The Child

by Erich Neumann

English, German (translation)

Genres: Psychology, Psychoanalysis

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1973

About the author

Erich Neumann (Hebrew: אריך נוימן) was a psychologist, writer, and one of Carl Jung's most gifted students.
Neumann received his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1927. He practiced analytical psychology in Tel Aviv from 1934 until his death in 1960. For many years, he regularly returned to Zürich, Switzerland to give lectures at the C. G. Jung Institute. He also lectured frequently in England, France and the Netherlands, and was a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology and president of the Israel Association of Analytical Psychologists.
Erich Neumann contributed greatly to the field of developmental psychology and the psychology of consciousness and creativity. Neumann had a theoretical and philosophical approach to analysis, contrasting with the more clinical concern in England and the United States. His most valuable contribution to psychology was the empirical concept of "centroversion", a synthesis of extra- and introversion. However, he is best known for his theory of feminine development, a theory formulated in numerous publications, most notably The Great Mother. His works also elucidate the way mythology throughout history reveals aspects of the development of consciousness that are parallel in both the individual and society as a whole.

Reviews

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was impressive overall. The book talks about the development of a child from the point that the baby is in the mother’s tummy to the point that he / she starts veering towards the influence of the father from a matriarchal to a patriarchal way of living. One of the key takes for me from the book was the importance the mother has in the nascent years of a child’s development and the extent to which love from the mother can hugely impact a child for the rest of its life. A father can come, proffers Neumann and water as much as he like but if the seeds of love havent been planted into the child from birth then nothing will grow. The author posits the idea that mothers who leave no stone unturned in providing everything for their child far from being the representations of ill-discipline for them which our contemporary puritan society would scream and shout about, Neumann claims that these mothers are able to instil such love and corroboration of the ego that the resultant confidence in the child is able to outweigh the negative effects of any discipline that he /she may lack. Neumann also raises some interesting points about the juxtaposition and clash that arises in the individual as he tries to develop himself as an individual within the confines of a society that places demands on how he should be as a reflection of the collective and the whole. The balance needed and the tension that the 2 potentially and often opposing demands place on the individual are the cause of much of the neurosis, Neumann claims, that we see in individuals and society today. Neumann also talks about the life and character of early man at the early stages of his mental and cognitive development – that man would have been far more multifaceted and multidimensional than the Metro reading, beer drinking, iPhone addicted, weekend living male we have today. That early man would could have been a poet, a hunter, a thinker, a father, a judge and an authority all in one. The book spoke a lot about the ego and the self and the super ego and the sun ego and the moon ego (wtf?) which I didn’t have a Scooby doo about hence the 4 stars. Overall a very interesting read however if you have young children.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book while taking Dr. Bell's Human Growth and Development course at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness had impressed me when I'd read it in college, he seeming to be one of the few analytical psychologists of C.G. Jung's stature. Now, years later, I don't remember this book as being much more than a rather pedestrian Jungian rephrasing of the commonplaces of developmental psychology. Looking within my copy, however, I find three pages of tightly written notes, so it seems it meant more to me at the time.

[Justin Hew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I picked up several years ago from a public library. Certainly a must-read for any Jungian psychoanalysis enthusiasts.

[Ruta Juzulenaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basics of analythical psychology. The writting style itself, as compared to Jung, is somewhat monotonous and repetitive, all in all the book could be at least 1/3 shorter without loosing its weight in terms of knowledge.

[Erika]

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