he observed in human nature as being relevant to meaning. Jung himself had the patience to let an intuitive conception ripen over many years, testing it under observation and by amplification. In each new work he would show the interconnections of his structured framework, as it were, in the round, not adding but integrating whatever he had newly ascertained.
Using the same method as Jung, Aniela Jaffé gradually develops his ideas, and having introduced the theme in the first chapter, she leads the reader from ‘The unconscious and the archetype’ to the concept of the self, individuation, psychology and religion, to mention only some of the milestones on the way to the last chapter, ‘Meaning as the myth of consciousness’. I would like to quote from her introductory chapter:
‘Meaning for him (Jung) was born of a long life, rich in experience, and of well over half a century of research into the human psyche. He found an answer that satisfied him, that tied up with his scientific knowledge though without cla