Psychotherapy and Alchemy VIII:

Coniunctio — Edward F. Edinger
The coniunctio is the culmination of the opus. Historically, as well as psychologically, it has both an extraverted and an introverted aspect. The alchemists’ fascination with the coniunctio on the extraverted side promoted a study of the miracle of chemical combination and lead to modern chemistry and nuclear physics. On the introverted side, it generated interest in unconscious imagery and processes leading to twentieth-century depth psychology. …

Self-Realization in the Ten Oxherding Pictures— Mokusen Miyuki

In my paper entitled, “A Jungian Approach to the Pure Land Practice of Nien-fo,” I challenged the prevailing psychological view of Eastern religions as aiming at the “dissolution,” or at least the “depotentiation,” of the ego. I argued that the Pure Land Buddhist practice of nien-fo aids the individual to strengthen, rather than dissolve, the ego through the integration of unconscious contents. In this paper, I would like to further support this point by examining the Zen tradition’s Oxherding Pictures. These pictures are products of the Zen “mind” and experess in an art form the experience of satori or Zen enlightenment. Since enlightenment is a psychological reality par excellence, these pictures can be analyzed by employing Jungian methodology and conceptual framework, and by viewing them as portraying what C.G. Jung calls “the individuation process.” …

Sexual Intimacy Between Patient and Analyst

— Charles H. Taylor
Sexual activity between patient and therapist occurs more frequently than is openly acknowledged or discussed. In the psychoanalytic tradition, such activity is still overtly tabu, and of course it is against the stated code of ethic of most professional associations. Yet such activity takes place in Jungian as in other circles, though it is normally a closely guarded secret. Not only is analytic privacy exploited directly to keep the sexual relationship secret as it occurs; ironically, the confidentiality of any subsequent analysis restricts open examination of the facts. Thus secrecy becomes a part of the patient’s wound and analytic confidentiality prevents discussion of the destructive effects of sexual contact by precisely those therapists who know the wounded patients best. …

Synchronicity and the Mexican Divinatory Calendar

Tonalamatl— J. F. Zavala
Synchronicity, as C. G. Jung understands it, is the simultaneous appearance of two phenomena, the first one of which is psychic, and the second of material nature. They are not related casually one to another, but their occurrence produces a feeling reaction in the observer which transmits to him the meaningful sense of this event. For example: somebody dreams that he is travelling into a cold land full of ice and snow, and this person catches a terrible cold the next day. These events happen very irregularly and arbitrarily, and they cannot be observed through statistics or through the theory of probabilities. The only common characteristic of the two phenomena forming a synchronisitic event is the moment of time in which they take place. These events allow us to have an insight into a very mysterious process which exists in the background of the same, and in which the psychic and the material phenomena, i.e., the opposites appear to be unified. Order and organization seem to exist in the process of unification. Now I will discuss one of the manifold and inexhaustible representations of this process which exists in the background of synchronistic events. …

Book Reviews

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

 — John Boswell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1980. Reviewed by Jonathan J. Goldberg.

The Supervisory Experience

 — Robert Langs, M.D. New York: Jason Aronson. 1979. Reviewed by William B. Goodheart.

Spontaneous Images: Relationship Between Psyche and Soma (Special Issue of Psychosomatische Medizin, Heft 1/2-Band 9, 1980) Baden, Switzerland: Transbooks AG. 1980.

Reviewed by Selma Hyman.

Dynamics of the Self

— Gerhard Adler

London: Coventure Ltd. 1979. Reviewed by Peter H. Tatham.

Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology

— Marie-Louise von Franz. Toronto: Inner City Books. 1980. Reviewed by Gertrud B. Ujhely.

Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance

— Marie-Louise von Franz. Toronto: Inner City Books. 1980. Reviewed by Nathan Schwartz-Salant.

Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey

— Sallie Nichols

Introduction by Laurens van der Post. New York: Samuel Weiser. 1980. Reviewed by Barbara Black Koltuv.