The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature

There are different wats of looking at the achievements of outstanding personalities. Each can be studied in the light of his individual development, of the historical influences that played upon him, or of the more intangible collective influences expressed by the word Zeitgeist. Jung’s attention was directed mainly to the great cultural movements- alchemy in particular- which compensated the Zeitgeist or arose from it, and tot he creative spirit that introduced pioneering interpretations into realms as divers as those of medicine, psychoanalysis, Oriental studies, the visual arts and literature.

The essays on Paracelsus, Freud, the sinologist Richard Wilhelm, Picasso and Joyce’s Ulysses have been brought together in illustration of this central theme; two others consider literary products independently of personality structures, and the psychology of the individual artist. The source of scientific and artistic creativity in archetypal structures, and particularly in the dynamics of the ‘spirit archetype,’ forms an essential counterpart to the theme underlying this collection of essays.