Educational Leadership and Foundations at

In order for teachers to reflect deeply upon themselves, they need powerful models and images to guide their introspection. In teacher reflectivity, as in the therapeutic processes, psychic energy must ultimately be “contained ” by models and modalities that enable one to make sense out of one’s inner and outer experiences. This enables those experiences to form the basis for the transformation of self, setting, and other. In this article, I would like to introduce and employ a model that I believe can enrich teacher reflectivity at biographical, political and spiritual levels. I am speaking of alchemy—and specifically, Jung’s psychothera-peutic interpretation of it. An Alchemical Primer In the last major phase of his career, Carl Jung, the father of archetypal psychology, turned to the lost art and arcane texts of alchemy in his researches, claim-ing that alchemical processes subtly embodied and richly symbolized the psycho-spiritual transforma-tions that occur in the course of deep therapy. He asserted that “the world of alchemical symbols defi-nitely does not belong to the rubbish heap of the past, but stands in a very real and living relationship to ou