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book1955

The Great Mother

Disciplines:
jungian psychology/jungian depth psychology
mythology/comparative mythology
anthropology/archaeology of religion

Summary

Erich Neumann's 1955 Jungian analysis of the Great Mother archetype — cataloguing her manifestations as nurturing, devouring, and transformative across global mythology, art, and religion.

Core Contribution

Provides the most comprehensive Jungian mapping of the feminine archetype — distinguishing its elementary (static) and transformative (dynamic) characters — with extraordinary iconographic range that gives Peterson's archetypal framework its mythological texture.

Historical Influences

Erich Neumann

Intellectual Lineage

Jungian Analytical Psychology Comparative Mythology Phenomenology of Religion

Allied Works

The Origins and History of Consciousness Symbols of TransformationThe Hero with a Thousand Faces

Contemporaries & Peers

The Origins and History of Consciousness The Hero with a Thousand Faces The Sacred and the Profane

Minds Influenced

Jordan B. Peterson

Intellectual Posterity

Great Mother archetypeElementary/Transformative character distinction

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