ABSTRACT
7 Alchemy
Jung used alchemy as a metaphor to illuminate his ideas. The alchemists’ search for gold, or the philosopher’s stone, can be seen in a psychological sense as finding new insights or symbols and using them in creative and healing ways. The alchemists in their laboratories were not necessarily or always looking for literal gold. They used these methods or ideas symbolically. A review is made of the process of alchemy in both a literal/historical sense, linking this to the process of psychotherapy and highlighting how a medieval art may be of use in a contemporary clinic. The four stages of the alchemical process are laid out. The Rosarium Philosophorum (or rose garden of the philosophers) is an alchemical text dating back to 1550 which contains a series of woodcut images. Jung writes a commentary on ten of them in volume 16 of his Collected Works to illustrate his thinking about the phenomenon of transference. He uses the set of images as a metaphor to describe the process of transference in analysis. The series of images contain representations of the ‘mystical marriage’ (the heirosgamos) of masculine and feminine. Each of the woodcuts is discussed.
