The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype [Paperback]

This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.

Featuring a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, this Princeton Classics edition ofThe Great Motherintroduces a new generation of readers to this profound and enduring work.

Erich Neumann(190560), a psychologist and philosopher, was born in Berlin and lived in Tel Aviv from 1934 until his death. His books includeThe Origins and History of Consciousness,The Fear of the Feminine, andAmor and Psyche(all Princeton).Martin Liebscheris senior research fellow in German and honorary senior lecturer in psychology at University College London. Neumann's creative intuition has enabled him to read in these records of the past a content and meaning that throws a beam of light on the psychological history of [hu]mankind.