Jungian Books

Drawing on insights from the psychology of interiority, these essays explore the relation between dialectical thought and alchemical logic. Alchemy occupies a pre-eminent place in Jung’s psychology, which for him fundamentally meant a “psychology with soul.” In the same way that alchemy straddled the mythic, pre-modern form of consciousness and that of early modernity, it served as a mediatrix for Jung’s psychology, straddling past and present. From different angles, these essays view alchemy’s reception in Jungian psychology today. They do so, however, based upon a fundamental principle of the psychology of interiority, which differentiates between the psychology of the soul and that of the human personality. Hence, the notion of interiority signifies the inwardness of soul, not that of the individual’s inner life. Alchemical interiority, as symbolized by the vas hermeticum,refers in that case to the soul’s interiority. Jung recognized such a difference, for instance, when referring to alchemical melancholia as not the alchemist’s own. Thus, we can say that whilst the soul manifestsin or through the human psyche, it is not of it. Alchemy is then looked at critically, against the foil of the way that contemporary Jungian psychology pushes the “stuffs” of alchemy down into the “inner” of the individual personality. With the latter standpoint, comprehension of the dialectical logic of the soul is lost. The psychological difference between the psychology of soul and the human personality is now one-sidedly compressed into the individual personality as if it were alchemy’s true referent.