Individualism, Oedipus, and Your Mom’s Basement

Reviewing Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious Mind, Part 6: Tackling Jordan Peterson’s Reading List

Gemini image of Oedipus laying with his mother

Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious is not something I can summarize in a short essay, so I decided to create bite-sized chunks of what I’m getting from it.

“He whose vision cannot cover
History’s three thousand years,
Must in outer darkness hover,
Live within the day’s frontiers.”
- Goethe

The preceding is one of my favorite quotes, likely because it describes what I value. Where one might enjoy getting to know a human, I enjoy getting to know humanity. The quote came to me in the beginning of Erich Neumann’s book, The Origin and History of Consciousness, and it’s not surprising understanding the manner in which his teacher, Carl Jung, approached the study of the Psychology of the Unconscious.

From the Jung’s introduction:

“Up to the present time the psychoanalytic investigator has turned his interest chiefly to the analysis of the individual psychologic problems. It seems to me, however, that in the present state of affairs there is a more or less imperative demand for the psychoanalyst to broaden the analysis of the individual problems by a comparative study of historical material…