Jung's Life and Work

The complete interviews that served as the basis for Jung’s bestselling memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Features a significant amount of material withheld from the original book
Newly translated and thoroughly annotated by world-renowned Jung expert Sonu Shamdasani

In 1957, at the age of eighty-one, C. G. Jung began a collaboration with his student and secretary Aniela Jaffe and the legendary publisher Kurt Wolff on a book about his life. Memories, Dreams, Reflections would become a bestseller, yet it draws from less than half of Jaffe’s original interviews with Jung. Much of the material from these candid, wide-ranging conversations was left on the cutting-room floor. Jung’s Life and Work presents these interviews in their entirety for the first time.

Marking the 150th anniversary of Jung’s birth, this new English translation captures the cadence and subtlety of the brilliant psychologist in his own words, giving voice to a thinker and teacher who is by turns witty and intellectually daring but also vulnerable and humbled by the world’s great mysteries. It restores numerous passages that were originally omitted or heavily edited and toned down for publication, “auntified” as Jung himself put it. Taken together, these talks reveal Jung actively discovering meaningful new connections in his life’s work. He shares his impressions of notable figures he encountered throughout his life-such as Sigmund Freud, William James, Albert Einstein, and H. G. Wells-and describes his striking visions, religious and paranormal experiences, and pioneering self-experimentation. Aided by Jaffe’s skillful questioning, Jung reflects on subjects ranging from Christianity and Buddhism and the fate of the West to the experiences that led to the formulation of his signature concepts of the collective unconscious, archetypes, anima and animus, and the shadow as well as on karma, the afterlife, and much more.

With an introduction and extensive annotations by acclaimed Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani that provide invaluable historical perspective, Jung’s Life and Work includes previously unpublished extracts from Jung’s letters and a completely reorganized text.

Author Biography

C. G. Jung (18751961) was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century and the founder of analytical psychology. Aniela Jaffe (19031991) was an analyst and longtime collaborator with Jung. Sonu Shamdasani is Professor of Jung History and Co-Director of the Health Humanities Centre at University College London and the editor of Jung’s Red Book. Thomas Fischer is an editor at the Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung and a great-grandson of Jung. Heather McCartney is a Jungian analyst and the translator of Analytical Psychology in Exile (Princeton). John Peck is a Jungian analyst and acclaimed poet.