Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche

I first read this book as a teenager 30 years ago. At the time I was a little overwhelmed by its richness & depth, gleaning only a little of its wisdom. But after three decades of reading it many times over, I've grown enough to truly appreciate the soul-nourishing food for thought to be found in its pages. I've seldom come across an elucidation of Jungian & spiritual thought with such clarity & poetry! Even more than Jung's own work, this book gave me my first understanding of the reality of the Psyche, as well as providing me with a new perception of God & the Sacred which went far beyond the either/or simplicity of Literal vs. Illusion. It helped me to grasp that what goes on inside is just as real as the experience of the exterior universe -- in some ways, perhaps even moreso. And each new reading reveals more layers of understanding for me. Most highly recommended!

I am proud to say I read this book in hardbound, probably around 1975 (or when it first came out). I am reading it again after seeing it out in paperback. It opened my eyes 20 years ago when I was just a teen-ager reading the collective works of Jung and it contributes still today. E.F. Edinger and this book have never received the recognition they deserve. This book symbolizes the relation of religion to humankind in such a way as to make the trials of individuals in the Bible come to life in a way that affects every person who must deal with being a conscious being in a complicated universe on a complicated planet. Edinger takes the ego-self axis, inflation and alienation and explains it in religious, but symbolic terms on the way to finding that difficult concept or place of being called individualization. He takes religious themes and explains them in eye opening secular terms, as the story behind the one we missed in the traditional source. I read this book in the past along with Jourard's The Transparent Self, R.D. Laing's The Divided Self, and Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. I thought I was living in a special time with a special future waiting around the corner. Perhaps we have now finally emerged from the intellectual and spiritual desert created in the 1980s. We can't turn back and change history, but we can build on foundations of the past as made possible by people like Dr. Edinger. Great ideas take years to digest. This is a book that helps to launch one on a vast experience and helps one gain a deeper understanding of those great ideas and connects us to other great minds that add to this work in a way steps lead us up. [email protected]

Dr. Edinger explains the Jungian concept of individuation as both a psychological and spiritual phenomenon. Although the author does not explicitly acknowledge the underlying spirituality of Jung's concept of the self/ego relationship, it is apparent that he feels there is a metaphysical and spiritual basis to human development. Edinger, it seems to me, posits that the ego is a temporal construct rooted in a trascendental, timeless Self (soul). The text is filled with insightful accounts of many hermetic and esoteric concepts which appear in the Jungian corpus. Those who have read Jung's works on alchemy will find Edinger's interpretations illuminating. This is a wonderful secondary work on Jungian theory.

Ego and Archetype emphasizes that (1) God is directly experienced within, at the core of the human psyche, that (2) spiritual maturation requires a radical shift away from narrow ego focus and towards subordination of the ego to God-within and that (3) maturation is accomplished only if the individual squarely faces and confesses the almost unbearable inadequacies, pretensions and selfishness of the unguided ego. While Ego and Archetype deals with the themes of sin, repentance and atonement, the theories advanced are naturalistic and not religion-bound. Edward Edinger elaborates on these themes masterfully, and any reader who considers them to be at the heart of the human condition will cherish this book.