Obituary Notices

Aniela Jaffé died on the 30 October 1991, at the age of 88, leaving many grieving friends, colleagues, and students throughout the world. Despite her declining strength, she remained in active contact with many persons up to the end of her life. She remained remarkably open and available to her friends and even in her old age was able to provide sympathy and deep wisdom to those who came to her for counsel and to accompany them on their path to self-development.

The focus of her life and her many publications revolved ultimately around the most burning human question, the question of the meaning of existence. So it was that the book that was perhaps her most substantial one was entitled, The Myth of Meaning in the Work of C. G. Jung. She grew up in a cultivated and well-to-do household in Berlin, the daughter of an attorney, but was expelled by the Nazis for ‘racial’ reasons. In the 1930s she came, via Geneva, to Zurich. During her bitter struggle for material and spiritual survival her encounter with the world and ideas of C. G. Jung proved to be decisive. Much later, in 1947, Jung wrote to thank her for her active participation in his psychological research: ‘It again became clear to me from your letter how much one misses when one receives no response or a mere fragment, and what a joy it is to experience the opposite—a creative resonance’ (Letter to A. Jaffé, 10 August 1947). Her many publications give evidence of this creative resonance: Pictures and Symbols in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Fairy Tale: ‘The Golden Pot’, Apparitions: An Archetypal Approach to Death Dreams and Ghosts (English version, 1957), The Myth of Meaning in the Work of C. G. Jung, From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung, and others.

During the last years of Jung's life she served as his personal secretary (from 1955 until 1961). Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, is the fruit of their work together. This book is often incorrectly described a