Alchemical Studies

Jung's Collected Works #13

by C.G. Jung, Gerhard Adler (Translator), R.F.C. Hull (Translator)

Five long essays that trace Jung's developing interest in alchemy from 1929 onward. An introduction and supplement to his major works on the subject, illustrated with 42 patients' drawings and paintings.

Genres: Psychology, Alchemy, Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis, Spirituality

524 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Carl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.

Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.

Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of Jung's works not to be read by the neophyte.

Medieval alchemy is usually treated in histories of science as a dead end in proto-chemistry, charlatanism or just as symptomatic of the fevered imaginations of Christians of the Dark Ages. Jung picks up on the latter theme, but takes their imaginings seriously. Thinking his theories of psychic development (shadow, anima/us, Self) adequate, he characterizes the alchemical work in those terms, seeing it as, on the one hand, further proof of his hypothesis and as, on the other hand, explicable in terms of the hypothesis.

Having taken much advantage of interlibrary loan privileges in college, I was, for two years or so, on top of journal articles about Jung. One thing that struck me was his influence in fields, like folklore studies and the history of religions, concerned with the study of alchemy. I took this as some indication that Jung was causing at least some scholars to look at the phenomenon with new eyes, having found Jung's approach insightful. Indeed, I, too, found Jung making sense of what had hitherto seemed to me to be gibberish.

This is not to say that all self-styled alchemists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were spirital men seeking wholeness and wisdom by the hypostatization of their own psychic processes into their alembics and retorts. Jung does not emphasize the charlatans and the out-and-out nuts. He does not provide an objective survey description of what has passed as alchemy in times past. He, as always, pans the sand for gold.

[Didymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be read last (third) among Jung's works on Alchemy. I read it out of order and thus made a challenging read even more difficult.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

JUNG’S EXPLORATIONS OF EASTERN RELIGIONS, THE PSYCHE, AS WELL AS ALCHEMY

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) wrote in his Foreword to the second German edition (1938) of this book, “in 1928… I had been investigating the processes of the collective unconscious… and had obtained results that … not only lay far beyond everything known to ‘academic’ psychology, but they also overstepped the bounds of any medical, purely personal, psychology. They confronted me with an extensive phenomenology to which hitherto known categories and methods could no longer be applied… I knew of no realm of human experience with which I might have backed up my findings with some degree of assurance. The only analogies… I found scattered among the reports of the heresiologists. This… made it more difficult, because the Gnostic systems consist only in small part of immediate psychic experiences, the greater part being speculative and systematizing recensions. Since we possess only very few complete texts … we have… an inadequate knowledge of the history as well as the content of this strange and confused literature… so I found it impossible to make use of the Gnostic material.

“The text that [Jung’s deceased friend Richard] Wilhelm sent me [‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’] helped me out of this difficulty. It contained exactly those items I had long sought for in vain among the Gnostics. At that time it seemed to me a matter of no importance [that] the ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’ is not only a Taoist text concerned with Chinese yoga, but is also an alchemical treatise… the alchemical character of the text is of prime significance…” (Pg. 3-4)

He observes, “The usual mistake of Western man when faced with the problem of grasping the ideas of the East is like that of the student in ‘Faust.’ Misled by the devil, (Faust) contemptuously turns his back on science and, carried away by Eastern occultism, takes over yoga practices word for word and becomes a pitiable imitator. (Theosophy is our best example of this.)" (Pg. 7)

He states, “Certainly the intellect alone cannot comprehend the practical importance Eastern ideas might have for us… The lack of comprehension goes so far that even learned sinologists have not understood the practical use of the 'I Ching' and consider the book to be no more than a collection of abstruse magic spells." (Pg. 10)

He advises, “There could be no greater mistake than for a Westerner to take up the direct practice of Chinese yoga, for that would merely strengthen his will and consciousness against the unconscious and bring about the very effect to be avoided. The neurosis would then simply be intensified.” (Pg. 14)

He reports, “When my patients produce these mandala pictures, it is naturally not the result of suggestion; similar pictures were being made long before I knew the meaning of their connection with the practices of the East… The pictures arise quite spontaneously, and from two sources. One source is the unconscious, which spontaneously produces fantasies of this kind; the other is life, which, if lived with utter devotion, brings an intuition of the self, of one’s own individual being.” (Pg. 24)

He asserts, “Our time has committed a fatal error; we believe we can criticize the facts of religion intellectually. Like Laplace we think God is a hypothesis that can be subjected to intellectual treatment, to be affirmed or denied. We completely forget that the reason mankind believes in the 'daemon' has nothing whatever to do with external factors, but is simply due to a naive awareness of the tremendous inner effect of autonomous fragmentary systems." (Pg. 36)

He suggests, “We are already building up a psychology, a science that gives us the key to the very things that the East discovered---and discovered only through abnormal psychic states.” (Pg. 43)

He explains, “I approach these problems in a way that has often been charged with ‘psychologism’… my aim as a psychologist is to dismiss without mercy the metaphysical claims of all esoteric teachings… One cannot grasp anything metaphysically, one can only do so psychologically… My admiration for the great philosophers of the East is as genuine as my attitude towards their metaphysics is irreverent." (Pg. 50)

He points out, “In spite of the not always unintentional obscurity of alchemical language, it is not difficult to see that the divine water or its symbol… means nothing other than the … god hidden in matter, the divine Nous that came down to Physis and was lost in her embrace. This mystery of ‘the god become physical’ underlies not only classical alchemy but also many other spiritual manifestations of Hellenistic syncretism.” (Pg. 104)

He wonders, "Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter." (Pg. 128)

He argues, “Paracelsus knew, in advance of modern times, that this Nature was not only chemical and physical but also psychic… And even if, like all the rest of them, he never produced any gold, he was yet on the track of a process of psychic transformation that is incomparably more important for the happiness of the individual than the possession of the red tincture.” (Pg. 160)

He contends, “The interested reader will want, as I do, to find out more about this spirit… For this purpose we must consult the abstruse literature of alchemy, which has not yet been properly understood. Naturally, in later times, the history of alchemy was mainly of interest to the chemist. The fact that it recorded the discovery of many chemical substances and drugs could not, however, reconcile him to the pitiful meagreness, so it seemed to him, of its scientific content… Had he only asked himself whether the chemistry of alchemy was authentic or not… then the texts themselves would have suggested a line of observation other than the purely chemical.” (Pg. 204)

He states, “The alchemical tetrasomia … have a long prehistory which reaches back… into Egyptian antiquity. From all this we can see without difficulty that we are confronted with the archetype of a totality image DIVIDED INTO FOUR… It is not the task of empirical psychology to speculate about the possible metaphysical significance of this archetype. We can only point out that in spontaneous psychic products such as dreams and fantasies the same archetype is at work and in principle produces over and over again the same pictures, meanings and values autochthonously. Anyone who studies impartially the above series of dream pictures will be able to convince himself of the validity of my conclusions.” (Pg. 283)

He asserts, “Love alone is useless if it does not also have understanding. And for the proper use of understanding a wider consciousness is needed, and a higher standpoint to enlarge one’s horizon. That is why Christianity as a historical force has not rested content with admonishing man to love his neighbor, but has also performed a higher cultural task which it is impossible to overestimate. It had educated man to a higher consciousness and responsibility. Certainly love is needed for that, but a love combined with insight and understanding. Their function is to illuminate regions that are still dark and to add them to consciousness---regions in the outside world as well as those within, in the interior world of the psyche.” (Pg. 296-297)

He reports, “Freud saw himself obliged to go back as far as possible into the past. In so doing he finally hit upon an uncommonly numinous idea, the archetype of incest. He thus found something that to some extent expressed the real meaning and purpose of symbol production, which is to bring about an awareness of those primordial images that belong to all men and can therefore lead the individual out of his isolation. Freud’s dogmatic rigidity is explained by the fact that he succumbed to the numinous effect of the primordial image he had discovered.” (Pg. 301-302)

He notes, “Curiously enough, I have critics who think that I of all people want to replace the living psyche by intellectual concepts. I do not understand how they have managed to overlook the fact that my concepts are based on empirical findings and are nothing but names for certain areas of experience." (Pg. 328)

He states, “In psychic disturbances it is by no means sufficient in all cases merely to bring the supposed or real causes to consciousness. The treatment involves the integration of contents that have become dissociated from consciousness---not always as a result of repression, which very often is only a secondary phenomenon.” (Pg. 342)

Jung’s ongoing fascination with alchemy still leaves me shaking my head, but this book contains a lot of interesting material on other subjects, as well.

[بثينة العيسى · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich and interesting

[Audrey Driscoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars because who am I to rate a book never intended to be read by someone with limited knowledge of the field of psychology? I'm going with Jung's unquestioned reputation and by the incredibly broad range of his background reading to produce this and his other writings on alchemy. There was no way I would ever read all those ancient treatises on the subject, but because Jung did, and quotes extensively from them, this book gives the reader with an interest in alchemy a good picture of the symbols and thought processes of alchemists over a period of more than a thousand years.
I must say, however, that it's not an easy read, and that my lack of knowledge of psychology and its language was a handicap.
A note on my reading progress: my copy has a total of 444 pages, with nearly 100 being the bibliography and index. Thus the final page of text is p. 349.

[Timothy Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

"No one can claim to be immune to the spirit
of his own epoch or to possess anything like a complete knowledge of it.
Regardless of our conscious convictions, we are all without exception, in
so far as we are particles in the mass, gnawed at and undermined by the
spirit that runs through the masses. Our freedom extends only as far as our
consciousness reaches. Beyond that, we succumb to the unconscious
influences of our environment. Though we may not be clear in a logical
sense about the deepest meanings of our words and actions, these
meanings nevertheless exist and they have a psychological effect. Whether
we know it or not, there remains in each of us the tremendous tension
between the man who serves God and the man who commands God to do
his bidding."

C.G. Jung

[Deken Flaherty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this book after vol 12, psychology and alchemy. In that book he proves that alchemy was thought and felt of as a psychological experience and how the art was likened to a religious experience of god by those who practiced it.
In this book he keeps the assumption that alchemy is a psychological practice and goes through evidence to shed light on what the art meant psychologically to men then and men today.
To me, the biggest take away is that mercurious, the characterization of the unconscious for the alchemist, is richly experienced as a god, a demon and earthly numa.

I will definitely read again, this book is dense and interesting.

[Alissa Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty academic read and I feel like a good chunk of it went over my head but some points I came away with were:
-Appreciation for the sophistication of ancient Chinese culture and philosophy.
-Realizing how little thought I have ever given to the Middle Ages.
-Realizing how deeply ingrained and collectively shared symbolism, religious, natural or otherwise is.

I don't know if I'd exactly recommend this one, but I would definitely like to read more Jung!

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-4.5/5

[Desert Rose]

The first part was enlightening and validating. It got to a point though where I realized I am not yet ready to engage with this work.