Approaching Jung’s Alchemical Thought: It’s Background And Settings

Considered through a selection of Jung’s works chronologically surveyed, this seminar examines his approach to the topic of alchemy, as framed in the period from 1911 to 1936. Participants will gain an understanding of the various layers of Jung’s alchemical thought, as undergirded by his seminal psycho-historical study of 1911–12, Transformations and Symbols of the Libido; as animated by the various ‘texts’ comprising Jung’s then privately-held Red Book project; and as inaugurated (at least by conventional accounts) through his 1929 commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower. Pertinent works of theoretical importance to Jung’s psychology will also be addressed, including the essays, “The Structure of the Unconscious”(1916) and “The Relations between the I and the Unconscious” (1928). The seminar will conclude with a detailed discussion of Jung’s first essays on alchemy, “Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process” and “Notions of Redemption in Alchemy,” works considered foundational to an understanding of his later output on the subject—including Psychology and Alchemy (1944), which combined these essays in revised and expanded form. As a means of interrogating and evaluating the material surveyed, special attention will be given to Jung’s quaternity symbol, which he aligned not only with the Self archetype, but with that preeminent symbol of Western alchemy,the philosophers’ stone.