Carl Jung's Answer to Job: the Birth of the Self in Transcendent Experiences

Carl Jung revealed his thirty-year research on transcendent experiences in the four most important books written after his serious medical problems of 1944. Answer to Job, the sequel to AION is one of them. Contrary to the general opinion, the book is not about Jung’s coming to terms with God and/or religion. What Jung found in the Book of Job is the description of the transcendent experience he lived in December 1913. That experience changed his life and the course of his researches. It is at the core of The Red Book and his whole psychology. In Answer to Job, Jung describes and interprets the birth of the Self in transcendent experiences using the Judeo-Christian myth. To Job’s question: Why is this happening to me? Jung offers three responses. First, the unconscious Self is made conscious by the transcendent function. Second, the birth of the Self in consciousness is a transcendent experience. And third, there is a second transcendent experience following the first and it is the goal of a consciously performed individuation process.