A Review of Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 1–12: On the Condition of the Soul in the West

In the opening pages of Psychology and Alchemy (Collected Works Vol. 12), C.G. Jung begins what will become a comprehensive exploration of alchemy as a psychological system. But before turning to esoteric symbolism, Jung grounds the work in clinical observation and cultural critique. He introduces not a curiosity about symbols, but a crisis of meaning. What emerges clearly from these early pages is his concern with the condition of the Western soul, its disorientation, its estrangement from mystery, and its forgotten capacity for transformation.

The Unconscious as Carrier of Spiritual Content
Jung’s starting point is his clinical work. Over many years of analysis, he discovered that “European and American men and women” were producing in their dreams “symbols similar to, and often identical with, the symbols found in the mystery religions of antiquity, in mythology, folklore, fairytales, and the apparently meaningless formulations of such esoteric cults as alchemy” (Psychology and Alchemy, p. 8). This observation becomes the foundation of his theory of the collective unconscious.

More than a mere repetition of old forms, these symbols brought with them psychic vitality. Jung writes that they “brought with them new energy and new life to the people to whom they came” (p. 8). The symbols were not abstract decorations; they had the effect of restoring orientation and direction, what one might call, in older terms, a spiritual reawakening.

Psychic Reality as Spiritual Reality
One of the most striking features of these early reflections is Jung’s assumption that psychic reality is itself real, and not only real, but spiritual. He speaks of the unconscious as “a source of energy and insight in the depth of the human psyche” and asserts that it has operated “in and through man from the earliest periods of which we have records” (p. 8). This language situates the unconscious not merely as a storage house of memory or trauma, but as the very field through which meaning and transformation unfold!

This view directly challenges the modern scientific reductionism that would treat psychic life as epiphenomenal (secondary, derived or less essential). For Jung, the unconscious is not beneath reason but beneath ego, and it contains within it the potential for renewal. That is, it carries the kind of symbolic, imaginative, and often religious content which modernity has discarded and which, as he implies, Western individuals desperately need.

Alchemy as a System of Soul
In describing alchemy, Jung is clear that his interest lies in it as “a particular example of symbol-formation, extending in all over some seventeen centuries” (p. 9). Alchemy, then, is not to be judged on its material claims, but as a cultural expression of the same symbolic processes found in the unconscious.

The alchemical texts, obscure, disorganized, and imagistic—bear a resemblance to dreams. Jung’s approach is comparative: he places the symbolic language of alchemy alongside the dream material of modern individuals, and in doing so, demonstrates their affinity. Both contain images of transformation, death, renewal, and union of opposites. The alchemists, he suggests, were projecting their psychic life into matter, unconsciously working through their own individuation.

He notes that his case material involves a patient who “had no knowledge of what the symbols appearing in the dreams might mean” (p. 9), which lends empirical weight to his hypothesis: the symbols arise spontaneously. They are not culturally acquired in the usual sense, but seem to emerge from what Jung terms the collective unconscious—a deeper layer of the psyche common to all humanity.

The Condition of the Western Soul
This leads to Jung’s implicit critique of the West. The fact that people’s dreams unconsciously generate alchemical symbols suggests that modern consciousness is no longer in contact with the symbolic layer of reality. It has lost access to the very images that facilitate psychic development. He writes:
“People forget that even their passions are only partially theirs; they belong also to their ancestors and have existed in the race for ages” (p. 10).

This is not merely a genetic or cultural statement—it is existential. To forget the deeper, inherited layers of the psyche is to forget the soul itself. Jung does not use the term “soullessness” directly in these pages, but it is implied in his concern: that the Western ego has cut itself off from the wellspring of life. It operates in isolation, unaware that its suffering might be the result of symbolic starvation.

A Christian Context (Implicit)
Though not emphasized explicitly in these early pages, Jung’s broader project is deeply informed by Christian symbolic material. Even here, he lays the groundwork for later comparisons between alchemical imagery and Christian motifs. The “spiritual development of the individual human being” (p. 9) that he describes echoes traditional theological language about sanctification or the transformation of the inner person.

His emphasis on symbolic processes that “reach far beyond the horizon of the conscious mind” (p. 11) gestures toward mystery, transcendence, and what the early Church Fathers might have called the imago Dei—the image of God in the soul, which must be recovered. What Christianity once described through myth, liturgy, and sacrament, Jung is now recovering through depth psychology.

In a later passage (not yet reached, but consistent with this opening), Jung will write that:

“The goal of the psychic process is the Self, the God-image within us.” (Aion, §40)

The implication is clear: the soul’s journey toward wholeness—whether called individuation or sanctification—remains fundamentally spiritual.

Conclusion
In these opening pages of Psychology and Alchemy, Jung is not just setting up a historical study. He is diagnosing a cultural and psychological rupture. Western man, he suggests, has forgotten how to listen to the soul. In its place, he has installed rationalism, moralism, and surface-level adjustment. But the unconscious continues to generate symbols of healing, drawn from the same deep source that once inspired religion and myth.
For Jung, alchemy becomes a historical parallel to the work of psychotherapy: a symbolic system for understanding the psyche’s natural drive toward integration. But more importantly, it becomes a witness to something modernity has lost—the symbolic life of the soul.
In recovering alchemy, Jung is not escaping modernity; he is trying to re-enchant it. And perhaps that is what makes this book enduringly relevant—not only to clinicians or historians, but to anyone concerned with the spiritual emptiness of our time.