Mysterium Coniunctionis

Carl Gustav Jung.

Mysterium Coniunctionis, subtitled An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, is Volume 14 in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, published in 1970 by Princeton University Press in the United States and by Routledge and Kegan Paul in the United Kingdom. Completed in his 81st year, it is Carl Jung's last major work on the synthesis of opposites in alchemy and psychology.

The book gives a final account of Jung's lengthy researches in alchemy. He empirically discovered that certain key problems of modern man were prefigured in what the alchemists called their "art" or "process". Edward F. Edinger poses an important question in the introduction to his book "The Mystery of The Conjunctio": "One might ask, why alchemy? ... The alchemists were fired with the beginnings of the modern spirit of inquiry, but yet, as investigators of the nature of matter they were still half asleep. So, in their zeal to investigate those newly opened vistas, they projected their fantasies and dream images into matter. in effect, they dreamed a vast collective dream using chemical operations and materials as imagery and subject matter for that dream. Alchemy is that great collective dream, and what makes it so important for us is that it's the dream of our ancestors. The alchemist were rooted in the Western psyche which we've inherited, so their imagery, their fantasy, their dream, is our fantasy and our dream. That's what Jung demonstrates so magnificently in his major works on alchemy."[1]

Jung maintained that:

The world of alchemical symbols does not belong to the rubbish heap of the past, but stands in a very real and living relationship to our most recent discoveries concerning the psychology of the unconscious.

The Journal of Analytical Psychology said of this book:

What Jung has to convey is so truly original and so far ranging in its implications that I suspect this book will be a real challenge even to those most psychologically sophisticated. What he here presents in rich and documented detail can perhaps best be described as an anatomy of the objective psyche.

The work includes ten plates, a bibliography, an index, and an appendix of original Latin and Greek texts quoted.

Publications

  • Jung, C.G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 2nd Edition, Collected Works of C. G. Jung, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-09115-2
  • Jung, C.G. (1970). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 14, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09766-4

See also

References

  1. ↑ Edinger, Edward F. (1994). Blackmer, Joan Dexter, ed. The Mystery of The Coniunctio -Alchemical Image of Individuation. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-919123-67-0.
  • "Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis". Princeton University Press. Retrieved 2014-01-20.
  • "Abstracts: Vol 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis". International Association for Analytic Psychology. Retrieved 2014-01-20.

}}

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.