ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes that a full understanding of the subtleties of meaning of the main concepts and theoretical constructs in his theory of personality is impossible without understanding the alchemical ideas that helped to shape these concepts. She introduces alchemy and cosmology and shows the specific ways in which alchemical ideas and images shaped Jung’s approach to therapy and his concept of the collective unconscious with its intimations of immortality. Through the alchemy, the Jung began to understand psychotherapy as a cycle of separation, regeneration, and transformation. An important group of the studies published in 1950 brought Jung’s alchemical and the religious ideas together and emphasised the central concept of individuation in his personality theory. The first is a ‘thoroughly revised and enlarged’ version of an earlier Eranos lecture entitled ‘A study on the process of individuation’.
