Archetypal Projection, Assimilation and the Limits of Unitive Vision after 1945
Erich Neumann’s two-volume *The Roots of Jewish Consciousness* (written 1934–1945 in Tel Aviv, published 2019) remains the most sustained attempt by a first-generation Jungian to construct a specifically Jewish depth psychology during the Shoah. This essay reviews Neumann’s central thesis—the modern Jew’s alienation from direct revelation, the dynamics of archetypal projection that cast the Jew as Europe’s “Other,” and the self-hatred that arises when the assimilationist internalizes that projection. It examines the work’s distance from C. G. Jung, its initial proximity to Martin Buber, and the decisive post-1945 rupture with Buber’s romantic Hasidism, marked by the deliberate excision of a 36-page section on evil as the lowest level of good. An addendum analyses Neumann’s earlier monograph *Jacob and Esau*, comparing it with biblical scholarship and the perspectives of Kirsch, Drob, Hillman, and Avivah Zornberg. Contemporary reflections on Viennese assimilation, the agony of visible Jewishness, and post-Holocaust anti-theodicy illustrate the continuing force of Neumann’s diagnosis.