Aurea Catena

the present stage at which the aurea catena has arrived, becomes our new hot question that we or our psychology have to struggle with. Only when his view of things has become the new great riddle for us is his psychology alive in ours and can there be a continuous progression of the soul problematic in the sense of the aurea catena.

Giegerich argues that genuine participation in the aurea catena requires that each psychologist transform their predecessor’s answer into a living question, making the chain a dynamic logical progression rather than mere transmission.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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The idea of the aurea catena is the representation of this unity-and-difference. Inasmuch as art and science are opposites in this context, what psychology shares with the one sets it off from the other.

Giegerich identifies the aurea catena as the conceptual image that holds together psychology’s peculiar unity — one ongoing opus distributed across many individual practitioners — distinguishing it structurally from both science and art.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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It is his published work that gives JUNG a place in the alchemical aurea catena as its latest, or one of its latest, links.

Giegerich locates Jung’s significance within the aurea catena not in his personal development but in his published oeuvre, which constitutes the objective, transmissible link in the chain.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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sensing that there was something wrong (“morbid”) about the way in which the same type of problem that he, JUNG, struggled with had appeared in NIETZSCHE’s work, too

Giegerich uses Jung’s encounter with Nietzsche to illustrate the condition of being ‘immune’ to a link in the aurea catena — the danger of not recognizing when a predecessor’s work constitutes a genuine psychological advance demanding engagement.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting

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Aurea Catena Homeri, 34

Von Franz indexes the Aurea Catena Homeri as a specific alchemical-Neoplatonic text relevant to Jung’s mythological context, anchoring the term in its historical bibliographic source.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting

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Aurea catena Homeri, 114n

Jung cites the Aurea Catena Homeri in his alchemical index, locating it within the matrix of Hermetic and alchemical sources he drew upon for Psychology and Alchemy.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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P. Lévéque, Aurea catena Homeri, 1959; J. Pépin, Mythe et allégorie, 1958.

Burkert cites Lévêque’s 1959 scholarly study of the Aurea catena Homeri in the context of Homeric allegoresis, situating the term within the classical-religious tradition from which the alchemical and depth-psychological usages descend.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting

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whereas archetypal psychology simply denies the death (sublation) of the old consciousness and is bent upon upholding the idea of an unbroken continuity of consciousness

Giegerich implicitly contrasts the aurea catena’s dialectical continuity with archetypal psychology’s regressive insistence on unbroken continuity, framing the former as the genuinely progressive form of psychological transmission.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside

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