Alchemy and Psychotherapy: Post-Jungian Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Mathers, Dale(Editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 309
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Alchemical symbols are part of popular culture, most recently popularised in the Harry Potter books. Alchemy intrigued Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. It inspired him as he wrote 'the Red Book' - the journal of his voyage of internal discovery. He devoted much of his life to it, using alchemical symbols as metaphors for unconscious processes.Alchemy and Psychotherapyexplores the issue of alchemy in the consulting room and its application to social and political issues. This book argues against the dominant discourse in contemporary psychotherapy - scientific materialism - and for the discovery of spiritual meaning.

Alchemy and Psychotherapy has four main sections:

'Alchemy and meaning' - looks at the history of alchemy, particularly the symbol of theconiunctio- sacred marriage - a metaphor for the therapeutic relationship.

'The symbolic attitude' - explores working with dreams, fairytales, astrology and the body: each of which is a symbolic language.

'The spirit and the natural world' - discusses the concept of 'burn out' - of therapists, our ecological resources, the mystical aspects of quantum physics and the philosophical underpinning of symbol formation.

'Clinical Applications' - shows alchemy's use with victims of abuse, those struggling to secure gender identity, in anorexia and in 'social healing' - atonement and restorative justice - which apply the idea of theconiunctio.

Alchemy and Psychotherapy is illustrated throughout with clinical examples, alchemical pictures and poetry which emphasise that alchemy is both a creative art and a science. Bringing together contributors from a wide range of disciplines, Dale Mathers and contributors show that therapy is both art and science, that the consulting room is the alchemical laboratory, and that their research is their creative engagement.Alchemy and Psychotherapywill be a valuable resource for practitioners, students at all levels of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychoanalysis and creative, art-based therapies and for creative practitioners (in film, literature and performing arts) who draw on Jung's ideas.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright Page......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
Table of Contents......Page 8
Illustrations......Page 12
About the contributors......Page 14
Foreword......Page 18
Foreword......Page 22
Acknowledgements......Page 26
Introduction......Page 28
Part I Alchemy and Meaning......Page 38
Water and Stone......Page 40
1 The Stone that the Builders Rejected......Page 42
2 Mysterium Coniunctionis: Fabric of Life......Page 54
3 The Rosarium Philosophorum......Page 71
Part II The Symbolic Attitude......Page 88
Transubstantiation......Page 90
4 The Queen and the Servant......Page 92
5 That Moment in the Rose Garden......Page 107
6 A Point in Time: The Horoscope as a Living Mandala......Page 124
7 Learning to Move: Imagination and the Living Body......Page 141
Part III The Spirit and the Natural World......Page 158
Hermes......Page 160
8 The Nature of Burn-Out and the Burn-Out of Nature: The Sloth and the Chickadee......Page 162
9 Embodied Being as Alchemy: A Post-Postmodern Approach......Page 182
10 Aurum Vulgi: Alchemy in Analysis, a Critique of a Simulated Phenomenon......Page 197
Part IV Clinical Applications......Page 212
The Hours of the Day......Page 214
11 Atonement......Page 216
12 Sulphur Rises Through the Blackened Body......Page 232
13 Masculinity and the Claustrum as Shadow Vas......Page 249
14 Anorexia and Alchemy......Page 265
15 Jung’s Quest for Individuation......Page 282
Alchemy......Page 298
Index......Page 299

✦ Subjects

Psychology