What Is Psychological Alchemy? Jung’s 1944 Claim and the Doubts

Psychological alchemy is the idea that the alchemists, while they worked on metals in a laboratory, were also describing the inside of a person. The idea belongs to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. He set it out in Psychology and Alchemy, first published in German in 1944. The English second edition, used here, is from 1968 (Jung, 1968).

It is a reading, not a settled fact. Historians of chemistry dispute psychological alchemy, and Jung did not say it explained everything. So the useful question is not whether it is true or false. It is what he claimed, what he based it on, and where the argument stands now.

Psychological alchemy meaning: what Jung claimed

Jung noticed something odd in the old alchemical books. The writers say they are making gold. They also say it is not ordinary gold. They call it philosophical gold, or a wonderful stone, and some end by saying that all recipes are to be despised (Jung, 1968, para. 343).

So why work in a laboratory with crucibles and alembics if you are describing something else? And if you are describing chemistry, why hide it under myth (Jung, 1968, para. 342)? His answer was projection.

Projection is what happens when you meet something unknown and fill the gap with something of your own, without noticing. Jung’s example is the night sky. People looked at the stars and found gods there, and a whole theory of human character (Jung, 1968, para. 346). The alchemist, he argued, did the same with matter. Here is the passage, in R.F.C. Hull’s translation:

The Latin means, roughly, “the obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown”. In plain words: the alchemist stared into a flask he did not understand, and the part of himself he did not understand showed up in it. He did not know he was doing this.

Jung pointed to accounts of visions during the work. Theobald de Hoghelande, a sixteenth-century writer, reports that strange shapes appear as the work goes on: animals, reptiles, trees, and in one text he cites, a man seated on a chair (Jung, 1968, para. 349). Jung took such reports to be projections of unconscious contents (para. 350). Earlier visions of this kind are the subject of our piece on Zosimos of Panopolis.

Four alchemical stages, then three: what Jung reports

Jung did not invent a four-stage model. He reports one the alchemists already used. Four stages are distinguished, he writes, named by colour: melanosis (blackening), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing) and iosis (reddening). Most authors agreed on the main points, and had done so from the start of the Christian era (Jung, 1968, para. 333). Mircea Eliade says the same four phases are already mentioned in a text attributed to Pseudo-Democritus, which he dates to the second or first century BCE, and that four, sometimes five, phases run, with many variations, through the whole history of Arabian and Western alchemy (Eliade, 1978, p. 149). Eliade still lists citrinitas among them.

Then the four became three. In Jung’s words, “Later, about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the colours were reduced to three, and the xanthosis, otherwise called the citrinitas, gradually fell into disuse or was but seldom mentioned” (para. 333). The three were black, white and red. Earlier in the book he puts it plainly: “In alchemy there are three as well as four regimina or procedures, three as well as four colours” (para. 31). So the sequence Jung walks through is nigredo, albedo and rubedo, with citrinitas as a transition he notes was dropped. He mentions it once in his dream analysis, saying that in alchemy yellow often coincides with the rubedo (para. 271).

The nigredo is the starting state: a darkness that is there from the beginning, or one produced by breaking things apart. The albedo is the first main goal. Then comes the part that gives the sequence its shape:

Jung argued that the change from four to three was not chemical. The process never reached its goal and was never carried out in one standard way, so no laboratory result could have forced the change. He put it down to the symbolic weight of four against three, which he called inner psychological reasons (para. 333). That is Jung’s inference, not a documented fact. Neither the four nor the three is Jung’s own scheme. Both are the alchemists’, and he reports them. Our guide to the order of the alchemical stages covers the sequence in full.

Why historians of chemistry dispute psychological alchemy

Not everyone who studies alchemy accepts this. In 1996 the historian of science William Newman published a study of one of the alchemists Jung relied on, Eirenaeus Philalethes. That was the pen name of George Starkey (1628–1665), who was born in Bermuda, studied at Harvard College and worked in London. The article’s abstract says that a careful analysis of Starkey’s work shows Jung was mistaken in his reading of him. It adds that this casts serious doubt on Jung’s interpretation of alchemy as a whole (Newman, 1996).

The same field has changed how it uses the words themselves. Newman and Principe (1998) show that in the seventeenth century “alchemy” and “chemistry” were used for the same craft, and that the split into a respectable chemistry and a gold-making alchemy was not widely accepted until the end of that century. They suggest the period’s own spelling, “chymistry”, for the whole of it.

A third position comes from the historian of religion Mircea Eliade. He lists the scholars who treat alchemy as an early stage of chemistry, and those who treat it as a spiritual technique. Then he writes that Jung’s psychological interpretation “forms a chapter apart in the historiography of alchemy” (Eliade, 1978, p. 142). He did not dismiss it, either. In his foreword he credits Jung with a specific finding:

“Soteriological” means to do with salvation. Eliade’s point is that the alchemists wanted to change a person as well as a metal, and that Jung’s patients, who knew nothing of alchemy, produced images like theirs.

What is left of psychological alchemy once both sides have spoken

Jung did not say alchemy was only projection. In his own words:

Individuation is Jung’s word for the long process of becoming a whole person rather than a collection of roles. Our article on the individuation process explains it. The claim in that passage is narrower than the name “psychological alchemy” suggests. It says the images were not only chemistry. It does not say there was no chemistry.

That gives three things to keep apart:

• Documented. Alchemical texts mix laboratory work with religious and mythic language. Jung and Eliade both say so, from different starting points.
• Argued by Jung. The images came from the unconscious of the alchemist, through projection, and they match the images of modern dreamers.
• Disputed. That this was the root of alchemy. Newman’s 1996 study challenges it directly, and Eliade sets it apart from the rest of the field.

None of the sources above tests whether using the alchemical stages helps a person. Treat psychological alchemy as a frame for reflection. It is a way to name where you are in a change, not a treatment. You do not have to settle the history to find the frame useful, and you should not claim more for it than Jung did.

If you want to try the frame, journaling for individuation is a place to start, and the free Midnight Alchemist guide walks through the stages the alchemists named, with exercises.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is psychological alchemy real alchemy?

It is a reading of real alchemy, not a type of it. The alchemists worked in laboratories (Eliade, 1978, pp. 10–11). Psychological alchemy is Jung’s argument about what else their images meant (Jung, 1968, paras 345 and 564).

Did Jung teach four alchemical stages?

No. He reported the alchemists’ old fourfold scheme (melanosis, leukosis, xanthosis, iosis) and said that around the fifteenth or sixteenth century it was reduced to three colours: black, white and red. His walk-through uses those three, with citrinitas as a transition that was omitted later (Jung, 1968, paras 333–334).

Did the alchemists know they were describing the mind?

Not in Jung’s account. He says the projection was not intentional but involuntary (Jung, 1968, para. 345). He did think some later authors became aware of the psychic side of their work (para. 332).

Is psychological alchemy a form of therapy?

No. It is an interpretation of old texts and a frame for reflection. The sources here do not test it as a treatment, and it should not replace medical or psychological care.

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