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.
Professor Humbert warns the reader from the start not to look for a psychological theory in this book: it is about an encounter with the unconscious. His aim is to provide a broad outline of Jung's work by exposing its internal logic; to show how he sought to understand the modes and meanings of unconscious products rather than construct a model of the psychic apparatus and its governing mechanisms; and how his thought and practice evolved in constant interaction. Limitations of space prevent him discussing the development and demonstration of Jung's theses, their relationship with other psychoanalytical schools and the many questions which could be raised on these subjects.
The foreword briefly recounts how the notions of complex and imago—the bases of Jungian psychology—grew out of the Burghölzli years and made for an immediate acceptance of Freud's concept of the unconscious when Jung first read him in 1906. Humbert regards the idea of the unconscious as the most important thing Jung received from Freud, and his intense personal confrontation with it during the period 1912—19 to be the true source of his work. Starting therefore from here, he divides his book in two sections.
He heads the first of these ‘Confrontation with the Unconscious’ and begins with an explanation of the connotations of the three verbs used by Jung to define conscious activity: geschehenlassen, betrachten and sich auseinandersetzen. Since the French equivalents of the German frequently do not cover the full meanings, these clarifications are invaluable and are given whenever necessary throughout the book. Humbert then goes on to survey the various manifestations of the unconscious and how these are experienced—dreams and active imagination, the dynamics of compensation, symbols, figures of the other (shadow, persona, great mother, anima-animus, ego-self) and finally the transference.
Humbert calls his second section ‘Reflection on the relation between Conscious and Unconscious’ and opens with