Landscapes of the Soul

Switzerland is home to illustrious soul-searchers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). The small country in the heart of Europe has a density of historic and current hotspots of psychiatry and psychoanalysis like hardly any other place in the world. From Geneva to Zurich, from Kreuzlingen, on the shore of the Lake Constance in the north, to Monte Verità near Ascona, close to the Italian border in the south, a dense network stretches across the map. Switzerland as a psycho-geographic space thus became a hub of psychoanalysis with a global reach.

Coinciding with C.G. Jung's 150th birthday, this book for the first time contextualises his thought and influence with the overall history of psychoanalysis in Switzerland. Besides Jung, its protagonists include, among other, Ludwig Binswanger, pioneer of existential psychology; Jean Piaget, best-known for his research of child development; Goldy and Paul Parin-Matthèy and Fritz Morgenthaler, co-founders of the Zurich School of Ethno-psychoanalysis; and Judith le Soldat with her radical feminist Nimbus theory.

Twelve thematic essays by distinguished authors are supplemented and put into perspective by key historical texts and art works, as well as visual material and documents, many of them from archives that have so far been virtually inaccessible.