The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

by Sonu Shamdasani (Foreword)

In The Undiscovered Self Jung explains the essence of his teaching for a readership unfamiliar with his ideas. He highlights the importance of individual responsibility and freedom in the context of today's mass society, and argues that individuals must organize themselves as effectively as the organized mass if they are to resist joining it. To help them achieve this he sets out his influential programme for achieving self-understanding and self-realization. The Undiscovered Self is a book that will awaken many individuals to the new life of the self that Jung visualized.

176 pages, Paperback

Published April 30, 2019

Reviews

[Alex Ast · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first foray into Jung and I feel that I finally had the preparatory knowledge to fully comprehend all of his theories and reading figures like Nietzsche and comparative religions had paid off. In the first essay, Jung diagnoses modern society with "mass psychosis" due to its stubborn resistance to acquire self-knowledge. In the second essay, Jung says that it is due to an imbalance of archetypes (natural, collective drives all humans possess) in our collective unconscious that causes all suffering in mankind. It is by analyzing our dreams that we can begin to attempt to individuate. Dreams help us compensate our natural drives and instincts in us, for our dreams always show us symbols that our unconscious recognizes as meaningful, but our waking consciousness has yet to fully recognize the profundity of. I'm excited to keep on diving deeper into Jung because his theories ring true to my soul.

[m i c h e l l e · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bizarrely prescient book for me to have impulsively plucked off a B&N shelf this January 😳

He seems to have organized this work while the world was still reeling in the immediate wake of WWII’s atrocities. He saw then how the ripples would extend through subsequent decades and urged the West to deal with this existential psychic conflict before it manifested anew.

…

WELP 😬

[Casey Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two excellent essays by a really fascinating thinker. These essays got me really excited and had lots of really great insights.

The first essay is The Undiscovered Self. This is a really thought-provoking analysis of the modern world from a psychological viewpoint.
The second essay is Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams. Freud thought of dreams as being wish fulfilment, which doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t even think that a substantial percentage of dreams are wish fulfilment dreams. It would be nice if that was the case because then sleeping would be more fun because you’d be able to live out your fantasies every time you go to bed. But that just isn’t the case, at least for me. Although I have yet to read Freud’s interpretation of dreams so maybe there is more to it that I’m missing.
Jung’s conception of dreams is more insightful to me. My understanding is that to Jung dreams are like the poetry of the instincts. It’s a way you’re unconscious attempts to impart important messages to the conscious mind to help provide guidance, maintain equilibrium, and promote self-awareness. This is an interesting theory. I will say I have my skepticism towards dream interpretation because it does seem like something that is quite hard to pin down and prove, but I really enjoyed reading what Jung had to say on it.

Overall I just really enjoy Jung’s perspective because of the depth and vitality of his vision. He views life the right way, i think. I don’t quite know how to explain it but it brings me a lot of intuitive satisfaction to see someone write about the world like this.

And now I just wanna buy more Jung books :3

[Vasilis Stefanou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carl Jung explains the importance of individuation for every human being because we lost our personalities and lives in the mass culture. He elaborates also on dreams and symbols, along with their meanings, by providing examples from his experiences and patients. All of us have similar or the same archetypal symbols manifest in various ways in our lives but we all must interpret them individually based on our own paths and backgrounds because we different beings. That is how we will progress and as a result progress humanity in the future.

[Eddie Reid-Simons · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO TRUE. Every page is a fucking revelation. Main takeaway from the second essay is that the unconscious is ultimately neutral, and that we can analyze it like any other fact of nature of biology.