Jung’s Alchemical Philosophy

Stanton Marlan is a Jungian analyst, President of the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts, and an Adjunct Professor in Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University, with long-time interests in alchemy and the psychology of dreams. He is also the author of other books on psychology and alchemy, including C.G. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination: Passages into the Mysteries of Psyche and Soul.

'It is all too easy to regard the Philosophers’ Stone as an idle metaphor or as the product of a misguided and vain alchemical obsession. But Jung’s Alchemical Philosophy demonstrates on the contrary that the Stone is something to take seriously with deep implications for our self-understanding and our connection to the cosmos. In this ambitious and comprehensive book, detailed discussions are given of Jung’s extensive research into the relationship between the search for the Stone and the greater Self, and of subsequent contributions by James Hillman with an emphasis on the soul work symbolized in alchemical transformation and on imagination as an inherent ingredient in that same transformation. The larger philosophical significance of the Stone is pursued in a nuanced treatment of Hegel’s notion of Absolute Spirit, drawing on the depth-psychological interpretations of Wolfgang Giegerich. Contemporary authors such as Derrida and Zizek are also woven skillfully into the larger tale. The book generates a complex tapestry of philosophical and psychological insights, demonstrating their dialectical co-valence. Written with a rare combination of precision and passion, this book expands the horizons of the always enigmatic relationships between matter and meaning, self and other, life and death. By the end, the reader comes to realize that the Philosophers’ Stone is not something merely chimerical but a psychical reality and an inroad into soul and spirit alike'. Edward S. Casey, Professor of Philosophy, SUNY at Stony Brook, USA'This edifying book has a double impact. The author is a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, and his book is at once a philosophical psychology and a psychological philosophy. In the first instance it reveals to its reader valuable and varied insights into the history and imagery of alchemy, demonstrating why the philosophy of alchemy has been crucial to the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. But this is not all. Philosophers think about thinking, and philosophy, as the book reminds the reader, is thought in the act of thinking about itself. So, in the second instance, this book shows its reader how to think about psychology psychologically, as opposed to thinking about psychology personalistically as medicine, science, spirituality, or problem-solving for ego and its difficulties. The book's doubleness rewards the reader with provocative perspectives'.David L. Miller, Watson Ledden Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University, USA'Stanton Marlan’s Jung’s Alchemical Philosophy provides a wide-ranging and profound analysis of the transformative psychological understanding of alchemy initiated by Jung. In the process Marlan brings to light the alchemists' efforts to come to terms with such binary oppositions as nature and spirit, absolutism and relativism, thought and being, and most pointedly, image and idea. Marlan provides a perspective through which these oppositions can be reconciled and he opens a new philosophical vista on alchemy which expands upon and complements Jung’s depth psychological perspective on the alchemical opus'.Sanford Drob, Core Faculty of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, USA

• 1. Philosophical Tensions in the Historiography of Alchemy: The History of Science and the History of the Human Spirit  2. The Eye of the Winged Serpent: Mercurius and Overcoming the Split in the Alchemical Imagination  3. Benign and Monstrous Conjunctions  4. Classical Development of Jung’s Ideas of Alchemy and the Philosophers’ Stone in Von Franz and Edinger  5. Innovations, Criticism, and Developments: James Hillman and Wolfgang Giegerich  6. James Hillman and Wolfgang Giegerich: Unification and Divergence in Their Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives  7. Exposition and Criticism of Giegerich’s Philosophical View of Psychology Proper and the Human-All-Too-Human  8. The Problem of the Remainder: The Unassimilable Remnant—What Is at Stake?  9. The Alchemical Stove: Continuing Reflections on Hillman’s and Giegerich’s Views of Alchemy and the Philosophers’ Stone  10. The Philosophical Basis of the Remnant in Kant’s Thing-in-Itself and in Hegel’s Move to Surpass It  11. A Reflection on the Black Sun and Jung’s Notion of Self  12. Spirit and Soul  13. The Self, the Absolute, the Stone