Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 18: The Symbolic Life

Originally planned as a brief final volume in the Collected Works, The Symbolic Life has become the most ample volume in the edition.  It contains some 160 items representative of the author’s numerous interests, his wide circle of professional and personal acquaintance, and his inquiring mind.  Its contents span sixty years; they include forewords to books by pupils and colleagues, replies to journalistic questionnaires, encyclopedia articles, occasional addresses, and letters on technical subjects.

Collection of this material relied on three chief circumstances.  After Jung retired from an active medical practice and until his death in 1961, he gave more of his time to writing and produced some sixty papers as well as books after 1950.  Second, research for the later volumes of works and letters (including The Feud/Jung Letters) and for the general bibliography has brought to light a number of reviews, reports, and articles from the early years of Jung’s career.  Finally, Jung’s files yielded several finished or virtually finished papers that survived in manuscript, the earliest being a report written in 1901 on Freud’s On Dreams.

Volume 18 includes three longer works: The Tavistock Lectures (1936), Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams (1961: his last work), the original version of Jung’s contribution to Man and his Symbols, and The Symbolic Life, the transcript of a seminar given in 1939.

With this volume the Collected Works is complete except for the General Bibliography of Jung’s Writings (Volume 19), and the General Index (Volume 20).