Decknamen or pseudochemical language »? : Eirenaeus Philalethes and Carl Jung/« Decknamen ou le langage pseudo-chimique » ? : Eirenaeus Philalethes et Carl Jung
— It is impossible to investigate the historiography of alchemy without encountering the ideas of the « father of analytical psychology », Carl Jung. Jung argued that alchemy, viewed as a diachronic, trans-cultural entity, was concerned more with psychological states occurring in the mind of the pra...
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| Published in: | Revue d'histoire des sciences 1996, Vol.49 (2), p.159-188 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fre ; eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | — It is impossible to investigate the historiography of alchemy without encountering the ideas of the « father of analytical psychology », Carl Jung. Jung argued that alchemy, viewed as a diachronic, trans-cultural entity, was concerned more with psychological states occurring in the mind of the practitioner than with real chemical processes. In the course of elucidating this idea, Jung draws on a number of alchemical authors from the early modern period. One of these is Eirenaeus Philalethes, the pen name of George Starkey (1628-1665), a native of Bermuda who was educated at Harvard College, and who later immigrated to London. A careful analysis of Starkey 's work shows, however, that Jung was entirely wrong in his assessment of this important representative of seventeenth-century alchemy. This finding casts serious doubt on the Jungian interpretation as a whole. |
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| ISSN: | 0151-4105 1969-6582 |