"Language is originally and essentially nothing but a system of signs or symbols, which denote real occurrences, or their echo in the human soul." Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious In the midst of reading Jung's Red Book, the idea of words and language and their relationship to the underlying wordless reality has begun to haunt me. …
Tag: Psyche
The Red Book – Library of Congress Symposium
As a follow-up to yesterday's post about James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani's book, Lament of the Dead, Psychology after Jung’s Red Book, I want to share a video I found on youtube of a symposium featuring several speakers and a panel discussion from 2010 that included Hillman, Shamdasani and other Jungians. It is very insightful for anyone …
Continue reading The Red Book – Library of Congress Symposium
Alchemical Psychology, Part VII – Air
"The Imagination of Air and the Collapse of Alchemy," is Hillman's next to last chapter in his book, Alchemical Psychology. He reminds us at the start of the chapter that it is the images of air and not their measurement that was the focus for the alchemists. The chapters of this wonderful book get meatier …
Alchemical Psychology – Part VI, Red
In the last three chapters of James Hillman's book, Alchemical Psychology, we turn our attention to the last stages of alchemy imagined as the reddening, or rubido: a) images of the goal, b) changes that led to the collapse of alchemy, and finally c) alchemical caelum, or the "aesthetic condition of mind." There's a lot left …
Alchemical Psychology – Part V, Yellow
We start off the chapter on yellow with a brief mention that many alchemists did not include the stage of yellow, especially in the later years of alchemy's heyday, but moved directly from white to red. Hillman, who was himself trained as a Jungian analyst, suggests that Jung included the yellow because he was fond …
Theoria 