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In a violence-ridden epoch, the sheer onslaught of a daily dose of avoidable deaths may have ceased to outrage us, may have blunted our sensibilities to the point of immunity. With this in mind, the title of this interesting book should, perhaps, not be taken too literally. A free translation would read: ‘Die and come to be—transformation and rebirth in puberty and mid-life.’
Death, human mortality, has preoccupied mankind throughout its history. The German title, Stirb und Werde, is borrowed from Goethe's poem, ‘Selige Sehnsucht’ (from his Westöstlichen Diwan), written in an era very different from our own. Goethe was concerned with the notion of metamorphosis, as symbolised, for instance, by the pupa ceasing to be itself and becoming a moth. His writings preceded Darwin's theory of evolution, of the survival of the fittest. His was a search for a progression, Steigung, as he called it, from the physical realities to a spiritual dimension. There is common ground here with Jung.
Butterflies and moths have been representations of the soul in ancient myths. Thus, Goethe's poem anticipates Jung's warnings about the potentially seductive nature of numinous, and so-called spiritual, experience.