JUNG'S READING OF GOETHE'S FAUST

Jung was introduced to Goethe's Faust at an early age. It was a love at first sight and was to become his life-long fascination. He took it to be a very rare western expression of the need to transcend the accepted human condition based on irrevocable opposites, a vindication of whatever has been repressed in the binary process (like the body, in favour of the mind). Rahter than a mere embodiment of evil to be eliminated, Mephisto is seen as representing the repudiated half of being, indispensable for the whole to be complete. Faust himself becomes a modern reincarnation of the archetypal hero on his quest for the promised boon, or, in Jungian terms, on his path of individuation.