The Myth of Meaning

Aniela Jaffé explores the subjective world of inner experience. In so doing, she follows the path of the pioneering Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung, whose collaborator and friend she was through the final decades of his life. Frau Jaffé shows that any search for meaning ultimately leads to the inner "mythical" realm and must be understood as a limited subjective attempt to answer the unanswerable. Any conclusion drawn from such a quest is one's very own - its formulation is one's own myth.

One of the most distinguished interpreters of C.G. Jung’s ideas, Aniela Jaffé was born in Berlin and studied psychology at the University of Hamburg. With the outbreak of World War II, she emigrated to Switzerland and soon began to train with the psychiatrist C.G. Jung. Frau Jaffé’s reputation as a lucid and authoritative writer was established through her collaboration with Jung on his autobiographical 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections', her editing of his collected 'Letters', and numerous independent works, including 'The Myth of Meaning'. She practiced as an analyst in Zurich until her death in 1991.