STANTON MARLAN
Stanton Marlan is an archetypally-oriented Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist who has a long-time passion for alchemical and dream studies. He worked closely with James Hillman, first as his analysand and later as a colleague and friend. Dr. Marlan holds two Ph.D.s from Duquesne University, one in Clinical Psychology and the other in Philosophy. He is a training and supervising analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, President of the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts, and past President of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He is an adjunct Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University and a Clinical Supervisor at Duquesne’s Psychology Clinic. Dr. Marlan has lectured widely at Jungian and Archetypal conferences in the United States and abroad and has taught at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich as well as at other Jungian institutes and universities. He has edited a number of books including Salt and the Alchemical Soul, and is the author of several books including The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness, and C. G. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination: Passages into the Mystery of Psyche and Soul, which was awarded Best Theoretical Book in Psychoanalysis 2021 by the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He has a private practice in Pittsburgh.
SALT AND THE ALCHEMICAL SOUL
Second, revised edition
Paperback original, 156 pages, $20
ISBN: 978-0-88214-131-2
Kindle/Apple Books, $9.99
ISBN: 978-0-88214-132-9
Salt is easily found, yet mysterious. It has been pursued down through the ages and across cultures. Homer called it a “divine substance,” and Plato described it as “especially dear to the gods.” It has been important in religion and magic, from baptism to a charm against the Devil. The image of salt has touched human behavior, feeling, and expression, from marriage rites and customs to economics, from fertility to friendship, from superstition to being the basic stuff of human life.
Not surprisingly, salt has become a focus of depth psychology. Edited and introduced by STANTON MARLAN, Salt and the Alchemical Soul is a collection of three papers from Freudian, Jungian, and Archetypal Psychology, providing excellent examples of different methods and styles of working with images. ERNEST JONES, in his essay “The Symbolic Significance of Salt in Folklore and Superstition,” attempts to apply psychoanalysis as a “new science” to an understanding of superstition. C. G. JUNG’s investigation into alchemy in “Sal” leads him to see salt as the principle of Eros at the base of the self. JAMES HILLMAN, using the image of salt, looks into the alchemical way of psychologizing, in “The Suffering of Salt.”