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Working the Soul: Reflections on Jungian Psychology
The chapters of this book were created over a period of ten years either in the form of articles, lectures, or introductions to other works. Each of them deals with issues and images central to traditional alchemical concerns. Some approach alchemy form a psychological perspective, others from a mythological, and yet others from a metaphysical. Poncé has grasped the essential psychological insight of the masters he evokes—Paracelsus, Jung, Kerényi, Eliate—and the traditions he joins—astrology, alchemy, mythology, kundalini.
- GenresPsychology
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 6, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 23, 2017
By going back to alchemy’s sources, to myth and ancient science like astrology, Charles Ponce attempts to trace a map of meaning to the human existence, by placing us between our origins and our destination, by depicting us as beings caught in between Earth and Sky, matter and Spirit, in the good tradition of his evoked antecessors, Paracelsus, Kerenyi, Eliade, and Jung, of course.
This collection of works are an attempt to pull us out from our perceived, static victimhood by showing us our dynamic dimension of work in progress, a collective psyche in full evolutionary process. His metaphysics as science of being and knowing takes us through all our dimensions to help us form a holistic view of the human soul. Working the Soul is adopting themes central to the spirituality of mankind along its geography and throughout its history, from the east to the west, from the antics to the Middle Ages to today, as proof of the alchemy and the psychology working at healing the human wound, for the atonement with the woman and the feminine. I particularly liked author’s dealing with the concept of the androgyne as an integration of the masculine and the feminine, an extension of Jung’s concept of the animus and anima. Readers will find themselves projected from everyday modalities of being into a whole new dimension of meaning, into contemplating own possibilities of achieving that dreamed about, but real realm of a Higher Consciousness, in full alchemic spirit. As Alchemy is using its means and processes at distilling the soul, rise it to the dimensions of the Spirit, we get to see how, on the larger scale of things, Existence itself has been toiling at our transformation even as we felt the most pained and wounded. The book (published in 1988, a decade from the end of the millenium) is an argument in case showing how our present level of evolution, with all its shakes and turbulences, helping us see how endings are in fact anticipations of rebirths.
This collection of works are an attempt to pull us out from our perceived, static victimhood by showing us our dynamic dimension of work in progress, a collective psyche in full evolutionary process. His metaphysics as science of being and knowing takes us through all our dimensions to help us form a holistic view of the human soul. Working the Soul is adopting themes central to the spirituality of mankind along its geography and throughout its history, from the east to the west, from the antics to the Middle Ages to today, as proof of the alchemy and the psychology working at healing the human wound, for the atonement with the woman and the feminine. I particularly liked author’s dealing with the concept of the androgyne as an integration of the masculine and the feminine, an extension of Jung’s concept of the animus and anima. Readers will find themselves projected from everyday modalities of being into a whole new dimension of meaning, into contemplating own possibilities of achieving that dreamed about, but real realm of a Higher Consciousness, in full alchemic spirit. As Alchemy is using its means and processes at distilling the soul, rise it to the dimensions of the Spirit, we get to see how, on the larger scale of things, Existence itself has been toiling at our transformation even as we felt the most pained and wounded. The book (published in 1988, a decade from the end of the millenium) is an argument in case showing how our present level of evolution, with all its shakes and turbulences, helping us see how endings are in fact anticipations of rebirths.
April 29, 2019
There are only a few parts that I liked about this book, but overall I found it too theoretical and it completely lost me on the last couple of chapters. I really liked his description of the iconoclast Paracelsus in pages 12 through 17 as well as the following excerpts:
“My final paragraph would have punctuated that for Paracelsus astrology was a tool employed to tell us not only who and what we are, but that we are – that we should look not continually ahead of ourselves to discover when things will be all right (when I find the right job, when I will be cured, when I will fall in love, etc.) but that things are right as they appear in each moment and that what the moment brings is right. The task of astrology, as that of any helping or healing profession, is to teach us how to carry each moment elegantly, with dignity, for it is the manner in which we receive ourselves that determines whether we grieve or sing, whether what we hear in ourselves is a cacophony or a melody, whether in that moment we stumble or we dance.” (Pg. 21)
“Rarely do we moderns, and one would expect most ancients, turn to ourselves unless we are ill. Few of us pay attention to the interior happening of our soul, the workings of our bodies, unless something is not working the right way. What brings me to the psychiatrists or internist’s office is the wound. It is by the wound that I eventually arrive at a new awareness of something occurring within me. But attending to the wound, I attend to portions of my body and soul that I have ignored.
…Thus, it is not enough to treat the wound, tend to the disease, with the intent of ridding ourselves of it. We should instead approach each wound, each illness, as a soul-message, an indication that there is something in ourselves we have refused.” (Pgs. 22-23)
“My final paragraph would have punctuated that for Paracelsus astrology was a tool employed to tell us not only who and what we are, but that we are – that we should look not continually ahead of ourselves to discover when things will be all right (when I find the right job, when I will be cured, when I will fall in love, etc.) but that things are right as they appear in each moment and that what the moment brings is right. The task of astrology, as that of any helping or healing profession, is to teach us how to carry each moment elegantly, with dignity, for it is the manner in which we receive ourselves that determines whether we grieve or sing, whether what we hear in ourselves is a cacophony or a melody, whether in that moment we stumble or we dance.” (Pg. 21)
“Rarely do we moderns, and one would expect most ancients, turn to ourselves unless we are ill. Few of us pay attention to the interior happening of our soul, the workings of our bodies, unless something is not working the right way. What brings me to the psychiatrists or internist’s office is the wound. It is by the wound that I eventually arrive at a new awareness of something occurring within me. But attending to the wound, I attend to portions of my body and soul that I have ignored.
…Thus, it is not enough to treat the wound, tend to the disease, with the intent of ridding ourselves of it. We should instead approach each wound, each illness, as a soul-message, an indication that there is something in ourselves we have refused.” (Pgs. 22-23)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews