Ancient World

The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype

    Translated by
  • Ralph Manheim
    Foreword by
  • Martin Liebscher

Paperback

Price:
$29.95/£25.00
ISBN:
Published:
May 4, 2015
2015
Pages:
624
Size:
5.5 x 8.5 in.
Illus:
185 halftones. 74 line illus.
Main_subject:
Ancient World
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This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.

Featuring a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, this Princeton Classics edition of The Great Mother introduces a new generation of readers to this profound and enduring work.