A Collected Works of C.G. Jung enquanto formato de popularização não introdutório: considerações a partir da investigação de intenções autorais e editoriais na coleção

Abstract

Until today, the Collected Works of C. G. Jung has been taken as the most disseminated collection of edited and published works from the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. The purpose of this research was to further the discussion about the characterization of the collection, its possibilities and limits. Starting from some propositions of Analytical Psychology historians, in which they claim that the collection is not academic or historic, we seek to offer an description that grasp what the collection represents rather than say what it is not. Thus, we explored the history of the Collected Works, the context of its creation and its aims. Our focus was on the varieties and differences of authorial and editorial intentions that surrounded the collection conception. For this purpose, we analyzed both editor's and author's preface on the collection's books in order to understand in which way and direction they would liked to be understood. We also investigated the institutions involved in the conception and execution of the publication project at the moment of its creation, as well as the institutions that today hold the rights to Jung's writings. We brought to the Analytical Psychology field, focusing on the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, the discussion about the History of the Books and the Collections, the idea of collection as the faithful materialization of the author's thoughts, the author-writer as an product of editorial strategy and the canonization of themes and works as the most substantial‘s and significant within the author's mind. In this research we used the English edition of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung as well as the German edition, the Gesammelte Werke von C. G. Jung, and the Portuguese edition, Obras Completas de C. G. Jung. We conclude that Collected Works of C. G Jung designates not only a physically delimited format for a collection of writings, but also an editorial and authorial strategy that sought, and still seeks, to build in the public imagination the image of an excellent and multifaceted researcher for Jung, as well as to promulgate the existence of a direction for which the author's writings and proposals flows, especially in relation to the theme of Alchemy, architected idea from the enunciation of elements such as the existence of central themes and more representative concepts of author's thinking.