Man and his symbols
by C.G. Jung
Illustrated throughout with revealing images, this is the first and only work in which the world-famous Swiss psychologist explains to the layperson his enormously influential theory of symbolism as revealed in dreams.
Past President of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Jungian Analyst Nancy Swift Furlotti, Ph.D. lives in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California. Nancy trained at the Los Angeles Institute while also participating in the von Franz Centre for Depth Psychology in Switzerland. She is a faculty member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and teaches and lectures in the US and Switzerland. Her articles ‘The Archetypal drama in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly’ and ‘Tracing a Red Thread: Synchronicity and Jung’s Red Book’ have recently been published in Psychological Perspectives. She also has a chapter, ‘Angels and Idols: Los Angeles, A City of Contrasts’ in Tom Singer’s (ed.) book, Psyche and the City: A Soul’s Guide to the Modern Metropolis. Her recent book edited with Erel Shalit, The Dream and its Amplification, is available through Amazon and Fisher King Press.
Nancy has a deep interest in exploring the manifestations of the psyche through dreams and myths, with a specific focus on the dark emanations from the psyche. A current focus of research is on Mesoamerican mythology and multiple states of consciousness. Her Ph.D. dissertation was titled, “A Jungian Psychological Amplification of the Popol Vuh,” the Quiché Maya Creation Myth. Nancy’s interest in exploring symbols and deepening her understanding of Jung, have landed her on two foundations: The Philemon Foundation, where she serves as President, and ARAS (Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism). She is also chair of the Film Archive Committee that oversees the Remembering Jung Video Series, 30 interviews with Jungian analysts, and the films, A Matter of Heart and The World Within.
Nancy has recently established the Carl Jung Professorial Endowment in Analytical Psychology at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.
Depth psychology is an all encompassing category that includes Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jung’s analytical psychology, and more recently humanistic-existential, and transpersonal psychology.
William James, MD (1842-1910) was a psychologist and philosopher who was considered to be the, “”Father of American Psychology””. He wrote,The Varieties of Religious Experience, and was an early researcher at Harvard University. He was influential on both Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961), whose psychologies of the unconscious emerged at the same time. Although they were both interested in the unconscious, their concepts were quite different from the beginning. While Freud believed it only contained repressed desires and emotions, Jung understood this as the personal unconscious and went further to describe the existence of the collective unconscious that is derived from ancestral memory and refers to the common experience of the human species. It is made up of archetypes and becomes apparent in the mythological images and motifs that can emerge in differing cultures independent of historical tradition or migration. It is the ground source of creativity and renewal. Jung advanced many recognizable concepts such as typology–introversion, extroversion, thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation, complexes, individuation, the greater Self, synchronicity, and amplification for understanding dreams.
Humanistic psychology with its holistic, phenomenological approach, focusing on the human experience, emerged in the 1920 in response to the development of behaviorism. One of its founders was Carl Rogers who was influenced by Otto Rank. Abraham Maslow developed this further into the study of self-actualization as a basic human desire.
Existential psychology focuses on the philosophical fundamentals of one’s experience of life such as, the inevitability of death, one’s sense of freedom, responsibility, and life’s inherent isolation and meaninglessness. Viktor Frankl and Irvin D. Yalom were proponents of this psychology.
William James, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank were influences on the early development of transpersonal psychology. It was founded in the 1960 by Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and Anthony Sutich. It is regarded as the fourth wave of psychology. It is a mix of interest in eastern thought and practices, comparative religions, and the psychedelic experience. Its focus is on the spiritual dimension of psychology and transcendence.
Nancy Swift Furlotti