Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Symbols of Transformation
The libido as not solely sexual but generally psychic energy — the archetypal substrate of myth, religion, and the collective unconscious
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Symbols of Transformation (Early (the 1912 break-from-Freud book; revised in 1952 as the mature statement of analytical psychology's mythopoeic register)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Non-local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | Mystical |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Symbols of Transformation
Mythic cyclical time of archetypal recurrence; the hero's journey, the descent-and-rebirth.
Space
Symbols of Transformation
Non-local through synchronistic phenomena; the imaginal as a real domain.
Matter
Symbols of Transformation
Substantival but psyche-bearing; synchronicity links physical events to psychic states.
Observer
Symbols of Transformation
Plural psyches with shared collective-unconscious substrate; multiple time/space instances through archetypal imagination. Cosmic-ordering.
Energy
Symbols of Transformation
Libido as general psychic energy, reversibly distributed across symbolic forms.
Information
Symbols of Transformation
Personal soul conserved through individuation; the archetypal substrate is eternally available.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Jung's mythopoeic register placed him outside mainstream scientific psychology and made him the principal twentieth-century reference point for New Age, perennialist, and alternative-spiritual movements he would not have wholly endorsed. The empirical-statistical evidence for archetypes per se is thin; what survives is the clinical insight that symbolic-mythological thinking is constitutive of human meaning-making.