Where applicable, the commentary brings the image into focus for its modern psychological and symbolic meaning, as well as often including a bibliography for related reading and a glossary of technical terms.
[citation needed] ARAS also publishes a quarterly online journal connecting art, culture and depth psychology from a multi-disciplinary perspective that can be subscribed to free of charge on their website, aras.org.
The ARAS archive is designed for and used by students and scholars for research, by artists and designers as a sourcebook of motifs and iconographic forms, by individuals interested in commonalities in mythology, dream imagery, and vision which transcend nation and ideology, and by practitioners of depth psychology or other psychological perspectives wanting to enhance their knowledge of archetypal symbolism.
[citation needed] Two volumes have been published containing a small fraction of the images held by ARAS, entitled An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism.
[citation needed] ARAS was begun—and built to over six thousand images—by spiritualist and scholar Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, who founded the Eranos conferences in 1933.
This detailed documentation renders the library of images accessible to the lay person as well as the specialist scholar, although as the ARAS homepage notes, "There is...no supposition among those working in this field that they have found the one and only way of interpreting archetypal symbolism.