Through the transference keyhole and into Jung's world : crystals and compost : Jung's alchemical transference

Abstract

This research investigates psychological transference through a lens constructed by Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961). He links transference inextricably to alchemy. I explore his ideas of transference as a phenomenon that exists inside the analytical dyad and in the world of relationships generally. Transference is an unconscious phenomenon made evident through the way the self is experienced in the presence of another. The implication is that self and other create a field of unconscious expectations, positive and negative, loving and hateful. Contents in the self appear first in projected form onto the object/other. In the entangled relationship the two create, each has the opportunity to sort out who owns which components, and how they construct a personal world through which the wider world is viewed. Self needs the other to reveal, in projected form, contents of which the self is unaware. These components might then be recognised and reclaimed by the self which grows in scope and complexity in the process. More specifically, the research investigates its topic with the assistance of data drawn from two sources: one theoretical, one experiential. The theoretical source is a guide which is applied and critiqued. The guide is an essay published by Jung in 1946. Jung's relatively brief essay is The Psychology of the Transference. Considered his major work on the subject of transference, it is notable in two ways: it presents transference through the metaphor and filter of alchemy; and it is organised around a series of alchemical woodcuts, from 1550, called Rosarium philosophorum. These place the sexual and erotic energies of the transference centrally within the discourse. Jung writes that only by associating his ideas with alchemical ones could he think about transference and construct a phenomenology of the unconscious process and its outcomes. The second and practical data source is my own position as a Jungian analyst in training. In this document I think about and experience transference as analysand and as person living in the world. My relationships, as analysand working with four analysts, in four analytical relationships, have formed data, experienced and thought, as has my exposure to other training analysts and the Jungian world in general. These influences operate in the essay as the bases for discussion and departure points. The thesis is an application of The Psychology of the Transference, and assumes that transference exists inside the analytical setting and outside of it. The research records my intellectual and experiential relationship with Jung's essay as my own guide to the psychology of the transference in the way that Jung presents it, and in the way I have come to understand it for myself.

Date of Award	2008
Original language	English