The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, Volume One: Revelation and Apocalypse is the first volume, fully annotated, of a major, previously unpublished, two-part work by Erich Neumann (1905-1960). It was written between 1934 and 1940, after Neumann, then a young philosopher and physician and freshly trained as a disciple of Jung, fled Berlin to settle in Tel Aviv. He finished the second volume of this work at the end of World War Two. Although he never published either volume, he kept them the rest of his life.
The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, Volume Two: Hasidism is the second volume, fullyannotated, of a major, previously unpublished, two-part work by Erich Neumann (1905-1960). It was written between 1940 and 1945, after Neumann, then a young philosopher and physician and freshly trained as a disciple of Jung, fled Berlin to settle in Tel Aviv. He finished this work at the end of World War Two. Although he never published it, he kept it the rest of his life.
These volumes anticipate Neumann’s later works, including Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, The Origins and History of Consciousness, and The Great Mother. His signature contribution to analytical psychology, the concept of the ego-Self axis, arises indirectly in Volume One, folded into Neumann’s theme of the tension between earth and YHWH. In Volume Two, Hasidism, his concept of the ego-Self axis is developed in clearly psychological terms. Four previously unpublished essays, appended to Volume Two, illustrate Neumann’s developmental psychology, including his theme of primary and secondary personalisation. This unique work will appeal to Jungian analysts and psychotherapists in training and in practice, historians of psychology, Jewish scholars, biblical historians, teachers of comparative religion, as well as academics and students.
