The scholarly community has been anticipating the release of Volume 12 – The Art of the Self: The Blue Book of Eranos Founder Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, published by Chiron Publications. Authored by Riccardo Bernardini, this volume brings to light the private, unpublished anthology of artworks, known as the “Blue Book,” created by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962), the visionary founder of Eranos.
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn established Eranos in Ascona, Switzerland, in the early 1930s. It became an extraordinary forum attracting influential 20th and 21st-century scholars—including C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell—to explore comparative religion, mythology, and depth psychology. Fröbe-Kapteyn believed that “the deepest things in human life… can only be expressed in images,” a conviction that drove both her work at Eranos and her personal artistic output. Her efforts were central to creating the Eranos Archive for Research in Symbolism at the urging of Carl Jung, who remained a key source of intellectual inspiration for her work.This newly published “Blue Book” offers a deeply personal document of Fröbe-Kapteyn’s imagination, tracing her own search for the Self.
This volume is released as part of the annual ISAP Zurich Lecture Series which took place in October this year. The series plays a vital role in the field, dedicated to publishing lectures, monographs, and scholarly research that deepens, critiques, and expands upon classical analytical psychology. The book is available in hardcover, paperback, and on Kindle.