The transformation of personality is mysterious, whether it comes about gradually or suddenly. In part, it is the result of the process of aging. Life itself puts a person through a series of transformations similar to the moultings of insects and reptiles. There are also rituals created by humans in their cultures that facilitate transformations to higher levels of identity and consciousness through instigating a process of spiritual death and rebirth into a greater sense of wholeness.
The essence of the process is alchemical and what controls it is mysterious, lodged in the unconscious dynamics of the self.
The chapters in this book are attempts at exploring those dynamics while acknowledging that they will forever remain beyond our understanding, a mystery.
This work consists of a series of probes into the mystery of the individuation process. Central to the discussion are Jung’s late writings on the alchemy of psychological transformation in the late stages of individuation.
The chapter, “The Mystery of Creativity — A Journey in Pictures,” features a commentary on a series of 10 paintings made by Diane Stanley, a contemporary artist, in response to studying and meditating upon the Ox-Herding Picture series. In these images, she captures the journey as process that leads to the mystery of creativity. The pictures, which the artist herself titled, depict a process that is at once ancient and postmodern.
The Mystery of Transformation – Table of Contents
1. The Mystery of Transcendence — A Dream for Our Time
2. Dante’s Divine Comedy — A Journey to the Mystery of Transformation
3. The Marriage of Anima and Animus in the Mystery of Individuation
4. “The Piano Lesson” — Wolfgang Pauli’s Mysterious Union of the Opposites
5. Mysterium Coniunctionis — “The Mystery of Individuation”
6. Individuation and/vs. Enlightenment
7. The Mystery of Creativity — A Journey in Pictures
8. The Meanings of “Meaning”
9. The Faith of the Analyst
References
Watch Murray Stein on Speaking of Jung
Dr. Stein joined Laura London for a livestream on June 18
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein
Audiobooks Available for Volumes 1 & 2
Volumes 1 and 2 of the Collected Writings of Murray Stein are now available as audiobooks.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein in Print
Volume 1 – Individuation
Volume 2 – Myth and Psychology
Volume 3 – Transformations
Volume 4: The Practice of Jungian Psychoanalysis
Also Available in Print from Murray Stein
Four Pillars of Jungian Psychoanalysis
The Bible as Dream: A Jungian Interpretation
Men Under Construction:
Challenges and Prospects
Map of the Soul – 7: Persona, Shadow
& Ego in the World of BTS
Murray Stein
Murray Stein, Ph.D., studied at Yale University (B.A. in English) and attended graduate student at Yale Divinity School (M.Div.) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. in Religion and Psychological Studies). He trained as a Jungian psychoanalyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich. From 1976 to 2003, he was a training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, of which he was a founding member and president from 1980-85.
In 1989, he joined the executive committee of IAAP as honorary secretary for Dr. Thomas Kirsch (1989-1995) and served as president of the IAAP from 2001-2004. He was president of ISAP Zurich 2008-2012 and is currently a training and supervising analyst there. He resides in Goldiwil (Thun), Switzerland. His special interests are psychotherapy and spirituality, methods of Jungian psychoanalytic
treatment, and the individuation process.
