Consciousness and the Unconscious

This is the second volume of an enormously informative series of lectures given by Jung for the general public under the auspices of ETH Zürich, where he was a full professor. I have a reviewed a number of other volumes in the series, including those on yoga and meditation, and on Ignatius of Loyola. Importantly, they provide Jung with an opportunity to explain his psychology in popular terms, which he does vividly, clearly and spiced with humorous anecdotes. They have been reconstructed from notes in a colloquial style, and cover the background of psychology, its relationship to language, psychological functions and types, the collective unconscious, family psychology, association experiments, dreams, psychology, and its interpretation. The volume also contains descriptions of the other books in the series, as well as an interesting chronology of events in Jung's career alongside world events, especially those in Germany. He reminds us that subjective reality is the reality of our sensations and intuition – he delves deeply into the nature of intuition. He reminds us that our consciousness is very narrow and limited, and interestingly defines it as 'an organ, an eye or an ear of the soul.' Altogether, an excellent introductory overview of his work.