Free Reading Discussion: Paracelsus the Physician (Jung CW15)

Concluding a lecture titled Paracelsus al Arzt, delivered to the Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and the Natural Sciences on September 7th 1941, Jung concludes, ” I shall be content if I have succeeded in giving you at least a few impressions of the strange personality and the spiritual force of the celebrated physician whom his contemporaries rightly named the “Luther of medicine.” Paracelsus was one of the great figures of the Renaissance, and one of the most unfathomable. For us he is still an enigma, four hundred years afterwards.
Jung was struck by the recurrence of alchemical symbols in his patients’ dreams and theorised that the symbolic language of alchemy was an expression of innate but unconscious psychological processes. He related alchemy to the psyche in the same way that Paracelsus, centuries prior, had to physiology. The extensive writings of the alchemists, and particularly Paracelsus among others, helped to ground Jung’s psychological discoveries in recorded lived experience across many centuries, anchoring his groundbreaking hypothesis of the collective unconscious and the process of “individuation”.
Join the C.G. Jung Library of Tampa Bay reading discussion group as we dive into Jung’s thoughts on this pivotal medieval Swiss physician and philosopher. Please note – this discussion will be held at the Library on River Hills. There are only 10 spots available. We invite those with serious interest in attending the discussion to register below.