ABSTRACT
In this chapter Alessio De Fiori aims to sketch a relationship between Jung’s notion of coniunctio oppositorum (“coincidence of opposites”), elaborated during the composition period of the Red Book (1913–1930), and the topic of holism. After a consideration of Jung’s psychiatric research activity begun in 1901 at the Burghölzli in Zurich, and in which he developed his thinking on the psyche as characterized by the notion of the “Split” (Spaltung), De Fiori turns to a presentation of the coniunctio, which appears from 1913 in an experience recounted by Jung in the Red Book. De Fiori shows how the notion of coniunctio appears in the Liber Primus, Liber Secundus and the Scrutinies, and how this notion can lead to a re-conception of a holistic vision of psychic development. In this way, the coniunctio oppositorum remains at the centre of the psychic process for Jung, and the path that leads from the split to wholeness.
