The Origins and History of Consciousness
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The Origins and History of Consciousness (Ursprungsgeschichte des Bewusstseins) is a 1949 book by psychologist and philosopher Erich Neumann. It was first published in English in 1954 in a translation by R. F. C. Hull. The work has been seen as an important and enduring contribution to Jungian thought.
Outline
Neumann's theories about and approach to consciousness have been described by the Jungian analyst Robert H. Hopcke as follows: Neumann traces the stages in the development of human consciousness out of unconsciousness, a process mythologically represented by the ego's emergence from the "uroboros", a primordial condition of self-contained unconsciousness symbolized by the circle of a snake devouring its own tail. Neumann's conclusion, based on study of creation myths from around the world and his clinical experience, is that as the ego consciousness differentiates itself from uroboric unconsciousness, the ego begins to experience this primordial unconsciousness both as the life-giving origin of its existence and as a threat to its newly won autonomy. This ambivalent experience is often given shape in the form of the Great Mother, who bestows all life and also holds life and death, existence and non-existence, in her all-powerful hands. For true autonomy to occur, the domination of the Great Mother must be shaken off by individual ego consciousness. Neumann describes two subsequent stages by which this process occurs: first, the "separation of the world parents" in which the opposites of masculinity and femininity emerge from the matrix of uroboric unity, and second "the hero myth", in which the ego aligns itself with the principle of heroic masculinity in order to free itself from the dominance of the matriarchy.
Homosexuality is seen by Neumann as a result of an identification with the archetypal feminine. Neumann writes that, "even today we almost always find, in cases of male homosexuality, a matriarchal psychology where the Great Mother is unconsciously in the ascendant." Neumann believes that homosexuality represents a lack of psychological development and can be considered immature.
Neumann says that, "one thing, paradoxical though it may seem, can be established as a basic law: even in woman, consciousness has a masculine character. The correlation 'consciousness-light-day' and 'unconsciousness-darkness-night holds true regardless of sex...Consciousness, as such, is masculine even in woman."
Scholarly reception
Psychoanalyst Theodore Thass-Thienemann notes that The Origins and History of Consciousness is "an example of mythological analysis according to the principles of C. G. Jung." The psychologist James Hillman writes that Neumann's identification of consciousness with the "heroic-Apollonic mode" forced him into the position that consciousness is masculine even in woman, which Hillman finds absurd.
Hopcke calls The Origins and History of Consciousness, along with The Great Mother (1955), "Neumann's most enduring contribution to Jungian thought". He notes that Neumann's view of homosexuality is not, or intended to be, original and differs relatively little from that of Jung. Psychiatrist Anthony Stevens calls The Origins and History of Consciousness, "a great but misguided book". Stevens argues that Neummann makes several fallacious assumptions, among them that ontogeny (individual development) recapitulates phylogeny (evolutionary development), that preliterate human beings were "unconscious", and that Western consciousness has been subjected to different selection pressures to that of other civilized populations. Stevens considers all of those assumptions biologically untenable.
The Origins and History of Consciousness has been described as "Jungianism at its learned best" by scholar Camille Paglia, who identifies the book as an influence on her work of literary criticism Sexual Personae (1990).
