The Undiscovered Self

One of the world’s greatest psychiatrists reveals how to embrace our own humanity and resist the pressures of an ever-changing world.
 
In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history’s greatest  minds—argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one’s unconscious mind and true, inner nature—“the undiscovered self”—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires that we face our fear of the duality of the human psyche—the existence of good and the capacity for evil in every individual.

In this seminal book, Jung compellingly argues that only then can we begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society—“the sum total of individuals”—and resist the potential threats posed by those in power.

“A passionate plea for individual integrity.”—The New York Times Book Review“A passionate plea for individual integrity.”—The New York Times Book ReviewCarl Gustav Jung was, together with Freud and Adler, one of the three great pioneers in modern psychiatry. He was born in 1865 in Switzerland, where he studied medicine and psychiatry and later became one of Sigmund Freud’s early supporters and collaborators. Eventually, serious theoretical disagreements (among them Jung’s view of the religious instinct in man) led to a doctrinal and personal break between the two famed psychiatrists. Dr. Jung was the author of many books, and he lived and practiced for many years in his native Zurich. He died in 1961.