On Psychological and Visionary Art

Notes from C. G. Jung’s Lecture on Gérard de Nerval's Aurélia

C. G. Jung, Craig E. Stephenson, Craig Stephenson

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780691270975, 9780691162478
• eBook ISBN: 9781400873470
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Psychology

The first English translation of Jung’s landmark lecture on Nerval’s hallucinatory memoir

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, C. G. Jung delivered a lecture in Zürich on the French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval. The lecture focused on Nerval's visionary memoir, Aurélia, which the poet wrote in an ambivalent attempt to emerge from madness. Published here for the first time, Jung’s lecture is both a cautionary psychological tale and a validation of Nerval’s visionary experience as a genuine encounter.

Nerval explored the irrational with lucidity and exquisite craft. He privileged the subjective imagination as a way of fathoming the divine to reconnect with what the Romantics called the life principle. During the years of his greatest creativity, he suffered from madness and was institutionalized eight times. Contrasting an orthodox psychoanalytic interpretation with his own synthetic approach to the unconscious, Jung explains why Nerval was unable to make use of his visionary experiences in his own life. At the same time, Jung emphasizes the validity of Nerval’s visions, differentiating the psychology of a work of art from the psychology of the artist. The lecture suggests how Jung’s own experiments with active imagination influenced his reading of Nerval’s Aurélia as a parallel text to his own Red Book.

With Craig Stephenson’s authoritative introduction, Richard Sieburth’s award-winning translation of Aurélia, and Alfred Kubin’s haunting illustrations to the text, and featuring Jung’s reading marginalia, preliminary notes, and revisions to a 1942 lecture, On Psychological and Visionary Art documents the stages of Jung’s creative process as he responds to an essential Romantic text.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations.

aestheticism, 83

Africa, 147, 149, 151

Agathos Daimon, 64, 98

alchemy: and anima mundi, 72, 73, 74, 103, 111; and bird of Hermes, 62, 62n24; and colors, 55, 55n11; Enigma of Bologna and, 46; in first notes, 110; and gardening, 64, 65, 66; Hermes and, 62, 62n24, 64, 68, 69; identity of lowest and highest in, 63n26; Jung’s interest in, 40, 40n; Nerval’s knowledge of, 64, 64n29; in Swiss lecture notes, 93, 98; in Zurich lecture, 63–64

alcheringa time, 62, 62n23, 98

Alphonse, Noël Léon, portrait of Jenny Colon, 5

Amphitryon, 154

Andreae, Johann Valentin, 57n16

anima: as alchemical figure (anima mundi), 72, 73, 74, 103, 111; in Aurélia, 134; in discussion after Zurich lecture, 80–83, 85–86; in editor’s commentary, 46; in first notes, 108, 109, 112; Haggard’s figure of, 58n17; in Jung’s abstract on Nerval, 49; in Swiss lecture notes, 92–93, 97, 100, 105; in Zurich lecture, 57, 63

animals: as double of genius, 75–76; inner man vs. animal man, 58n16; souls of the dead appearing as, 62–63, 96–98, 109, 129, 130. See also bird; llama

animus, 85–86, 134n25

antiquity: in discussion after Zurich lecture, 82; in first notes, 108; in Swiss lecture notes, 93; in Zurich lecture, 57–58

Apollyon, 192, 192n68

Apuleius, Lucius, The Golden Ass, 17, 120

art, psychology of, 1, 40–41

Artaud, Antonin, 16, 16n5, 41

art brut (outsider art), 42

artist, psychology of, 1, 27n, 28, 33. See also psy...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Permissions
• One - Introduction Craig E. Stephenson
• Two - Jung’s Abstract on Nerval from The Symbolic Life (Collected Works, Volume 18)
• Three - Jung’s Lecture on Gérard de Nerval at the Psychology Club, 1945
• Four - Minutes of the Discussion following the 1945 Lecture
• Five - Jung’s Notes to the 1942 Lecture
• Six - Jung’s First Notes on Aurélia, 1942
• Seven - Nerval’s Aurélia (1855) Translated by Richard Sieburth (1999); illustrations by Alfred Kubin (1910)
• References
• Index