The cross-indexing by theme makes possible comparisons across temporal and cultural boundaries, and the collection will be enriched as a wider range of cultural examples are made available. A generous grant from Mr. Bingham's Trust for Charity will make possible the completion of the basic sections of the Archive within five years.
 
ARAS derives its origin from the collection of pictures which Olga Froebe had assembled as part of the Eranos conferences which she sponsored at Ascona, Switzerland. In 1956 she presented the Eranos Archive to the Warburg Institute in London and photographic copies were made for the Jung Institute in Zurich and for the Jung Foundation in New York. The New York set became the starting point for ARAS.
 
The 4,000 photographs from the original Eranos collection were expanded by another thousand collected by Jung, 800 from Jolande Jacobi, and 1,500 added by Jessie Fraser, the first director of the ARAS project (FRASER 3). All the illustrations used by Erich Neumann in The Great Mother and those collected by Dorothy Newman for her exhibit, 'The Heroic Encounter', are a part of ARAS as well.