Copyright: 1964
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0-38505-221-9
I confess that I did not gain nearly as much from reading this book as I anticipated. My hope was to learn something useful about symbolism and the study of semiotics but instead I learned a lot of the psychology of dreams. If you are into that sort of thing then Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols is a must read. If, like me, you are quite skeptical of that sort of thing then you will be as disappointed as I was with this book. The illustrations in the hard cover book are fantastic, every page of the book being adorned with illustrations of art-work and historical photos. Aside from that, I quickly lost interest in Jung (and his followers who wrote parts of the book) long-winded descriptions of how wonderful their dream interpretation was.
One semi-useful tidbit I picked up was Jung's differentiation between signs and symbols. Signs, he asserts, are shorthand replacements for the real thing. As such, they are always less than the concept they represent. Symbols on the hand, contain deeper, non-obvious meanings and are thus always more than the concept they represent.
This distinction is somewhat intriguing for me as a software developer. Icons and other graphical representations typically are short-hand sign-posts to point the user in a given direction. Often though I have seen symbolism used which tends to get in the way. The difference from a human-computer interaction standpoint is that signs should be universally recognizable while symbols depend on context.
Another interesting tidbit was the difference between how Freud and Jung looked at dreams. Freud tended to see dreams a good starting point for free association which he felt would lead his patients to reveal latent and subconsciously repressed thoughts. Jung on the other hand believed the subconscious was purposely concocting the symbolism in the dream and that the symbolism itself was the revelation of the inner workings of the mind. In conjunction with some of the other reading I have done on conscious thinking, I tend to lean more towards Jung's interpretation. That said, I don't plan on doing any dream interpretation, even my own, any time in the near future!
Conclusion
Read this book if you love psychology and "squishy" sorts of science. Avoid it if you are hoping for some practical useful things in your study.