Erich Neumann, The Archetypal World of Henry Moore (Bollingen Series LXVIII), translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1959, 1985) ("But the highest values in every culture are also symbolical values; and these, by their very nature, cannot be made wholly accessible to consciousness, let alone to rational thought. Thus in every culture and every age we find without exception that its cultural canon is determined by unconscious images, symbols, and archetypes. It is immaterial whether they express themselves as gods, as ideals and principles, as daemonic powers, or as the certainties of religious faith and superstitious belief." Id. at 2. "If the essence of Moore's work lies in its concentration on the archetype of the feminine, then its radical advance from the naturalistic and representational to the 'abstract'... is not to be understood as a formal process having its analogy in the trend of modern art as a whole. The unique feature in the development of Moore's art is that his apparently formal process goes hand and hand with an ever-changing revelation of its archetypal content, in which this content achieves ever greater authenticity and clarity." Id. at 14. "As we follow Moore's development we shall see that it is always the two great themes of mother and child and the reclining figure round which his art unfolds. All other objects are only peripheral; they prepare, illustrate, and elucidate what is going on in this central zone of the feminine." Id. at 18-19. "The spectral of the feminine archetype that everywhere makes it assume the frightening form of the hag, revenant, and devouring mother appears--like everything else Moore does--as an absolutely new figure in our age. Whereas death, hitherto depicted in European culture as a skeleton doing the death dance, or as a warrior, murderer, or a man with a scythe, has always preserved its masculine character, Moore's death figure is feminine--she is the Great Goddess manifesting herself as mistress of death." Id. at 115. "Whereas the feminine, in good and evil alike, exercise a fatelike power in Moore's work, the masculine always remains stuck at the 'adolescent' stage and never gets beyond the phase of bondage to the Great Mother." Id. at 176-179.).
Erich Neumann, Art and Creative Unconscious: Four Essays (Bollingen Series LXI), translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1959. 1971) (From "Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mother Archetype": "In normal development, the man's 'feminine component' is largely repressed and contributes to the constellation of the anima in the unconscious, which, projected upon the woman, makes contact with her possible. But in the creative man this process is incomplete. By his very nature he remains in high degree bisexual, and the retained feminine component is manifested by his increased 'receptivity,' by his sensibility and a greater emphasis in his life on the 'matriarchal consciousness,' expressed in inward processes of parturition and formation that essentially condition his creativeness." Id. at 18. From "Art and Time": "When the world of security crumbles, man is inevitably devoured by nigredo, the blackness and chaos of the prima materia, and the two great archetypal figures of the Devil and the Terrible Mother dominate the world. The Devil is shadow, evil, depression, darkening of the light, harsh dissonance." Id. at 113. "Behind the archetype of Satan and the blackness surrounding him, at whose impact the crumbling world of the old cultural canon has collapsed, rises the devouring Terrible Great Mother, tearing and rending and bringing madness. And everywhere in modern art we see this dissolution in the breakdown and decay of form." Id. at 114.).
Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, with forewords by C. G. Jung, Gerhard Adler & James Yandell, and translated from the German by Eugene Rolfe (Boston & Shaftesbury: Shambhala, 1969, 1990) (From the backcover: "The modern world has witnessed a dramatic breakthrough of the dark, negative forces of human nature. The 'old ethic,' which pursued an illusory perfection by repressing the dark side, has lost its power to deal with contemporary problems. Erich Neumann was convinced that the deadliest peril now confronting humanity lay in the 'scapegoat' psychology associated with the old ethic. We are in the grip of this psychology when we project our own dark shadow onto an individual or groups identified as our 'enemy,' failing to see it in ourselves. The only effective alternative to this dangerous shadow projection is shadow recognition, acknowledgment, and integration into the totality of the self. Wholeness, not perfection, is the goal of the new ethic." Think some of the rhetoric in the so-called war on terrorism, in the political posturing of democrats and republicans, in many discussions of global/international competition/cooperation, in the machinery of interoffice politics, etc. Many of us are still imprisoned by the old ethic, unwilling and unprepared to accept that the future is here and the old ethic simply does not work or, at least, not constructively.).
Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 2d ed. (Bollingen Series XLVII), translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1955, 1963) ("This book...is the first part of a 'depth psychology of the Feminine.' The investigation of the special character of the feminine psyche is one of the most necessary and important tasks of depth psychology in is preoccupation with the creative health and development of the individual." "But this problem of the Feminine has equal importance for the psychologist of culture, who recognizes that the peril of present-day mankind springs in large part for the one-sidedly patriarchal development of the male intellectual consciousness, which is no longer kept in balance by the matriarchal world of the psyche. In this sense the exposition attempted in our work is also a contribution to a future therapy of culture." "Western mankind must arrive at a synthesis that includes the feminine world--which is also one-sided in its isolation. Only then will the individual human being be able to develop the psychic wholeness that is urgently needed if Western man is to face the dangers that threaten his existence from within and without." Id. at xlii. "When analytical psychology speaks of the primordial image or archetype of the Great Mother, it is referring, not to any concrete image existing in space and time, but to an inward image at work in the human psyche. The symbolic expression of this psychic phenomenon is to be found in the figures of the Great Goddess represented in the myths and artistic creations of mankind." Id. at 3. "[I]t is evident that the combination of the words 'mother' and great' is not a combination of concepts but of emotionally colored symbols. 'Mother' in this connection does not refer merely to a relationship of filiation but also to a complex psychic situation of the ego, and similarly the term 'Great' expresses the symbolic character of superiority that the archetypal figure possesses in comparison with everything human and with created nature in general." Id. at 11. "A configured form of the Great Mother has emerged from the primordial archetype..... She has three forms: the good, the terrible, and the good-bad mother. The good feminine (and masculine) elements configure the Good Mother, who, like, the Terrible Mother containing the negative elements, can also emerge independently from the unity of the Great Mother. The third form is that of the Great Mother who is good-bad and makes possible a union of positive and negative attributes." "Great Mother, Good Mother, and Terrible Mother form a cohesive archetypal group." Id. at 21. "For obvious reasons woman is experienced as the vessel par excellence. Woman as body-vessel is the natural expression of the human experience of woman bearing the child 'within' her and of man entering 'into' her in the sexual act. Because the identity of the female personality belongs with the foundation of feminine existence, woman is not only the vessel that like every body contains something within itself, but, both for herself and the male, is the 'life-vessel as such,' in which life forms, and which bears all living things and discharges them out of itself and into the world. [] Only when we have considered the whole scope of the basic feminine function--the giving of life, nourishment, warmth, and protection--can we understand why the Feminine occupies so central a position in human symbolism and from the very beginning bears the character of 'greatness.' The Feminine appears as great because that which is contained, sheltered, nourished, is dependent on it and utterly at its mercy. Nowhere perhaps is it so evident that a human being must be experienced as 'great' as in the case of the mother. A glance at the infant or child confirms her position as Great Mother. Her numinous superiority constellates the characteristic situation of the human infant in contrast to the newborn animal, which is far more independent at birth. [] Woman = body = vessel = world [.] This is the basic formula of the matriarchal stage, i.e., of a human phrase in which the Feminine is preponderant over the Masculine, the unconscious over the ego and consciousness." Id. at 42-43. "The Great Mother is the giver not only of life but also of death. Withdrawal of love can appear as a withdrawal of all the functions constituting the positive side of the elementary character. Thus hunger and thirst may take the place of food, cold of warmth, defenselessness of protection, nakedness of shelter and clothing, and distress of contentment. But stronger than these is often loneliness, the principium individuationis, the contrary of the containment that is the basic principle of participation mystique, of the bond in which there is no loneliness." Id. at 67. "The Great Goddess--if under this name we sum up everything we have attempted to represent as the archetypal unity and multiplicity of the feminine nature--is the incarnation of the Feminine Self that unfolds in the history of mankind as in the history of every individual woman; its reality determines individual as well as collective life. This archetypal psychical world which is encompassed in the multiple forms of the Great Goddess is the underlying power that even today--partly with the same symbols and in the same order of unfolding, partly in dynamic modulation and variations--determines the psychic history of modern man and of modern woman." Id. at 336.).
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Bollingen Series LXII), with a foreword by C. G. Jung, and translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1954, 1970, 1973) (From the backcover: "This is an original and creative interpretation of the relations between psychology and mythology by a distinguished Jungian analyst. According to Dr. Neumann's thesis, individual consciousness passes through the same archetypal stages of development that marked the history of human consciousness as a whole. The stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent; the intermediary 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. The Hero, throughout this sequence, is the evolving ego consciousness.").
