• Frontmatter,
• FOREWORD TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION,
• FOREWORD,
• NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT,
• CONTENTS,
• LIST OF PLATES,
• LIST OF TEXT FIGURES,
• PREFACE,
• Chapter One. THE STRUCTURE OF THE ARCHETYPE,
• Chapter Two. THE ARCHETYPAL FEMININE AND THE GREAT MOTHER,
• Chapter Three. THE TWO CHARACTERS OF THE FEMININE,
• Chapter Four. THE CENTRAL SYMBOLISM OF THE FEMININE,
• Chapter Five. THE TRANSFORMATION MYSTERIES,
• Chapter Six. THE FUNCTIONAL SPHERES OF THE FEMININE,
• Chapter Seven. THE PHENOMENON OF REVERSAL AND THE DYNAMIC OF THE ARCHETYPE,
• Chapter Eight. INTRODUCTION,
• Chapter Nine. THE PRIMORDIAL GODDESS,
• Chapter Ten. THE POSITIVE ELEMENTARY CHARACTER,
• Chapter Eleven. THE NEGATIVE ELEMENTARY CHARAc'rER,
• Chapter Twelve. THE GREAT ROUND,
• Chapter Thirteen. THE LADY OF THE PLANTS,
• Chapter Fourteen. THE LADY OF THE BEASTS,
• Chapter Fifteen. SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,
• BIBLIOGRAPHY,
• ERICH NEUMANN,
• INDEX,
• PLATES,

This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.
Featuring a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, this Princeton Classics edition of The Great Mother introduces a new generation of readers to this profound and enduring work.

Erich Neumann (1905-60), a psychologist and philosopher, was born in Berlin and lived in Tel Aviv from 1934 until his death. His books include The Origins and History of Consciousness, The Fear of the Feminine, and Amor and Psyche (all Princeton). Martin Liebscher is senior research fellow in German and honorary senior lecturer in psychology at University College London.