JUNG’S NEW DEFINITION OF THE SYMBOL

As a result of the experiences which he recorded and elaborated in his Red Book, Liber Novus, Jung re-defined his use of the term “symbol”, clearly differentiating it from its Freudian semiotic sense. In this seminar I will compare Jung’s lyrical writing on the symbol in Chapter 20 of Liber Secundus with the definition in the language of scientific psychology he published seven years later in Psychological Types. My aim will be to suggest how the symbol, in Jung’s new sense, may inform and guide the practice of psychotherapy.