ABSTRACT
The purpose of psychological phenomena is to initiate consciousness into the mysteries of the soul’s logical life, into the absolute, transcendent; it is the seductive-anima purpose of luring consciousness into the soul’s depths, into the unknown, into the otherworldly wisdom of the dead ancestors. The second and very different purpose is that of emancipation precisely from that into which the first purpose initiated or which it celebrated. On the level of modernity, for psychology, initiation must not be confused with the time-honored cultural institutions of this name. Emancipation in the sense of “individuation,” freeing oneself from illusions, facing oneself objectively, is nowadays a psychological task of the individual, which is one reason why we now have the institution of psychotherapy. It is of course Jung’s prerogative not mainly to be concerned with the treatment of neurosis.
