Essays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" and "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious," with their original versions in an appendix.

The Birth of Tragedy itself is structured around an explanation of the rise of literature in Greek culture. The artistic impulse first manifests itself with the invention of the pantheon of Olympic gods, then with the parallel creations of the Apollonian epic and Dionysian lyric verse. These two forms are...

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. For Durkheim, studying Aboriginal religion was a way "to...

In this work, first published as "Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures," Levy-Bruhl speculated about what he posited as the two basic mindsets of mankind; "primitive" and "Western." The primitive mind does not differentiate the supernatural from reality, but rather uses "mystical participation" to manipulate the world. According to...

Originally titled The Integration of the Personality, this title was part of Joseph Campbell's Sarah Lawrence Reading List. The work includes papers on child psychology, education, and individuation, underlining the overwhelming importance of parents and teachers in the genesis of the intellectual, feeling, and emotional disorders of childhood. The final...

The Interpretation of Dreams is a book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The publication inaugurated the theory of Freudian dream analysis and introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation.

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is a record not of a literal journey but of a meditative journey across time and space into the medieval imagination. Using the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of the two locales as a starting point, Adams breathes life into what others might see merely...

First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade. Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no fewer than half a dozen European languages, The Myth of the...

"Not since Frazer's Golden Bough has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis of world mythology. Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis on difference and context, Witzel assembles massive evidence for a single, prehistoric, Ur-mythology. An astonishing book."--Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions...

"Unique and important . . . Patterns of Culture is a signpost on the road to a freer and more tolerant life." -- New York Times A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture is an eloquent declaration of the role of culture in shaping human life. In this...

"The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths,...

This volume is a collection of the most important essays written by Franz Boas on the science of anthropology. "Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology and one of the founders of the field of modern anthropology. The book, Race, Language, and Culture, is a collection of some of his...

One of the most common requests the Joseph Campbell Foundation receives is for Joseph Campbell's reading list – the books he assigned in his mythology course at Sarah Lawrence College. It's a lengthy list. Bill Moyers shares a story about receiving a letter from a former student of Campbell's who...