Retrieving and projecting Jung's transcendent function with complexes and the Rosarium Philosophorum

Abstract

This presentation will retrieve Jung's work on the transcendent function and complexes as well as a phenomenological and ontological interpretation of Jung's work on the Rosarium Philosophorum to project a new meaning of the use of the transcendent function in psychotherapy. This presentation enables complexes and the Rosarium Philosophorum to be understood in connection to the ontology of the transcendent function that was presented in the author's article Unconcealing Jung's Transcendent Function with Heidegger . This presentation will also highlight how Nietzsche's work in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra inform the use of Jung's transcendent function in psychotherapy. More specifically, this presentation will demonstrate that stage 1 of the transcendent function involves discovering the meaning of a guilty mood of a complex from having-been. Stage 2 of the transcendent function focuses on removing the obstructiveness of a complex from being in the world by retrieving missing possibilities from the readiness to hand. Stage 3 of the transcendent function involves the practical application of the intellectual discoveries from psychotherapy which can provide further insight into one's which not really seen at all, only the idea of them (Jung, 1966, p. 291). By applying the insights from psychotherapy to everyday relationships where the obstructiveness of a complex is encountered, mistakes and possibilities missing from the readiness to hand are highlighted as they are noticed by the other person as well as by oneself. Then and then only can they really be felt and their true nature recognized (Jung, 1966, p. 292).