The Bollingen Series, a collection of 275 volumes with the Collected Works of C.G. Jung as its centerpiece, has been published by 快色直播 since 1969. As the Wilson Library Bulletin stated, 鈥淣ever before in the history of publishing has there been an author list as distinguished as that of Bollingen, nor has a publishing program had a more telling impact on the thought of its time.鈥�
I would like to address three questions: What makes the Bollingen series so special? Why has the series had such a great influence on American culture? And what is the Press鈥檚 strategic initiative Bollingen Recollections?
And before I begin, anybody who wishes to learn more about the Bollingen series and its history, I recommend as the starting point William McGuire鈥檚 Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past, which 快色直播 published in 1982, while McGuire was still the series editor. The book has been our 鈥渂ible鈥� from day one of our Bollingen Recollections enterprise as it contains endlessly fascinating details about individual projects, personalities, and the overall history of Bollingen. Consequently, you will see me quoting from it throughout this essay. When I started at the Press in 1987, McGuire had already officially retired, but I remember running into him on a regular basis as he was no doubt 鈥渨rapping up鈥� some of the loose ends of the Bollingen project.
What鈥檚 in a name? Bollingen explained
The series got its name from the small Swiss village of Bollingen on Lake Zurich in Switzerland, where in 1923 C.G. Jung built by hand a two-story, medieval inspired tower. Bollingen is situated about twenty-five miles from the Zurich suburb of K眉snacht, where C.G. Jung had his main home and where he saw patients in his office. He lived there with his wife Emma and their five children from 1908 until his death in 1961.
Jung saw Bollingen as his refuge and the time that he spent there as a source for renewal. The fact that the house was without electricity or running water instilled in him a feeling of direct harmony with the elements: 鈥淚n Bollingen,鈥� Jung wrote, 鈥渟ilence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live in modest harmony with nature.鈥� (McGuire, p.3)
In 2023 I had the great privilege to be welcomed into C.G. Jung鈥檚 home by Andreas Jung, his grandson, who still lives in part of the house with his wife. We toured the house so I could see Jung鈥檚 desk, his study, the family鈥檚 living room, and the garden.
I also had a chance to see the actual Bollingen tower, closed to the public, but Carl Christian Jung, one of C.G. Jung鈥檚 great grandsons and currently head of the C.G. Jung Foundation, welcomed us. The Press has been collaborating with Carl Christian and the Foundation on publication of the exciting new The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung. More about this in a later post.
Who founded the Bollingen Series?
Mary and Paul Mellon were among those whom C.G. Jung had welcomed to the tower in Bollingen. In the Spring of 1940, the Mellons met with Jung, first in New York and then in Switzerland. At the tower, Mary Mellon talked with Jung about her idea of a whole book publishing program, with Jung鈥檚 Collected Works as the centerpiece. To name such a series after the enchanted place of Bollingen, so closely associated with Jung, seemed only natural, and that is how the Bollingen series originated.
Launched that same year, 1940, and originally published by Pantheon 快色直播, the series features some 275 iconic books in psychology, mythology, archaeology, art history, religion, literature, and related fields, including the collected works of C. G. Jung.
Who published the Bollingen series first?
The series was initially published by the legendary publisher Kurt Wolff, a German Jewish refugee escaping Nazi Germany, who, together with his wife Helen, had just founded Pantheon 快色直播 in New York. It was Heinrich Zimmer, the author of Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (a book which was subsequently published in the Bollingen series), who had connected Mary Mellon with Kurt Wolff.
Kurt Wolff, a decade younger than Jung, was an early and enthusiastic admirer of Jung鈥檚 work and considered Jung to be a 鈥済reat thinker and visionary.鈥� Wolff was therefore instrumental in introducing Jung鈥檚 work to an American audience, although Harcourt Brace in the U.S. and Routledge & Kegan Paul in the UK had also been publishing some of Jung鈥檚 earlier work in the 1920s and 30s already. Jung eventually signed separate agreements with both the Bollingen Foundation and Routledge & Kegan Paul for his Collected Works, leading to a territorial split between the two publishers. It was the Bollingen Foundation, however, who paid all editorial and translation costs. (McGuire, pp.105-115)
Beyond publishing Jung and the Bollingen series, Wolff was one of the architects of European modernist literature, publishing such figures as Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, G眉nter Grass, Robert Musil, Philipp Roth, Heinrich Mann, Paul Val茅ry, and many others. The offices of Pantheon 快色直播 were on Washington Square South in New York City on a block called Genius Row. Jung鈥檚 Collected Works was subseries XX of the Bollingen series, which, according to McGuire鈥檚 account of Bollingen, was 鈥渧ital for the financial survival of Pantheon 快色直播.鈥� (McGuire, p.17)
Who decided what was part of the Bollingen series and is there a unifying element?
Mary Mellon, the first editor of the series, was once asked to write a statement of 鈥減rinciples and purpose鈥� for the Bollingen series. From her initial long manifesto, (see McGuire, 67-70) only parts made it into the first announcement:
The Bollingen Series will attempt to make available books of the past and present which contribute to the evolution of human consciousness. The series is particularly interested in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, psychology, mythology, comparative religion, and art in all its forms.(McGuire, 69-70)
These categories remain in use to this day.
Although Mary Mellon鈥檚 passion for all things Jungian was apparent in her funding of the entire translation of the Collected Works of Jung, in the end, few of the Bollingen volumes could be called 鈥淛ungian鈥� in a strict sense. Still, several of the series鈥� authors had a definite Jungian affinity, such as Joseph Campbell, Karl Ker茅nyi, and Heinrich Zimmer. (McGuire, p.121)
After Mary Mellon鈥檚 death in 1946, John D. Barrett, a close friend of the Mellons, was appointed to become the second editor of the Bollingen series, a position he held from 1946-1969. Many of the Bollingen series鈥� treasures were acquired during his reign, and while Barrett became engrossed in the world of Jungian psychology, the Eranos circle, and the realms of myth and religion, he was also responsible for broadening the Bollingen publishing program and expanding it into archaeology, art, and literature.
William McGuire, the third and final editor of the Bollingen series from 1969-1982, has aptly described the two poles of the series, both of which were reflected in what John Barrett and his advisors considered 鈥淏ollingen material鈥�:
On the one side was 鈥he Mythic: analytical psychology, symbolism, religion, antipositivism, the primitive, and the entire sweep of the perennial wisdom including, above all, Platonism. On the other side, rather austerely, was the Aesthetic: the history of art, literary scholarship, literature in translation 鈥� as well as the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, and cultural history. (McGuire, p.121)
One fun fact that McGuire mentions is how John Barrett profited greatly from the advice of Abraham Flexner, the first director of the Institute for Advanced Study at 快色直播. The two got together regularly for lunches and Barrett credited Flexner with establishing a 鈥淏ollingen approach and attitude.鈥� (McGuire, p.122)
What does the Bollingen series consist of?
Mary Mellon had already defined some of the main categories of the Bollingen series, and here are some of the major works in each of the six categories: Analytical Psychology; Religion, Mythology, and Symbolism (easily the largest category); Philosophy; Literature and Literary Criticism; Art and Aesthetics; Archaeology.
Analytical Psychology
- C. G. Jung
- Eric Neumann etc.
Religion, Mythology, and Symbolism
- Carl Kerenyi
- Joseph Campbell
- Mircea Eliade
- Heinrich Zimmer
- I-Ching etc.
- Egyptian Religious Texts etc.
Philosophy
- Complete Works of Aristotle and Plato
Literature and Literary Criticism
- Collected Works of Coleridge
- The Divine Comedy
- Miguel de Unamuno
- Collected Works of Paul Valery
- Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 Eugene Onegin etc.
Art and Aesthetics
- The Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
- Ananda Coomaraswamy
- Andre Malraux
Archaeology
- Samothrace
What is the significance of the Bollingen series?
As the series grew with Pantheon as publisher, people recognized it as exceptional and innovative in many regards: the freshness of the intellectual contribution, the prestige of the authors, the general message of the series as counterpoint to the prevailing culture, as well as its exceptionally crafted design and production values. Some of the best designers in the business of book publishing, such as Paul Rand, Herbert Bayer, P.J. Conkwright, Jacques Schiffrin, and E. McKnight Kauffer, worked on these books, and as we assembled our Bollingen library a few years ago, we marveled at the stunning and timeless modernist designs of the original Pantheon volumes.
Kenneth Rexroth, an American poet and critic, wrote in 1967 at the height of the countercultural movement.
It is obvious that the Bollingen Series constitutes an important pivot in the swing of Western culture to a new taste quite contrary to the one dominant between the wars鈥�. Whether Suzuki, Eliade, Zimmer, Campbell or Blake or Coleridge, there is a kind of relentlessness about the consistency of the Bollingen program. What is this program? A steady drive toward reclaiming interiority [my emphasis], reinstating values that cannot be reduced to quantities; an adventure for significance, a quest for meaning鈥 part of the struggle for revaluation and refounding of a collapsed Western civilization. (Kenneth Rexroth, 1967)
How did the Bollingen Series come to 快色直播?
The series came to 快色直播 in 1969 because, although Paul Mellon had continued Mary鈥檚 work after her death in 1946, he had decided to wind down the Bollingen series and cap it at 100 projects (many of the projects are multi-volume, resulting in the 275 series total).
Publishing was also changing, as it always is. In 1961 Pantheon had become part of Random House, and Kurt Wolff had died in 1963. As this era was ending, the search for another publisher had begun. Several publishers were in the running, but Herb Bailey, the longtime Director of 快色直播, had expressed interest in the Bollingen imprint as early as 1962, shortly after the Pantheon Random House merger. And this is how the Bollingen series became an imprint of 快色直播 in 1969.
What is the backlist initiative Bollingen Recollections?
Among pandemic projects, our team turned to library building and were determined to reconstitute our own collection of each of the Bollingen titles. We gathered all existing editions of each title into one room at the Press, and those we couldn鈥檛 find, we ordered from various sources. Then we sorted the titles according to the six Bollingen categories in one of the Press鈥檚 rooms, which we renamed 鈥淭he Bollingen Room.鈥� It took us close to three years to assemble the entire library, something that turned out to be essential to our ongoing intellectual property research as we worked with various estates trying to figure out multiple complicated rights situations. Having a physical library was equally beneficial for our design and production colleagues who could look at the various editions as we were making publication decisions for the ongoing lives of these books, in print and digital formats鈥攁udio included.
Putting together the Bollingen Library with colleagues, still during the pandemic 2021
The idea to re-issue the entire Bollingen series as a collectable whole in a unified format and available in all editions鈥攑aperback, hardbound case, and digital鈥攅volved only gradually over the years and was by no means pre-ordained. Numerous colleagues were part of these conversations, and many friends of the Press encouraged us to do so as we thought about different paths forward. Early on, we had two wonderful graduate students from 快色直播 University join us as Bollingen fellows to sift through some of the largest categories, that of Myth, Religion, and Symbolism, and also the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. We thought about how we should produce these volumes so that we could ensure that everything would always stay in print. And eventually, we came up with a way to integrate all of this into the existing reissue workflows of the Press.
I should state here clearly that many, if not most of the Bollingen books, have been continuously in print and have seen several editions. The series could certainly be called a powerhouse on our backlist, with books regularly making our monthly bestseller list, such as the I-Ching, Erich Neumann鈥檚 History of Consciousness, and several works from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, including The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Volume 9.1),and Psychology and Alchemy (Volume 12).Other perennial bestselling volumes are: Mircea Eliade鈥檚 Shamanism, Yoga, and The Myth of the Eternal Return; Daisetz T. Suzuki鈥檚 Zen and Japanese Culture, Erwin Goodenough鈥檚 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Erich Auerbach鈥檚 Mimesis,&苍产蝉辫;贰.贬.&苍产蝉辫;骋辞尘产谤颈肠丑鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;Art and Illusion, or Kenneth Clark鈥檚 The Nude, to name just a few. For a full listing of all Bollingen titles see here: Bollingen Series.
That said, many of the works, especially those multi-volume ones and those that are a bit more, for lack of a better word, 鈥渙bscure,鈥� have not been readily available and until this year, only available in antiquarian bookstores.
What have been the different stages of the Bollingen strategic backlist project, and what are the next steps?
The Mellon Lectures
As you can imagine, such a gigantic project needed to be approached in stages. Step one was to engage with the A. E. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, of which there are 75 titles now. The Mellon Lectures, which emerge from the longest running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art, are the only ongoing part of the Bollingen series, which otherwise is a closed series.
For many years, 26 of the Mellon Lectures had been out of print, mostly because of permissions issues. During a period of two years, and with the help of the National Gallery of Art, our long-term publishing partner for the Mellon Lectures, we built a legal case 鈥� with the help of counsel, to claim Fair Use for scholarly purposes for all the illustrations that we needed to reproduce in order to republish all these out-of-print books again. To fortify our fair use case, we reproduced many of the images in a smaller format and in black and white in these reprints. Our Creative Media Lab designed stunningly beautiful covers for the Mellon Lectures that were out of print and are now all available again. Generous support from one of the friends of the Press, Charlie Scribner, enabled us to relaunch the Lectures for modern readers.
The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
We subsequently addressed the fact that the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, the centerpiece of the Bollingen series, could not easily be ordered as a set, either in paperback or hardcover. Some of the hardcover volumes were out of stock, and the paperback set was lacking six of the volumes altogether, meaning they had never been published in that format. The goal here was to make available again the entire hardcover set of 20 volumes plus 2 supplements and, for the first time, the complete paperback set, so that anybody who wanted to order the entire set, in either format, would now be able to do so through our website. About two years prior, we had already created a new, improved, expanded, and fully accessible digital edition of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung.
The Idea of Mini Collections
After addressing the Mellon Lectures and the Collected Works of Jung, we started looking at the rest of the series and asked ourselves how best to publish all these books in all these different categories. The answer came as we looked at the entire collection in the Bollingen room: noticing that there are so many multi-volume works and authors with multiple works in the series, we realized that it made sense to think of mini collections within the entire Bollingen collection.
Designing the Bollingen Recollection Series
Much thought and collaborative effort went into coming up with a new design for Recollections, and here are four of the candidates that the brilliant designers of our Creative Media Lab came up with: Structure, Connections, Emblem, and Highlight.
The consensus was that the design called 鈥淪tructure鈥� would serve the series best because the design showcases graphically the aspect of the mini-collection approach with the six thematic umbrellas of the series.
Figuring out Different Trim Sizes
Many of the Bollingen books have different trim sizes, are oversized, or were lavishly produced and illustrated, complete with fold-out pages and other features that would not be possible to reproduce nowadays. So, it was necessary to come up with standard trim sizes for all the books so we could produce them with print-on-demand technology in all formats, paperback, case bound hardcovers, as well as e-books.
The First Three Mini Collections
These are the first three mini collections published on the Fall 25 list: eight volumes of Erich Neumann, five volumes by Heinrich Zimmer, and four by Ananda Coomaraswamy. We anticipate publishing about 15-20 books a year, and this whole initiative should be completed within the next 6-8 years.
Why is the Bollingen Series Relevant Today?
Much could be said about this, but I鈥檒l highlight just a few aspects. Because of the influence of C.G. Jung, who was the founder of analytical psychology, we are now familiar with the concept of the Unconscious, we talk about Archetypes, we pay attention to dreams, we talk about the concept of Personality and Shadow Personality, and we are generally interested in human psychology, our psyche, and personal growth.
We are equally conversant with the concept of personality types such as 鈥渋ntrovert鈥� or 鈥渆xtrovert,鈥� and we use personality tests to fathom what kind of personality we inhabit, something that goes straight back to Jung and continues to have great popular appeal.
Thanks to many of the Bollingen authors, foremost Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, we now all know about the 鈥淗ero Myth,鈥� which is part of many religions and cultures all over the world. The six-part 1988 TV series with Bill Moyers, called Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, enchanted millions of viewers. In fact, Campbell inspired a whole generation of Hollywood Superhero epics, and he worked closely with George Lucas on Star Wars. I recently watched the series again, and I found it as fascinating and meaningful as it was in 1988. I recommend it highly:
C.G. Jung has been called the Godfather of the New Age and the Counterculture movement and all that comes with it, such as different methods of鈥痵elf-inquiry, mind-body practices, new Eastern spirituality practices like yoga and zen, but also shamanistic and mind-altering practices like the new psychedelics鈥� movement.
The annual Eranos gatherings in Ascona, Switzerland, on Lake Maggiore, where Jung and many Bollingen authors talked about spirituality in the East and the West, found its reincarnation in Esalen, CA, which then became a major portal of the human potential movement in the U.S.A. For more on the Esalen Institute, see here: .
For me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Bollingen series and its influence, and anybody who wants to read a bit more about it, can immerse themselves in the fascinating History of Eranos and Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, who was the major force of the Eranos conferences. Since 1933, the Eranos Conferences had been held in Ascona in southern Switzerland and had assembled numerous Bollingen authors, such as Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin, Paul Tillich, Daisetz T. Suzuki, Heinrich Zimmer, Erwin Schr枚dinger, C.G. Jung, Helmuth Wilhelm, and Erich Neumann, among many others. ..
A colorful description of Eranos can also be found in McGuire (pages 20-30). The annual conferences began in 1933, and the lectures appeared in the Eranos Yearbooks, of which six were published by 快色直播 in translation and mostly edited by Joseph Campbell.
What do Contemporary Scholars Say about Bollingen? Confronting the Future through Creative Recovery of the Past?
Bollingen Recollections also creates an opportunity for us to connect the series to contemporary research and generate new conversations and communities. I have been engaging with some scholars to illuminate these connections, and my plan is to continue this exploration.
First, I engaged with the work of the Dutch historian Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam, who has written a history of esotericism in Western culture. In it he argues that Western Culture, and especially the academic realm, has rejected the kind of 鈥渆soteric鈥� knowledge that forms part of the Bollingen series; in fact, people have used pejorative labels like 鈥渕agic,鈥� the 鈥渙ccult,鈥� 鈥渋rrational,鈥� or 鈥渟uperstition鈥� in this context. As you perhaps know, this characterization has also been used for parts of the Bollingen series, which, along with Jung, have been labeled 鈥渆soteric,鈥� 鈥渋rrational,鈥� 鈥淣ew Age,鈥� 鈥渨oo-woo,鈥� etc.: in short, not anything that serious people in the academy should engage with. Hanegraaf, who has called Jung the father of the New Age movement, begs to differ, and in his book Esotericism in Western Culture makes the case that it is essential that the humanities study what he calls 鈥渞ejected knowledge.鈥�
I also had a wonderful conversation with John Tresch, a historian at the Warburg School in London. He is currently writing what sounds like a fascinating book with the title: Behind the Jungian Century: Amplifying Archetypes from Ascona to Wakanda, with Ascona referring to the original meeting place of the annual Eranos meetings, and Wakanda referring, of course, to Ryan Koogler鈥檚 Black Panther sequel.
He thinks that our returning interest in Eranos and C.G. Jung is to be found in the widespread sense that we are 鈥渆ntering a new, untested and largely unprecedented mode of modernity鈥� and that the notion that progress means leaving behind superstition, magic, ritual, the archaic, is falling away. He sees older forces and characters, including traditional religion, new spiritual practices, and a genuine thirst for individual and collective renewal coming to the fore, yet he is also quick to point out both the 鈥渢onic鈥� as well as the 鈥渢oxic鈥� influences of Jung and the Eranos circle.
He describes our efforts to republish the entirety of the series in these words:
It is exciting news that 快色直播 is reprinting the Bollingen series. Bollingen was a major, quietly influential, and at times quixotic venture to rediscover and curate humanity鈥檚 most enduring conflicts and concerns. The ideas it pursued still have a curious magnetism: they were at once profound and idiosyncratic, aspiring to universality while expanding, challenging, and redefining what 鈥渢he universal鈥� might mean. No human possibility was off limits: Iliad and I Ching, Yoga and Zen, Winnebago myth and African sculpture, Grail and Great Mother. Its publication history is inseparable from the world wars, capitalism, and mid-century malaise, but Bollingen rejected nihilism, technocratic simplification, and quick commercial flash; it never condescended to readers, even if it occasionally (and endearingly) overestimated the appetite for erudition. Though Bollingen was named for a neomedieval, handcrafted tower, it wasn鈥檛 a retreat to romantic or reactionary never-neverland: in the world鈥檚 ancient achievements and living traditions, it sought ways to face the vertigo of modernity. Put together with style and strangeness, the Bollingen series confronted the future through creative recovery of the past.
John Tresch, The Warburg Institute, author of The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science
And finally, I had a fascinating conversation with Jeffrey Kripal, who is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Texas. He wrote a history of Esalen, the famous California retreat founde
d in 1962 and by many considered the epicenter of the 鈥淗uman Potential Movement鈥� and incubator for America鈥檚 multifold ways of alternative thinking. For more information see:
Esalen, in Kripal鈥檚 mind, was the continuation in America of what the Eranos annual meetings had been for the Europeans and Jung. For those who want to pursue some of this new kind of thinking that Kripal also advocates for the Humanities, please see the interview on the fascinating podcast Wonderstruck: , his , at Rice University, and his books.
Asked for a statement on our Bollingen Recollections enterprise, he offered the following:
Carl Jung and the entire Bollingen project was prescient. It is still prescient, potential, even achingly relevant. It is more than time that we fully embrace our critical theories鈥痑nd鈥痚nvision something fundamentally cosmic, something more than human (鈥�) Toward this future metamorphosis, we can think after what we have called the humanities and the sciences toward a future form of knowledge whose language has not yet come. From the very beginning, this has been the promise of the academy, the cave of the senses that looks beyond the cave to the sun outside. Here, in the Bollingen books, we have a series of writers who were beginning to forge this very language, this very way out of the cave. They knew that what we once called religious experience can be understood today as cosmic experience, as revelations of the actual structure of reality coded in culturally and historically distinct ways. They knew that the human was really the superhuman.
Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of鈥�The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities
I believe that by looking all around us, we can begin to see just how deeply influential the Bollingen series has been for the 20th Century and beyond. We very much hope it will point to a constructive way, as John Tresch says in his endorsement of Bollingen Recollections, 鈥渢o confront the future through creative recovery of the past?鈥�
I would like to acknowledge that the Bollingen Recollections initiative has been possible because of the many brilliant colleagues at PUP across all departments of the Press, too numerous to mention here individually. It is only because of their expertise, genius, creativity, and enthusiasm that such a vast enterprise is possible. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to all my colleagues involved in this momentous enterprise.
Brigitta van Rheinberg is Associate Director & Executive Director, Global Development and IP鈥痑t 快色直播.