The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease

Psychotic contents, especially in paranoid cases, show close analogies with the type of dream that the primitive aptly calls a big dream. Unlike ordinary dreams, such a dream is highly impressive, numinous, and its imagery frequently makes use of motifs analagous to or even identical with those of mythology. I call these structures archetypes because they function in a way similar to instinctual patterns of behaviour.

The importance of this volume of Jungs writings on psychosis can scarcely be overrated both in historical terms and for the understanding of Jungs psychology. It begins with his famous work, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. It was this work that established his reputation as a psychiatric investigator of the first rank and it was this work also that engaged Freuds interest and led to their eventual famous meeting. The research in this work contains the seed of his theoretica divergence form psychoanalysis.

Following on from this are a further nine papers on psychopathology and schizophrenia revealing Jungs original thinking in this area and providing valuable insight into the development of his later concepts such as the archetypes and the collective unconscious.