The Secret of the Golden Flower

Excerpts - Jung

Observations made in my practice have opened to me a quite new and unexpected approach to Eastern wisdom. But it must . be well understood that I did not have a knowledge, however inadequate, of Chinese philosophy as a starting point. On the contrary, when I began my life-work in the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and only later did my professional experience show me that in my technique I had been unconsciously led along that secret way which has been the preoccupation of the best minds of the East for centuries. This could be ·taken for a subjective fancy-one reason for my previous reluctance to publish anything on the subject-but Richard Wilhelm that great interpreter of· the soul of China, fully confirmed the parallel for me. Thus he gave me the courage to write about a Chinese text which belongs entirely to the mysterious shadows of the Eastern mind. At the same time, and this is the extraordinary thing, in content it is a living parallel to what takes p1ace in· the psychic development of my patients, none of whom is Chinese.

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