Alchemical Active Imagination (Seminar Series (Spring Publications, Inc.), 14.) Book

C. G. Jung's most important living disciple explains alchemy as a symbolic process of psychological and spiritual transformation. Although alchemy is popularly regarded as the science that sought to transmute base physical matter, many of the medieval alchemists were more interested in developing a discipline that would lead to the psychological and spiritual transformation of the individual. C. G. Jung discovered in his study of alchemical texts a symbolic and imaginal language that expressed many of his own insights into psychological processes. In this book, Dr. von Franz examines a text by the sixteenth-century alchemist and physician Gerhard Dorn in order to show the relationship of alchemy to the concepts and techniques of analytical psychology. In particular, she shows that the alchemists practiced a kind of meditation similar to Jung's technique of active imagination, which enables one to dialogue with the unconscious archetypal elements in the psyche. The book opens therapeutic insights into the relations among spirit, soul, and body in the practice of active imagination. "Von Franz is probably Carl Jung's most important living disciple, and her work fully embodies the essence of his teachings. But she is, in her own right, an original and provocative thinker, as manifested by her many astonishingly perceptive books." -- Jonathan Cott, Rolling StoneRead More