4.4.2024 | Jung’s Essay: The Transcendent Function | Part I of II (Reading Discussion FREE)

Jung’s 1916 essay on the transcendent function was circulated privately for over forty years, eventually getting to the public by way of the Collected Works in 1958. Simply put, the transcendent function is the “function” behind active imagination, the intrapsychic method of dialoguing with the unconscious.. More complexly put, the Red Book is one dramatic example of Jung’s own use of active imagination in the individuation process.

The transcendent function is at the core of Jung’s thought of psychological growth and a centerpiece used in Jungian inner work. For the interested reader, this early seminal essay describes the method of active imagination in both a provocative and accessible manner that has stood the test of time. Join the C.G. Jung Library of Tampa Bay Reading Discussion Group for an in depth conversation about this quintessential function, so centrally on display in the Red Book.

(Part I of II) This essay can be accessed in Joseph Campbell’s The Portable Jung. The image above is a painting of Christiana Morgan’s, a talented artist, patient of Jung, and the subject of his Vision Seminars (1930-1934), whom he deemed a “pioneer woman” in the exploration of the inner realms of the psyche.