Carl Gustav Jung: Where do I start?

One of the most common questions asked by people who have just discovered Jung is where to begin. There is a large amount of literature written by Jung – in addition to books, there are essay collections, correspondence, and seminars. The content and accessibility of these works can vary greatly, depending on the subject and intended audience. Some texts are easy to read, particularly the seminars perhaps; others are almost impenetrable, like some later writings.

When I discovered Jung myself, I did not face this problem of abundance. Here in Sweden, there were only three books by Jung in Swedish (none in English) at the time, plus Man and His Symbols. This was before the internet, so books that were not available in libraries or bookstores simply did not exist in my world.

But the Swedish publishers knew what they were doing, as I have come to realize in hindsight, for those very books they did publish constitute a solid introduction to Jung’s life and work, and I always recommend them as a good starting point when someone asks.

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Man and His Symbols consists of essays that introduce the reader to Jungian psychology (or Analytical Psychology). Jung begins with his own essay, followed by his close collaborator Marie‑Louise von Franz, and then several additional essays by other collaborators of his. The book was written late in Jung’s life as a result of a blossoming general interest following the BBC interview "Face to Face" (which Jung was unused to), a publisher’s plea, and a positive dream he had in relation to the project. The book was explicitly intended for “the educated public” who were not particularly familiar with Jung.

He writes in a light and casual manner, offering a sort of summary of his psychology, often with the dry humor that characterized him. In short, it is a very brief, very good, and easy‑to‑read introduction to Jungian psychology.

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology was, in my time, translated into Swedish in the form of two thin paperbacks. This volume in Jung’s collected works comprises, as the title suggests, fairly fundamental essays on his psychology. Jung goes through his typology, the personal as well as the collective unconscious, persona, anima and animus, the theory of eros, and so on.

It has been a long time since I last read them, but I was only nineteen years old when I first opened ”The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” and I do not recall having any difficulties following Jung’s reasoning. Considering the fundamental content and my own experience, I dare to recommend the essays to beginners. They provide a very good understanding of Jungian psychology and also include some more unexpected sections, such as the “Mana personality.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is Jung’s autobiography. It is quite personal, even intimate. He recounts his childhood, what drew him to psychiatry, his collaboration with Freud, journeys that left an impression on him, as well as deep reflections on life and death. In particular, the concluding chapters are phenomenal reading that leaves a strong impression on most.

The autobiography is admittedly controversial, as the original texts on which it was based were heavily edited by Aniela Jaffé and the editors, and “censored” by relatives. Its creation is a long and complicated story involving many people and thus had every chance of becoming a literary disaster – but in reality, Memories turned out to be a very worthwhile biography, a bestseller many times over, which can be warmly recommended to anyone with even the slightest interest in Carl Gustav Jung.

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Analytical Psychology – Its Theory and Practice (Tavistock Lectures) is a transcription of four lectures, along with subsequent discussions, that Jung delivered to approximately 200 English physicians in London. I recommend this because it is interesting and entertaining to “hear” Jung lecture – he was quite spontaneous – and also because he does not assume any particular prior knowledge on the part of his audience, thereby introducing the listeners, and later the readers, to his theories.

Selected Letters of C.G. Jung. Jung wrote an almost incomprehensible number of letters (considering everything else he produced), and here you get a selection. I recommend this book for the same reasons as the ”Tavistock Lectures,” namely that one gets to experience a different Jung than the one encountered in his collected works (e.g., Two Essays...).

Jung was multifaceted, and in his letters a Jung emerges who is more open and often more specific than the one one comes to know from his official writings. Jung had reason to be careful with his scientific persona at the time and place in which he worked, and he can sometimes present his theories as if he were being cautious, but in his personal letters he allowed himself greater freedom.

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With this collection of books, the reader gains a good basic understanding of Jungian psychology and, so to speak, gets to know the person behind it. But the reader has only scratched the surface of Jungian psychology and can thereafter choose deeper dives into Jung’s vast world. Presumably, after the aforementioned books, the reader will have the ability to orient himself, yet I will still offer some additional, though broader, comments.

Essays: Keep in mind that most of the books in Jung’s Collected Works are collections of essays. Volume 9i, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, for example, might give hope that Jung intends to once and for all settle these central concepts within the framework of a thick book – but that is not the case; rather, the editors of his Collected Works have, as in many other volumes, thrown together a number of essays (often from completely different periods in Jung’s life and development) of more or less similar content. The essays are worth reading, but plowing through this book, or other essay collections, from cover to cover is not necessarily better than reading and contemplating selected essays that arouse one’s curiosity. I mention this because Volume 9i is sometimes recommended as a starting point, and I don’t believe it is a very good one.

Guide: Since Jung’s Collected Works primarily consist of essays that sometimes seem a bit “thrown together” in different volumes, not in chronological or any other obvious order, it can actually be a good idea to orient oneself by focusing on the essays rather than the volumes.

For this purpose, Robert H. Hopcke’s A Guided Tour of the “Collected Works” of C. G. Jung is recommended. One must admittedly have access to large parts of the Collected Works in order to follow along, but they are available in paperback at an affordable price, and, of course, one does not need to buy them all at once. (The essays that largely make up Jung’s Collected Works are also often published individually and in selections in thinner and cheaper editions.) Hopcke’s book is aimed at the person who is about to begin studying Jung, and it guides that person through essays on different subjects and in a good order – from the basics, through more advanced areas, to finally rather inaccessible works. He also recommends secondary literature that supports the understanding of the different areas.

Going Esoteric: There seems to be a tendency among especially younger people who discover Jung to immediately gravitate towards his more “esoteric” books. But without a genuine understanding of the fundamentals of Jung’s psychology, it is basically impossible to absorb the content of the more difficult works. Even those who have studied Jung for many years must really put in the effort for reading these to be valuable.

A challenge with Jung is that he often presupposes that we already know everything he has conveyed up to the time of writing, and that we possess the same classical education as he himself and his primary audience of that time. Jung’s habit of quoting in Latin and sometimes even in classical Greek in his writings, using French and German expressions during his English lectures, and so on, is certainly not an expression of self-aggrandizement, but rather a reflection that the audience he addressed, like him, had a very high humanistic education. Yet this means that a contemporary reader, who in most cases lacks this knowledge, finds Jung inaccessible; it is simply difficult to keep up with all the “obscure” references.

Furthermore, add to this the very condensed content of some writings, and the text is experienced as nearly impenetrable. In order to understand the more advanced texts, one must patiently study them and probably have several dictionaries at hand. Just as Jung took extensive notes when he studied the genuinely obscure alchemical texts, we must be almost as meticulous when studying some of Jung’s works.

Aion is an example of a book that is unexpectedly often recommended to people who ask where they should begin with Jung. I do not agree with this recommendation at all. I am, in fact, convinced that it is fundamentally unintelligible without proper preliminary studies. When Jung submitted his manuscript, he actually received exactly that response from the editor (according to my information), something like “you must at least begin with an introduction of your concepts, otherwise no one will understand what you are writing about.”

So Jung wrote the introductory chapters “The Ego,” “The Shadow,” “Syzygy: anima and animus,” and “The Self.” These actually constitute a very good introduction to each concept – but do they particularly help the reader follow the intricate account of “researches into the phenomenology of the self” that follows through a historical consideration of Christianity? I am not sure about that, and why would Jung’s investigations into “The Sign of the Fishes,” “The Historical Significance of the Fish,” “The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish,” and so on, be recommended reading for someone who has just begun taking an interest in Jung? Aion is, of course, worth reading, but it is far from a beginner’s book.

Jungian literature: Besides Jung’s own books, there are countless good books in the field of Jungian psychology. There is also a great deal of literature on Jung and Jungian psychology of a more questionable nature. How is one to know which book to choose? A general tip is to read books by Jungian analysts; not because it guarantees anything extraordinary, but because the baseline quality is generally high.

Popular Jungians who are close to Jung include Marie‑Louise von Franz. Her interpretations of fairy tales are accessible and down‑to‑earth. One learns a great deal about dream interpretation by reading them. Creation Myths is considered by many to be her best book, and her Alchemy… is a good introduction to that thorny subject.

Edward Edinger is very influential, but can be fairly advanced. Two books that can be mentioned are Ego and Archetype - for good reason a Jungian classic - and Anatomy of the Psyche, a very in‑depth but clarifying book on the relationship between alchemical symbols and processes and the psychology of the unconscious.

Robert A. Johnson is a third Jungian one can recommend among many others. He has written Inner Work, which is a practical guide to how one can work with one’s own dreams; and his He (an unfortunate title Johnson didn't chose himself) is a brilliant book about Parsifal and the Holy Grail from a Jungian perspective. Johnson is a phenomenal, thoughtful storyteller.

Because Jung was so multifaceted and his works so dense, Jungian literature offers both clarifications, deep dives, and further developments of his ideas (such as James Hillman). Everyone who studies Jung over time probably also reads, among others, the aforementioned authors.

Secondary literature: In order to understand Jung, archetype theory, dreams, and so on, one needs knowledge in mythology, fairy tales, and similar subjects – to some extent the “education” we mentioned above. I recommend that one read the religious historians Mircea Eliade and Karl Kerenyi, since these were clearly inspired by and collaborated with Jung, in addition to being authorities in their fields. And of course, the mythologist Joseph Campbell is a given.

Furthermore, it may be worthwhile to build up one’s own library with books on mythology and related areas, where classics such as Larousse World Mythology and Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend can constitute a foundation.

Finally, symbol dictionaries are valuable in the study of archetypal images; The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols, and the less extensive The Herder Dictionary of Symbols are all highly recommended.

Videos: If you want to take a break from studying books and just lean back (perhaps with a notebook), there is a lot of great material on YouTube – interviews with Jung himself; wonderful, long conversations with the aforementioned Robert A. Johnson; several lectures by the inspiring and often entertaining James Hillman, and so on. You can find Marie-Louise von Franz there, lectures by Edward F. Edinger, and much more. I would like to emphasize that it is wise, first and foremost, to stick to Jungian analysts, in order to ensure serious information that is truly grounded in Jungian psychology.

Finally, there are several digital platforms where one can purchase seminars and courses by, among others, Jungian analysts, such as jungplatform.com, jungchicago.org, and jungarchademy.com.