Great Mother

Author: Li Yihong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-09-01
Features: Care and nurturing, or hostility and destruction—in this groundbreaking work by the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann, the Great Mother is explored as an archetypal image of the human psyche. In this book, using rituals, myths, art, and records of dreams and fantasies, he examines how this archetype has been externally expressed in many cultures and eras since prehistoric times. Through numerous descriptive passages and reproductions of artworks—from Paleolithic sculptures to sculptures by Epstein and Moore—Neumann shows how women are depicted as goddesses, monsters, doors, pillars, trees, moons, suns, vessels, and various animals, from snakes to birds. In studying this series of both serene and transformative images, Neumann distinguishes the universal experience of "maternity" as a dual source of life nurturing and fear, a dialectical relationship based on growing consciousness, symbolized by the experience of children.