ABSTRACT

Life and Work of Erich Neumann: On the Side of the Inner Voice is the first book to discuss Erich Neumann’s life, work and relationship with C.G. Jung. Neumann (1905–1960) is considered Jung’s most important student, and in this deeply personal and unique volume, Angelica Löwe casts Neumann's comprehensive work in a completely new light.

Based on conversations with Neumann’s children, Rali Loewenthal-Neumann and Professor Micha Neumann, Löwe explores Neumann’s childhood and adolescent years in Part I, including how he met his wife and muse Julie Blumenfeld. In Part II the book traces their life and work in Tel Aviv, where they moved in the early 1930s amid growing anti-Jewish tensions in Hitler’s Germany. Finally, in Part III, Löwe analyses Neumann’s most famous works.

This is the first book-length discussion of the existential questions motivating Neumann’s work, as well as the socio-historical circumstances pertaining to the problem of Jewish identity formation against rising anti-Semitism in the early 20th century. It will be essential reading for Jungian analysts and analytical psychologists in practice and in training, as well as scholars of Jungian and post-Jungian studies and Jewish studies.

part I|60 pages

Germany

chapter Chapter 1|24 pages

“I am a Jew and hold Prussian citizenship”

The cultural and political reorientation of a generation

chapter Chapter 2|13 pages

“Our paths will cross again!”

Erich Neumann and Julie Blumenfeld

chapter Chapter 3|21 pages

“… The wound of isolation beckons” 1

Neumann’s early writings

part II|92 pages

Zurich; Tel Aviv; Moscia–Ascona, Lago Maggiore

chapter Chapter 4|14 pages

“… The Jews must go to the tzaddikim”

C.G. Jung and Neumann’s early letters and writings

chapter Chapter 5|9 pages

Excursus: “Motherly Soil” and “Renewal”

Martin Buber’s and C.G. Jung’s metaphors of cultural criticism

chapter Chapter 6|11 pages

“I must learn to distinguish myself” 1

Neumann’s correspondence with C.G. Jung on the collective unconscious and individuation

chapter Chapter 7|13 pages

“… A general and identical revolution of minds” 1

The pogroms of November 1938 and the Jung–Neumann correspondence

chapter Chapter 8|24 pages

“… Yet still have the feeling of being in the right place” 1

Life in Tel Aviv

chapter Chapter 9|19 pages

“…Belonging to this island as if to a plot of land” 1

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn and Eranos

part III|108 pages

Reading Neumann’s works

chapter Chapter 10|19 pages

“The Transparency and Transcendence of the Earth” 1

Spiritualising a problematic concept

chapter Chapter 11|21 pages

“Actualised messianism”

The theological conceptualisation of crisis, identity and transformation

chapter Chapter 12|16 pages

“… On the side of the inner voice and against the conscience of his time”

Depth Psychology and a New Ethic in the context of the Jewish reception of Nietzsche

chapter Chapter 13|11 pages

“… All of a sudden I grasped his innocence” 1

A vision

chapter Chapter 14|19 pages

“Oedipus the vanquished, not the victor” 1

The Origins and History of Human Consciousness and Neumann’s critique of Freud

chapter Chapter 15|20 pages

“… A new principle of love”

Neumann’s Amor and Psyche