Jaffé, Aniela. The Myth of Meaning. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York:  Putnam & Sons for C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, 1971. Pp.  186.

Though The Myth of Meaning is probably the only correct translation of the German tide ‘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.

… 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’.…

… It is a great merit of her book that it nowhere defends neither does it shirk ‘controversial’ issues either by silence or by partisanship. The author lets us see Jung's inevitable shadow as well as his light, with a calm ‘here it is’ attitude which neither condemns nor excuses. She does not idealize. She is not a pupil looking up to the master. She comes over as a person whose understanding of Jung has become truly integrated. What with a lesser person and a lesser writer might be a compilation of significant quotations has here become a creative contribution to the literature.

In spite of the clear exposition this book is not an easy one. In fact, I