Читать книгу The Essential Jung: Selected Writings - Anthony Storr - Страница 28

In the midst of this period when I was so preoccupied with the images of the unconscious, I came to the decision to withdraw from the university, where I had lectured for eight years as Privatdozent (since 1905). My experience and experiments with the unconscious had brought my intellectual activity to a standstill. After the completion of The Psychology of the Unconscious I found myself utterly incapable of reading a scientific book. This went on for three years. I felt I could no longer keep up with the world of the intellect, nor would I have been able to talk about what really preoccupied me. The material brought to light from the unconscious had, almost literally, struck me dumb. I could neither understand it nor give it form. At the university I was in an exposed position, and felt that in order to go on giving courses there I would first have to find an entirely new and different orientation. It would be unfair to continue teaching young students when my own intellectual situation was nothing but a mass of doubts.

I therefore felt that I was confronted with the choice of either continuing my academic career, whose road lay smooth before me, or following the laws of my inner personality, of a higher reason, and forging ahead with this curious task of mine, this experiment in confrontation with the unconscious. But until it was completed I could not appear before the public.

Consciously, deliberately, then, I abandoned my academic career. For I felt that something great was happening to me, and I put my trust in the thing which I felt to be more important sub specie æternitatis. I knew that it would fill my life, and for the sake of that goal I was ready to take any kind of risk.

Siegfried is one characteristic personification of the archetype of the hero. Hero myths are found all over the world; and, from whatever culture they originate, show striking similarities. The archetype does not correspond to the actual manifestation produced by any particular culture; yet it underlies all manifestations produced by all cultures.