The Great Mother : an analysis of the archetype

625 Pages·2015·643.66 MB·English

by  Erich Neumann

BOLLINGEN SERIES XLVII
ISIS
Tomb of Thutmosis IV, Thebes, XVIII Dynasty
THE
GREAT MOTHER
AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHETYPE
BY
ERICH NEUMANN
Translated from the German by
RALPH MANHEIM
With a new foreword by
MARTIN LIEBSCHER
BOLLINGEN SERIES XLVII
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Cop}ught 1955 (9 1963 by Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, NY;
CopYTight (9 Renewed 1983 by PTincetonUniversity Press
New foreword by Martin Liebscher copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 'Vl1liam Street,
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All Rights Reserved
press.princeton.edu
Second Edition, 1963
First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Edition, 1972
First Princeton Classics Edition, wi.th a new foreword by Martin Liebscher,2015
This is the forty-seventh in a series of>.yorks sponsored by
Bollingen Foundation
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-16607-0
Library of Congress Control Nrnnber: 2015930406
Printed on acid-free paper.
00
Printed in the United States of America
13579108642
To C. G. Jung
FRIEND AND MASTER
IN HIS EIGHTIETH YEAR

FOREWORD TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION
"Bachofen is overall a treasure chest of psychological knowledge, if one un
derstands hilll-his 11lcrit5 as an historian aside-as a lllodenl researcher of
the soul, something he himself was not a\vare of. For instance, as soon as you
read the teHurian [= chthonic or earth centred] region as the unconsclous
and oppose it to the uranian region of consciousness, all of his findings in
terpreted symholically and not historically gain a new and highly modern
significance."l
T HIS PRAISE of the Swiss scholar JohannJakoh Bachofen, whose study
Mother Righi: An Investigation oft he Religious and JU1'idical Charader
ofMalrianhy in the Ancient World (1861) can he seen as the foundational
text of modern theories of matriarchy, was written hy the Cennan-horn
Jewish psychologist Erich Neumann (19051960). The passage originates
from an unpublished manuscript on the Jakob-Esau brother motif and was
written during Neumann's first years in British Mandate Palestine, where he
had migrated in 19.34.
After the Nazls had seized p(Hvcrlll Germany, N eumann~a dedicatedZioIllst
since his youth, left Berlin with his family in the autumn of 19.3.3 to settle in
Tel-Aviv for good. He briefly interrupted hisjourney, until May 19.34, to study
with Carl Custav Jung in Zurich. These few months not only qualified the
young man, who hadjust finished his study of medicine and held a university
degree in psychology and philosophy, to practice as a psychotherapist, but
also formed the beginning of a friendship and correspondence with the Swiss
psychologist that lasted un til Neumann's death.'
The above passage is significant as it shm.ys that Neumann was acquainted
with Bachofen's thoughts on ancient mother cults long before his own major
works on that theme, On the 01igins and History of Consciousness (1949)
I Erich Neumann: ';'Contributions to the symbolism of the Jacob and Esau opposition~" part II:
"Onlhe collective symbolism of the brother motivet unpublished manuscript [Neumann Papers~
Jerusalem] .
2 SeeAnn{ttical P'~.'Ycholog't in Exile. The Jung-Neumann COTrespondence~ edited and introduced
by Martin Liebscher~ translated by He-..ather l\'l('Cartney~ The Philemon Series (IJrinceton:
IJrinceton University Presf>~201 S).
'V'll
FOREWORD
and the collection of essays The Fear of the Feminine (1953), appeared. But
Neumann's main monograph on this subject is TIle Great Mother (1955),
which is now available to a new generation of readers. The book opens with
a quotation from Bachofen's preface to The Myth of Tanaquil (1870): "We
must ralse our aspirations to theirvery limit if\vc \\'ould not fall short of them"
(p. Ivi). Bachofen could not have been more accurate in regard to his own
writings: though his theory ofa cultural evolution, which developed from the
female-dominated epochs ofhetaerism and the mother right through to the
male-dominated cultures ofDionysos and Apollo, was criticized and rejected
by most contemporary historians, it nevertheless asserted its influence on
a number of important thinkers ranging in their diversity from Friedrich
Nietzsche to Friedrich Engels. But it was psychological theoreticians
especially, such as Joseph Campbell and Erich Neumann, who, in the wake
of C. G.Jung, tried to rescue Bachofen's concept of an age of gynaecocracy
through a psychological revision. Their attempts were solidly based on the
archetypal theory ofJung, who had himself written a substantial piece on that
subject entitled Psychological Asflects oft he Mother Archetyjle.
Jung's article originated from the Eranos conference of 1938, which was
dedicated to "The Nature and Cult of the Great Mother." To accompany
the conference, an exhibition was put together that displayed different
mythological, religious, and artistic depictions of the Great Mother.'
Neumann, who had only visited Switzerland twice hefore the war, in 19.34
and 1936, did not see the exhibition himself, butJung sent him a copy of his
contribution to the Eranos Yearbook of 1938.4 In his contributionJung stayed
on the surface of the archetypical cultural manifestations and concentrated
mainly on their psychological implications in regard to the mother complex.
Neumann, in his later study, expanded Jung's original research through a
detailed examination of the difIerent archetypal appearances of the Great
Mother in mythology and religion.
During the war, Neunlann's contact with Jung was interrupted. It was in
those difficult years of isolation that Neumann wrote two of his best known
S This would mark the beginning of the Eranos picture archive~ which was later transferred to the
\Yarburg Institute in London and formed the basis of The Archive for Research in Archetypal
Symbolif>m (ARA.S) in New York.
4 Carl Gustav Jung: '"Psychological Aspectf> of the J\,lother Archetype~" Co/lutt'd Wurks I X/l ~ pp.
75-110.
'l.IZ'll
Ji'oreword to the ]Vew Princeton Classics Edition
works, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (1949) and On the Origins and
History of Consciousness (1949). The latter already included an important
chapter on the archetype of the Great Mother. According to Neumann,
mankind and this runs parallel to the psychological development of the
individual child-has gradually evolved from an unconscious "uroboric".'i
state via the age of the Great Mother toward the patriarchal cultures of
ego emancipatlon. Little surprise that Neumann's chapter on the Great
Mother opens with a reference to Bachofen: "The world experienced by the
J. J.
waking ego of humanity is the world of Bachofen's matriarchate with
its goddesses of motherhood and destiny. The wicked, devouring mother
and the good mother lavishing affection are two sides of the great uroboric
Mother Goddess wbo reigns over this psycbic state" (On the Origins and
History oj" Consciousness, p. 39). The chapter contains Neumann's first
attempt at a thorough differentiation of tbe archetype on which he based his
later elaborations in The Gnat Mothe,..
Jung had seen a draft version of On the Origins and History ofC onsciousness
and recommended Neumann to Olga Frobe-Kapteyn, the Dutch organizer of
the Eranos conference, who "vas looking for someone to write an introduction
to the first Bollingen publication of material from the Eranos picture archive.
Tbe chosen topic was tbe archetype oftbeGreat Motber,as tberewas sufficient
pictorial material available from the 1988 exhibition. Fr;;be-Kapteyn outlined
the task in her letter to Neumann of.30 October 1947: "Even before tbe war,
the Bollingen Foundation planned to publish a series of publications from
the Eranos picture archive. They will each consist of around 100 images
in large format with a foreword. All images of each volume must relate to a
single archetype or primitive image. I have proposed that we commence with
the archetype of the Great Mother."" Neumann accepted the proposal, which
also included financial support from the Bollingen Foundation, but instead of
providing an introduct.ion to a catalogue of images he wrote a book in its own
right, illustrated with the images. He finished the manuscript in 1951 and the
book was published in the Bollingen Series in 1955.
Neumann's TIle Gnat Mother provided a watershed moment in the way
archetypal studies would be conducted. There was certainly no shortage
5 On the llroboros see chapter 2.
7l
6 Olga Frohe-Kapteyn to Erich Neumann, SO October 194 Neumann papers].
lX