Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung

Psychology and Alchemy has been one of Jung’s most influential works. In a prefatory note, he says: “In this present study of alchemy I have taken a particular example of symbol-information, extending in all over some seventeen centuries, and have subjected it to intensive examination, linking it at the same time with an actual series of dreams recorded by a modern European not under my direct supervision and having no knowledge of what the symbols appearing in the dream might mean. It is by such intensive comparisons as this (and not one but many) that the hypothesis of the collective unconscious—of an activity in the human psyche making for the spiritual development of the individual human being—may be scientifically established.”

This volume includes 270 illustrations, drawn largely from old alchemical books and manuscripts, many of which were in Jung’s personal collection.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker, and the founder of analytical psychology (also known as Jungian psychology). Carl Gustav Jung was, together with Freud and Adler, one of the three great pioneers in modern psychiatry. He studied medicine and psychiatry in his native Switzerland and later became one of Sigmund Freud's early supporters and collaborators. Eventually, serious theoretical disagreements (among them Jung's view of the religious instinct in man) led to a doctrinal and personal break between the two famed psychiatrists.

Jung's radical approach to psychology has been influential in the field of psychology and in counter-cultural movements across the globe. Jung is considered the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and to explore it in depth. His many major works include Analytic Psychology: Its Theory and Practice; Man and His Symbols; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung; and The Red Book. He lived and practiced for many years in his native Zurich before passing over in 1961.