Page 23 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

Jung

According to Jung, after the break with Freud he wished to discover
if his own psychological experiences had any similarities in the
historical record. Firstly, between 1918 and 1926, he studied the
gnostics6, but found them too remote from his experience (Jung 1963:
200-1). He had known of the psychological aspect of alchemy because
of the work of fellow psychoanalyst Herbert Silberer, with whom he was
in correspondence circa 1914 when Silberer’s book on the subject was
being published, and according to Richard Noll Jung had mentioned
alchemy in lectures in 1913 (Noll 1977: 171), but had considered the
subject too obscure and confusing (Jung 1963: 204). Silberer had related
the symbols and processes of alchemy to the processes of
psychoanalysis and the building of a new religious/ethical ego through
the symbols freeing the ego from its old ties and dissolving opposites.
Silberer himself was not only influenced by the 19th Century American
writer General Hitchcock, who gave a largely ethical interpretation of
alchemy, but also (I think) by Jung’s early writings particularly the
Psychology of the Unconscious. As might be expected, Freud violently
rejected Silberer, who committed suicide as a result.

In 1928 Richard Wilhelm sent Jung a translation of the Chinese
alchemical text The Secret of the Golden Flower for a commentary -
largely it appears because he thought that Jung’s theories might
elucidate the text - and Jung wrote that it “gave me undreamed of
confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation
of the centre” (Jung 1963 197), i.e. the symbolic representation of the
Self, and the idea that the Self is not centred in the ego.

Possibly also inspired by the paintings of his client Kristine Man
(CW 9, I: 305), Jung then began to explore the Western alchemists,
largely by compiling a list of index cards for phrases that he considered
odd or interesting (Jung 1963: 200-5). In Memories Dreams and
Reflections he is reported as commenting that he found “the experiences
of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences and their world was

6. Jung had already read widely in the European occult from as early as 1895
(Jung 1963: 98-9). Sometimes, it seems that Jung’s theories are held to be
wrong because they may have been influenced by the nineteenth century occult.
Those with this kind of position would rarely say that Newton or Boyle theories
were irrelevant because they were influenced by alchemists.

19