Goethe’s Faust: Notes for a Jungian Commentary

Goethe’s masterwork, Faust, was C.G. Jung’s lifelong companion, referred to hundreds of times in his Collected Works, seminars and letters, and in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.  Besides being a major literary work of the nineteenth century, Faust is a “document of the soul” of special importance for the psychological understanding of modern men and women.

Faust has many levels of meaning.  It is at once a portrait of the modern psyche, a symbolic description of a depth analysis and the “final summit” of the alchemical opus.  As Jung wrote in one of his letters, “It seems to me that one cannot meditate enough about Faust, for many of the mysteries of the second part are still unfathomed.”

In Goethe’s Faust, Dr. Edinger presents his current views on the psychological significance of this great work of art.