Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works 9ii)

Carl Gustav Jung was a psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology, and this volume, part of his Collected Works published by Princeton University Press, presents his own theory of the Self as archetype, developed partly through his analysis of Christian, Gnostic and astrological symbolism, including his reading of the astrological age of Pisces as psychological symbol. As a primary source it is the strongest possible evidence for what Jung himself actually argued, in his own words, about these symbolic systems. Its limit is that Jung's psychological interpretation of religious and astrological material is his own theoretical framework rather than a historical or theological claim about what those traditions mean within their own terms, so it should be read as psychology's engagement with religious symbol, not as religious or historical scholarship on the traditions themselves.