Name: Man and His Symbols
ISBN: 9780440351832

Man and His Symbols

Excerpt from back cover: "This book, which was the last piece of work undertaken by Jung before his death in 1961, provides a unique opportunity to assess his contribution to the life and thought of our time, for it was also his first attempt to present his life-work in psychology to a non-technical public...What emerges with great clarity from the book is that Jung has done immense service both to psychology as a science and to our general understanding of man in society, by insisting that imaginative life must be taken seriously in its own right, as the most distinctive characteristic of human beings." -Guardian

What Hacker News says

DisruptiveDaveNov 2025

May I suggest "Man And His Symbols" by Car Jung? It was his final writing and, I believe, his only one that focused on the common(ish) reader as the audience. The basis of the book (and generally his studies and beliefs) is that the subconscious is as meaningful as the conscious, it just communicates in ways that are harder to access in modern society, and therefore it's been pushed away and ignored.

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popalchemistJul 2025

I've spent 20 years working in Hollywood. This is definitely not anything new, but we are in an up-cycle. Ambiguity is hard to tolerate, in life, in general. Ambiguity is also where personal meaning can arise. However in hard times (economically, culturally, politically, existentially... we're currently in all 4), market forces drive things away from ambiguity and toward one-pointedness. This is reflected in the world of trailers even more clearly than in the world of films - the trailers often specifically highlight exactly the kinds of moments this writer is critiquing, as if the purpose of film is to trade in such moments; the underlying conceit is something like "populist memes are a commodity."

This is what is currently driving pop culture; the commodification of the meme. Movies aspire to be memes - the dominant means of expression and the atomic unit of culture in the present moment.

They used to aspire to be themselves (movies, for their own sake). IMO that ended around 2008. The Dark Knight was the end and Iron Man was the beginning of a new Hollywood cycle; defined by the movie's ability to trade in this currency - memes - which stand alone, isolated, traded out of context of an entire narrative.

Further reading for whoever is interested: Society of the Spectacle by Debord (re: the degradation of being into having, having into mere appearing, as a universal and ubiquitous byproduct of the core function of capital which is commodification)... and Man and His Symbols (re: the difference between a symbol, which is universal and carries a wealth of meaning, and a sign, which is contextual/temporary and carries a fixed meaning).

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milsorgenDec 2021

A Man and His Symbols by Jung and others.

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anthropodieSep 2021

What you are doing is not individuation per se but is one component of it. By identifying immature psychic traits in yourself and how you react to others you are withdrawing your own projections.

That is one way of trying to know your own shadow self. Knowing and integrating shadow is first step to individuation.

Man and his symbols is good introduction to Carl Jung's theories if you would like to know more.

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andrelgomesOct 2019

Just started reading "Man and His Symbols" by Carl Jung (would recommend), and as other people posted, Jungarian beleive that dreams are more active than random passive thoughts. New ideas can come through the sub-conscious.

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billywayneJul 2010

I would suggest "Man and His Symbols", which is an introduction to Jungian psychology. Jung took a unique view on the psyche, which I believe is helpful in forming an objective opinion about humankind 'in itself', a necessary vantage point if you desire anything "eye-opening".

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