title: "Decknamen or pseudochemical language"? Eirenaeus Philalethes and Carl Jung.
abstract: 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 of alchemy as a whole.
authors.affiliation: Department of the History of Science, Harvard University.
authors.forename: W R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Newman
mesh_terms: D000422:Alchemy; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011584:Psychology / Q000266:history*; D013557:Switzerland; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States