The Origins and History of Consciousness

The first of Erich Neumann's works to be translated into English, this eloquent book draws on a full range of world mythology to explain how the individual consciousness passes through the same archetypal stages of development as has human consciousness as a whole. Neumann, one of Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent. The intermediate 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. Throughout the sequence the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness.