Alchemy

Jung's work in the last part of his life focussed on giving both worlds of science and mythopoeic imagination their due.

He found the historical equivalent to his own psychology in medieval alchemy, from Greek Khemia "art of transmuting metals". Alchemy had discovered its own peculiar solution to the problem of uniting opposites. He was the first to make alchemy psychologically accessible to the twentieth century by showing how alchemical symbols were similar to archetypal dream images.

Alchemy is called the "Hermetic Art", a secret or occult practice, named after the legendary founder of alchemy, Hermes Trismugistus the "thrice greatest Hermes". The alchemist's goal was to experiment with physical substances to transform base metal into gold. The philosopher's stone was the agent which would enable this to occur. The aim was not real material gold but philosophical gold, concerned not only with the transformation of inanimate matter but with their own spiritual transformation. Jung believed that alchemy stood as the 'Shadow' in compensatory relationship to Christianity. Christianity's one-sided dogma and inability to unite the opposites had alienated us from our natural roots in the unconscious. Alchemy extracts the shadow from sunlight and the sun ray from its shadow. The philosophers stone is produced by the unity of divine opposites, the sphere of divine unwillingness, non-being, death and the sphere of divine will, being and life. The sun and the shadow rotate casting their opposites; the God, Dionysius, sun's Shadow, killing and dismembering the alchemist (I kill and make alive), and the sun God, Apollo, raising the alchemist to eternal life (I wound and heal), which is exactly what psychoanalysis does.

In the Christ/philosopher's stone (lapis) alchemist equation, the alchemists saw their goal not only as assisting God to redeem man, but also to redeem God himself from matter. The one primarily in need of redemption was not man but the deity sleeping in the darkness of man. Jung recognized the alchemical work parallels the individuation process, the analytical task is identical to the alchemical endeavour because both the analyzer (the alchemist), and the analyzed person are patients who must undergo an inner journey. Both must confront the terrors of their own unconscious in a process that aims at total transformation; both are projecting their unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate and liberate it or to bring it to consciousness.

The alchemist is often depicted as working with a female assistant, the anima or 'soul' image. The materials they cook and brew can be compared with psychological equivalence e.g. sulphur is hot and desirous, silver retentive and touchy, iron brave and passionate, copper constant and sensuous, tin honest and lofty, lead detached and cruel, the slippery nature of mercury, with its invisible poisonous vapours epitomizes danger, tricks and deceptions of the entire world. The Spirit of Mercurius was the central figure through which the alchemical union of opposites is made possible. Mercurius is for Jung the image of the collective unconscious itself.

"I am the old dragon, found everywhere on the globe of the Earth, young and old, very strong and very weak, death and resurrection, visible and invisible, hard and soft; I descend into the Earth and ascend into the Heavens, I am the highest and the lowest, the lightest and the heaviest. I am dark and light … I am known and yet do not exist at all".

monster

Alchemists experimenting in their laboratories reported confrontations with terrifying monsters in their reports and alendics. Jung recognized these monsters as archetypal images which described the psychic conditions of the alchemists undergoing states of depression, despair, passion, frustrated desire and so on. These could be paralleled to the stages in the individuation process during analysis.

Throughout the alchemists' recipes for making a stone, Jung found a constant theme of a "chemical marriage" between king and a queen (gold and silver) who unite, die and are re-born as a Siamese pair or Hermaphrodite. Jung studied the bizarre imagery of this marriage with immense difficulty in 1965 when his own wife died, while he was aged 80.

Transference

The marriage of king and queen describes analysis itself, especially the transference relationship between analyst and patient. Transference is the projection on to the analyst of feelings and ideas which are derived from introjected figures or objects in the patient's past, commonly parental figures. The patient repeats and re-enacts the past relationships with the analyst, the transference may be a positive one (falling in love) or a negative one (hostility and hatred). By analyzing the transference unconscious patterns become conscious to the patient. Counter transference occurs when the analyst projects his or her own unconscious contents on to the patient.

transference

Looking at this problem from a Jungian point of view - for example, 'mother projection' - we note that in the collective unconscious we are in the archetypal world of humanity, finding ourselves in a living myth. When the patient says 'mother', thinks 'mother' or is unconsciously 'mother', the therapist is an interesting place. He will first see his patient, then her mother, and then her mother archetype and may well hear the archetype talking through his patient and exerting a power on the therapist as well. The archetypes appear in symbolic expression; the presence of the archetype is known by powerful feeling, - we are all born of mothers - which embodies transpersonal images and powers. The mother that is behind the real mother may be the great mother, the tragic mother, the terrible mother, the devouring mother, the cruel mother, the tyrannical mother, the wise old woman or others. Jung often used the metaphor of the cauldron as the container for the interaction of opposites and the interaction of real and symbolic people. A positive transference is a desirable state in which analysis flourishes but it is not a steady state and fluctuates. Whenever two people are in a close relationship transference is there; it is first personal, a reflection of real people and then non-personal, a representation of inner objects which are not part of our subjective life, come from the collective bin of humankind. These images live in mythology, faery tales, legends and heroic fantasies and in the heroic world of good and evil. They can be persons of the opposite sex, or of no sex, or of androgenous sex, or non-human beings. It is an unconscious projection of the repressed personal and collective images and transference can apply to people, things and ideas.

Looking at origins of transference we see that it begins with infantile relationships - for example, mother. Your real mother is unique in the world of mothers, it is not your mother when someone says "take that mother out of here". 'Mothers' are diverse, archetypal mother symbols abound, dark cave, milk, nurse, fruitful earth, the muse of creativity, Mother Earth, nature, the mistress of the elements, sovereign of all things spiritual, origin of life, Moon Goddess, perpetual renewal, creator, destroyer.

Mother Archetype

There are two worlds; the world of the 'I' and the world of the 'Not I'. The personal psyche is the 'I', the ego and the dimensions of it, (ego, superego and id in Freudian terms). You can understand that domain by understanding the patient's 'real world'. The deeper Self of the 'Not I' is the symbolic centre of life and our world, the Self, the inner, all encompassing archetype as opposed to 'self' meaning our personal self. This is the essence of the 'Not I'. The outer world and its repressed elements are know to us as the 'I', compared to that from within, the inner world of 'Not I' that is the collective unconscious. This 'Not I' transcends our personal being. The 'Not I' world of archetypes presents in its cast of thousands, anima, animus, shadow, good mother, bad mother, good father, bad father, wise old woman, wise old man, Satan, redeemer, saviour, bęte nour, demons, monsters, king, queen, floods, storms, trickster, gods, goddesses, serpent, antichrist, tree of knowledge, tree of life, sun, moon, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, sacred mountain, mandala, trinity, Christ, soul, persona, re-birth, spirit, ad infinitum. There are so many forms in which archetypes appear because they are expressed in an infinite variety of symbols. The 'Not I' is an archetypal phenomenon.

"The more remote and unreal the personal mother is, the more deeply will the son's yearning for her clutch at his soul, awakening that primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes and helps assumes paternal form from the alma mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals". Jung.

"The father represents the world of moral commandments and prohibitions, although for lack of information about conditions in prehistoric times it remains an open question how far the first moral laws arose from dire necessity rather than from the family preoccupations of the tribal father … The father is the representative of the spirit whose function it is to impose pure instinctuality. That is his archetypal role which falls to him regardless of his personal qualities; hence he is very often an object of neurotic fears for the son. Accordingly for the monster to be overcome by the son frequently appears as a giant who guards the treasure. The archetypal symbol carries the same meaning for a large portion, if not all, of mankind - for example, Sky Father, axis of the wheel, father of us all, spirit and intellect; the Great Mother, physical matter, the Earth Mother". Jung.

The Alchemical Process

Jung interpreted some wood-cut illustrations from a 17th century alchemical text, the Rosarium Philosophorum, to describe the process of analysis in archetypal terms.

  1. The Mercurial Fountain. The vessel in which the work takes place contains the divine water, the stars are the four corners of the four elements in separate and hostile states which need to be united as the fifth star over the fountain shows. These four elements are Jung's four functions and the fifth is the wholeness of the self. The stars on the vessel represent six planets, the triple fountain in its middle is the seventh, Mercury, and the mercurial fountain is a "chthonic" or underground counterpart to the Christian trinity. Mercurius is also the water in the fountain and symbolizes the unconscious; the process begins with disunion - a disintegrated and unredeemed state among the four elements or functions - redemption or wholeness will be affected through Mercurius, the integration of unconscious elements. Mercury as water can cause great elation and depression, just as the patient will experience in her analysis.

    mercurial fountain
  2. The king and queen are sun and moon, animus and anima, brother and sister. They are fully clothed, disguising their natural state. Their left-handed handshake indicates a sinister union. The left is the dark, unconscious side which suggests an incestuous marriage. In the right hands the king and queen hold branches with four flowers, the four elements. The Dove or Holy Ghost descends and unites them in a union which is also spiritual. Incest, the union of like with like, symbolizes marriage with one's 'being' becoming the Self in a situation. The king and the queen are the unconscious figures of the alchemist and his female anima assistant. In terms of the transference, this is the initial meeting of the analyst and the patient; the incestuous handshake indicates that unconscious infantile fantasies, originally invested in members of the patient's family, are transferred on to the analyst and provide the "primal matter" for the analytical work.

    clothed king and queen
  3. The naked truth. The king and queen now confront each other as they are, without conventional disguises. Both now have one flower each instead of two, symbolizing that two elements have paired off in a partial union. The naked contact represents the integration of the shadow with the ego and assimilation of the shadow brings a return of the body. This is the conjunction of opposites, the soaring eagle of the ego and the earthy toad of the shadow. Animal instinct and primitive consciousness merge without being repressed by fictions or illusions.

    naked king and queen
  4. Immersion in the bath. The king and queen descend into the water, the unconscious, the immersion is a night sea journey or dissolution which returns them to dark initial state. The well is a uterus in which to be re-born. The king and queen are united "above and below" by the dove and also the water of Mercurius, the unconscious. King and queen - or spirit and body - are unrelated without the soul to bind them together. The dove and water symbolize the bond of the soul. The unrelated human being can achieve wholeness only through the soul.

    king and queen in bath
  5. The intercourse (coniuenctio). The sea now engulfs the king and queen. Coitus occurs in water, in the unconscious. They have returned to the beginning - the massa confusa or "unleashed chaos" - and at this moment the lapis (philosopher's stone) is conceived.

    king and queen bonking
  6. Death and putrefaction. The king and queen are dead and have melted into a being with two heads, the Hermaphrodite. After intercourse a state of putrefaction sets in, punishment for the sin of incest and conception. This is known as the nigredo (state of blackness) which requires the alchemist's self-cleansing. The nigredo indicates that psychic life stagnates when there is a blending of identity into the unconscious. It also represents the stage in analysis when projections are withdrawn. This enlarges the personality but can also lead to ego inflation if the ego identifies with unconscious contents and is thereby "polluted" by them. When the ego unites successfully with the unconscious soul image it will produce a new personality compounded of both, the Self or union of archetypal opposites.

    king and queen decaying
  7. Ascent of the soul. The soul departs from the spirit and body of king and queen in great distress. Unlike the usual idea of conception, it does not come from "above" to animate the body, but it leaves the body to mount heavenwards; later it will descend as a healing force and saviour, a parallel to Christ's 'second coming'. This is the soul-less stage in analysis when the patient has no sense of direction, as in schizophrenia. The decomposition of the elements, the four functions, has led to dissociation and collapse of the existing ego consciousness. The analyst, like the alchemist, must work ceaselessly at this stage to assist the royal couple's "resurrection".

    ascent of soul
  8. Purification. The dew descends. The aqua sapientiae (or water of wisdom) - portending the divine birth. Illumination washes away the nigredo by an albedo (or whitening), like sunrise after darkness. At this stage of analysis, when the unconscious contents have been made conscious and theoretically evaluated, the patient usually believes the goal has been reached.

    purification of king and queen
  9. The return of the soul. The soul dives from heaven to breathe life into the Hermaphrodite. The two ravens at the bottom of the picture indicate that the pair of opposites still exist in the sphere of the unconscious. The winged and the wingless birds symbolize the double nature of Mercurius, the chthonic (earth underworld) and pneumatic (airy, upper world) sides. The patients at this stage will begin to integrate the opposites in their psyche and can view their body in a detached, far off way.

    return of soul
  10. The new birth or rebis. The rebis or the "re-born" is the winged Hermaphrodite standing on the moon with snakes and a raven still present, which is associated with the devil. Why is the desired goal of alchemy portrayed in this monstrous form? Because alchemy is the "maternal darkness" and compensates for Christianity's "paternal light" and the goal is to become holy oneself, light and dark made one.

    the rebis

The importance of Jung's alchemical studies extends far beyond their relevance to analytical psychology and into the mystery of the "mind-matter" connection itself. Located prior to modern physics, alchemy crossed the divide between the psyche and matter, subject and object. As chemistry and physics developed out of alchemy into objective sciences, the psyche of the observer became specifically excluded from the objective material with which the observing scientists work. It was therefore only in the twilight, paranormal area that the mysterious union of psyche and matter could be emotionally experienced in our modern age. The alchemist had named this union the Unus Mundus "one world". It was this experience of the "oneness" that Jung attempted to elucidate through his concept of synchronicity.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is an acausal meaningful relationship of an inner and an outer world event.

It is not the same as synchronous or coincidence. The synchronistic principle asserts a meaningful relationship with no possible cause or connection between a subjective experience within the human psyche and an objective event which occurs at the same time, but at a distant place, in the outer world of reality.

Jung found that he came against this phenomenon often and the connection of events by other than cause and effect is a central feature in modern, quantum physics.

To serve as an example of the difference between synchronicity and coincidence Jung cites the following stories:

  1. "A wife gives a man a new pipe for his birthday. He takes a walk and sits under a tree in a park. Sitting next to him is a man smoking the same kind of pipe. He tells the man that his wife gave him his pipe for his birthday. The man says "mine did too". It turns out that they both have the same birthday. They introduce themselves. They have identical christian names". This is not synchronistic because there is no simultaneous inner meaningful subjective event.
  2. "A dog suddenly barks and whimpers in the night and wanders bereft and aimlessly through the house. The next day it is found out that the dog's master was slain in another city at the very time the dog was seized by the paroxysm of crying". This is synchronistic because of the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully related, but not causall connected events.

"One does not need to produce ten thousand duck billed platypi in order to prove they exist. It seems to me synchronicity represents a direct act of creation which manifests itself as chance. The statistical proof of natural conformity to law is therefore only a very limited way of describing nature since it grasps only uniform events but nature is essentially discontinuous, that is subject to change, to describe it we need a principal of discontinuity. In psychology this is the drive to individuation, in biology it is differentiation but in nature it is the "meaningful coincidence" that is to say, synchronicity". (Jung).

Meaningful coincidences had always fascinated Jung. He looked for a theoretical concept which would account for such a paranormal chance phenomena as the I Ching. In 1930 he first used the term synchronicity to describe an "a-causal" (the connection between psychic states and objective events). He carefully distinguished synchronicity from the mere synchronism of events occurring simultaneously but unconnected in meaning. His earlier attempts to understand synchronicity were influenced by the classical idea of astrology, the "objective time moment". This supposes that a certain quality exists in a moment of time itself - "a time to be born, a time to die, a time to reap and a time to sow". Whatever is done at this moment of time has the quality of this moment of time. Qualitative time seems to "explain" why astrology and other forms of divination work.

But synchronicities are not always dependent on such a moment of time. Precognition, for example, does not occur in "same-timeness". Jung gradually abandoned the supposition of qualitative time. He concluded that since qualitative time was nothing but the flux of things and was just as much "nothing" as space, this hypothesis ends up in a vicious circle - "the flux of things and events is the cause of the flux of things and events etc.".

Jung went on wondering if there was any law or pattern of synchronistic events which could be contrasted with the Newtonian law of causality. He thought it possible to link his acausal principle of synchronicity with new ideas now emerging in physics, which also suggested an acausal paradox. Radioactive break-up appeared to be an effect without a cause. It suggested that the ultimate laws of nature were not even causal. The quantum physicist and Nobel prizewinner (1945), Wolfgang Pauli, was a close friend of Jung's and one of several scientists interested in Jung's views. A union of psychology and physics seemed entirely possible and Pauli stated that he had discovered the presence of archetypes in the scientific theories of Kepler.

Jung and Pauli agreed that the trinity of classical physics - time, space and causality - could be turned into a quaternity by adding synchronicity as a fourth term. Thus we have indestructible energy opposing the space/time continuum and causality; and constant connection through effect opposing synchronicity with inconstant connections, (very light quantum mechanics, the study of almost infinitesimally small sub-atomic particles states that there are discontinuities in the way the universe works).

This conflicted with Einstein's theory of general relativity, that the structure of space time is smooth and continuous. God doesn't play dice. Jung and Pauli said "perhaps he does but we don't know by what rules".

To what degree is synchronicity either subjective or objective or is it partly both? "Synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective psychic states of the observer or observers". Jung.

The relationship between observer and observed remains confused, giving rise to two understandings of synchronicity. In one version there is already an interdependence of objective events amongst themselves (planets, marriage, for example) observed objectively. Yet in the second version, involving the subjective participation of the observing psyche, the experimenter's psyche is also involved. The first version of synchronicity, with its objectivity, could be examined for an inherent theory of law; the second with its secret mutual connivance is unique and notably, it depends on and even brings to light the psyche of the observing subjects so that the individual's own psyche is mysteriously reflected in the objective material.

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