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‘Was C.G.Jung a Mystic?’ & Other Essays by Aniela Jaffé; translated by Diana Dachler and Fiona Cairns; edited by Robert Hinshaw, assisted by Gary Massey and Henriette Wagner.

Cover design by Adrienne Pearson.

ISBN 978-3-85630-917-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Foreword

After Aniela Jaffé’s memorable collaboration with C.G. Jung on his life story, Memories, Dreams, Reflections1 and painstaking work on his Letters,2 and after her illustrated Jung biography, Word and Image,3 and The Myth of Meaning,4 among other efforts, it is a pleasure to be able to present a new selection of essays from her prolific German writings, many of which still remain to be translated. All four of the essays in this volume are published here for the first time in English.

The title piece, “Was C.G. Jung a Mystic?,” the author’s latest contribution, appears for the first time in any language. As in Frau Jaffé’s other writings, she here approaches the life and work of her subject from many angles, providing insights which are the rich fruit of her long years of close association with Jung.

“The Romantic Period in Germany” consists of a key chapter from Aniela Jaffé’s untranslated literary work, Bilder und Symbole aus E.T.A. Hoffmanns Märchen ‘Der goldne Topf‘5 (Images and Symbols in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Tale, ‘The Golden Pot’). This major effort of some 380 pages occupied her for more than ten years before its publication in 1950 along with essays by C.G. Jung in a volume entitled, Gestaltungen des Unbewußten (Figures of the Unconscious).6

“The Individuation of Mankind” was originally presented in German as a paper at the Eranos Conference in Ascona in 1974, and subsequently published in the Eranos Yearbook.7

The fourth and last essay in this collection, “Transcendence”, based on her conversations about post-mortal existence with C.G. Jung in the final months of his life, was written in 1985 and published for the first time in Aniela Jaffé’s recent book in German, Themen bei C.G. Jung.8

This latest little collection of essays, written over a period of nearly half a century, is at once both ‘modern’ and timeless, and it is highly appropriate that these writings by Aniela Jaffé also become available to readers of English.

Robert Hinshaw

1. Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé (transl. R. and C. Winston), Pantheon, New York, 1962.

2. C.G. Jung: Letters, edited in German by Aniela Jaffé and in English by Gerhard Adler, transl. by R.F.C. Hull, Princeton and Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York and London, 1973-75.

3. C.G. Jung: Word and Image, edited by Aniela Jaffé, Princeton, 1977.

4. Aniela Jaffé, The Myth of Meaning, orig. 1970, 4th edition Daimon, Zürich, 1986.

5. Aniela Jaffé, Bilder und Symbole aus E.TA. Hoffmanns Märchen ‘Der goldne Topf,’ orig. 1950, 3rd ed. Daimon, Einsiedeln, 1986.

6. C.G. Jung and Aniela Jaffé, Gestaltungen des Unbewußten, Rascher, Zürich, 1950.

7. Eranos-Jahrbuch 43, Adolf Portmann and Rudolf Ritsema, Editors, Brill, Leiden, 1974.

8. Aniela Jaffé, Themen bei C.G. Jung, Daimon, Zürich, 1985.