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Introduction Nietzsche was not merely a philosopher; Thus Spoke Zarathustra constitutes a singular manifestation of psychic contents of extraordinary intensity. Jung, for his part, approached the work as a clinical and archetypal phenomenon in a seminar conducted between 1934 and 1939. For Jung, Zarathustra is not a conventional literary character but an irruption of the Self, capable of mobilizing unconscious energies that the author’s conscious ego cannot fully sustain. This article examines how Jung interprets the Dionysian eruption in Nietzsche, the attendant risk of psychic disintegration, and the symbolic function that makes individuation possible. The central thesis is that, although Zarathustra embodies a remarkable affirmation of life, its emergence without sufficient archetypal containment leads to a psychic danger that Jung analyzes with both clinical precision and philosophical depth. Nietzsche and the Archetypal Eruption Jung approached Zarathustra as a text in whi...

Jung and Nietzsche, Degas-inspired. AI-generated image. Objective To analyze Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche as a paradigmatic case of interaction between archetype, consciousness, and psychic disintegration, drawing primarily on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar and other relevant works by Carl Gustav Jung. Introduction Over many years, Carl Gustav Jung devoted sustained and meticulous attention to Friedrich Nietzsche, regarding his case as one of the most significant for understanding the relationship between archetype, consciousness, and psychic disintegration. His most extensive engagement is found in the seminar Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar (1934–1939), published posthumously in two volumes. In this work, Jung approaches Nietzsche neither as a philosopher nor as a literary figure, but as a psychological phenomenon in which symbolic expression reveals extreme tensions between the archetypal unconscious and the ego’s capacity to contain it. ...