The Origins and History of Consciousness

A landmark account of the evolution of consciousness by one of the twentieth century’s leading Jungian psychologists

This book draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann, one of C. G. Jung’s most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in the universal myths of the World Creation, the Great Mother, the Separation of the World Parents, the Birth of the Hero, the Slaying of the Dragon, the Rescue of the Captive, and the Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Neumann traces how, throughout this sequence, the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness. With a foreword by Jung, The Origins and History of Consciousness is an eloquent and enduring meditation on myth and the human psyche.