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The Great Mother

An Analysis of the Archetype

• By Erich Neumann

• Price: $36.00
• Binding: Paperback
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 5th April 1982
• Illustrations: 186 plates and 74 figures
• ISBN: 978-0-415-13673-0

About the Book

Loving or nurturing or hostile and devouring, The Great Mother is explored as a primordial image of the human psyche in this landmark book by the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann. Here he examines how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory drawing on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies.

Through a wealth of descriptive passages and reproductions of artistic works ranging from Paleolithic stone carvings to the sculptures of Epstein and Moore, Neumann shows how the feminine has been represented: as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snake to bird. In studying this array of both static and transformative images, Neumann discerns a universal experience of the Maternal as a dual source of life support and fear: 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.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Note of Acknowledgement

List of Plates

List of Text Figures

Preface.

Part I

1. The Structure of the Archetype

2. The Arhetypal Feminine and the Great Mother

3. The Two Characters of the Feminine

4. The Central Symbolism of the Feminine

5. The Transformation Mysteries

6. The Functional Spheres of the Feminine

7. The Phenomenon of Reversal and the Dynamic of the Archetype

Part II

A. The Elementary Character

8. Introduction

9. The Primordial Goddess

10. The Positive Elementary Character

11. The Negative Elementary Character

B. The Transformative Character

12. The Great Round

13. The Lady of the Plants

14. The Lady of the Beasts

15. Spiritual Transformation

Bibliography

Index

Plates

About the Author(s)

Erich Neumann, born in 1905, was a student of C. G. Jung and practiced analytical psychology in Tel Aviv from 1934 to his death in 1960. He is known through his many publications for advancing a philosophical approach to analysis and for formulating a coherent theory of feminine development.