Page 25 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

unconscious (CW 12: 62). It must be said that Jung is often confusing
about this Collective Unconscious. Sometimes it appears to be primarily
a social phenomenon, sometimes it appears biological and sometimes
even cosmological. It is probably fairer to Jung to say it could be all
three, although it might be analytically useful to try and separate them.
However, if the existential status of the Collective Unconscious is
unclear, then that of the archetypes which structure it is even less so.
Despite repeatedly insisting that the archetypes are not specific images,
but structures and potential constellations, and that the contents of the
archetype are always determined by culture and personal experience,
Jung continually treats the archetypes as specific images. For example
he states that Water is a symbol for the living part of the psyche, and
that Mercurius is a symbol of the intellect (CW 12: 69, 74).

Jung and Alchemy

Jung attempted to explain the obscurity of alchemy, the drive of its
marked and colourful symbols, and the reality behind people’s reporting
the discovery of things, like the Philosophers’ Stone, which we might
regard as chemically impossible.

Basically Jung argued that the alchemical work acted as a kind of
dynamic Rorschach blot in which the equally dynamic processes of the
psyche were projected onto the substances the alchemist was working
with. Alchemy was a kind of a collective conscious dream. Alchemical
works were so obscure, not because the alchemist was inherently trying
to conceal something (although this possibility was largely ignored by
Jung as irrelevant), but because of the difficulty of representing both the
psychic processes (which were unclear to begin with) and the work on
substances, at the same time. Furthermore, during this work, Jung
implies that alchemists sometimes did reach a kind of enlightenment in
which they had worked through (unbeknownst to themselves) their
psychological problems and became aware of, and went into dialogue
with, their Self. Thus the claimed discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone
was the discovery of a symbol for the Self. The alchemical work
expressed the individuation process as well as the chemical process. In
particular Jung argued that Christianity was in many ways incapable of
dealing with such psychological processes and, in some cases, actually
generated the pathological ego for which alchemy (or the alchemical
dream) was a compensation. In this case he apparently forgot that there
were non-Christian alchemies, or never made any comparisons.

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