The Alchemical Attitude

If the analyst confuses historical knowledge of Alchemy with the ways in which it may be applied in clinical practice, he is likely to fall prey to a dangerous simplification. Every great culture has developed its own “alchemistic attitude” to compensate for the dominating attitudes of the era.Today’s psychoanalytic theories, as long as they recognize the existence of objective psychic reality, are the descendants of an alchemistic heritage which they extend and deepen using conceptual tools and the differentiation of our own era’s sentiment from its ethic.