ABSTRACT
If Herbert Silberer was skating on thin ice with Freudian orthodoxy with his delicate discussion of the hypnagogic, and perhaps on even thinner ice when exploring the genesis and purpose of symbols, the Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism clearly landed him in a pond of apostacy from which he would never emerge. Silberer then unabashedly proceeds to make multiple religious, mostly Christian, references, that address the 'perfection' of mankind, the centrality of conscience, and the interconnectedness of all men. Clearly so enthusiastically and scholarly an exposition of alchemy reflects Silberer' belief that it embodied some of the highest aspirations of mankind at its particular moment in the history of the evolution of human consciousness. In fact, C. G. Jung has famously noted that: "Herbert Silberer has the merit of being the first to discover the secret threads that lead from alchemy to the psychology of the unconscious".
