Hi Enjolras,
I have been immersing myself over the last few months or so in literature that deals with the relationship of Jungianism to psychoanalysis. When I started with Useless Science, I knew very little about the post-Jungian history of interest in psychoanalytic models. I knew there was such interest and influence, but I never really paid much attention to it and simply by chance must have read mostly "classical" Jungian literature (in which psychoanalytic influence is marginal). I'm still playing catch-up, but I've learned a lot. Regrettably (at least in regard to my own personal ideals), I have been increasingly disturbed by the extent of psychoanalytic influence on Jungian thinking. I say regrettably, because I can get weary of always playing the antagonist, always being distinctly oppositional and preachy. And yet, I seem to have a knack and/or a compulsion for such antagonism . . . or maybe more accurately, "agonism".
I spent the first couple years of Useless Science deconstructing and arguing with the phantom opponent of classical Jungianism (marked by its metaphysical, spiritualistic, anti-scientific, rather fundamentalist, shadow denying reputation and indulgences). Most "internet Jungians" or "lay-Jungians" seem to fall into the classical persuasion (leaning toward even more extreme New-Ageism). And I can't help but attribute the very limited traffic on this forum to my own antagonism (or perceived antagonism) toward spiritualism and other New Age sacred cows. My initial hope was to attract lay and professional Jungians who were ready to start thinking critically about Jungianism, yet without rejecting it outright or projecting various shadowy elements on it. What I found mostly was that those people most interested in criticizing Jungianism were not the same people interested in helping heal or revise it . . . or else they were partisans of one Jungian sub-tribe or another who demonized what they saw as the "False Jungianism" in the "Other". This wasn't really what I was after. I'm open to both expressing and considering "affective criticism" or emotional, even volcanic responses to Jungianism . . . but I strive to direct these or rework these affective reactions into constructive criticism. I personally don't always (or perhaps even often) succeed at this, but as an ideal, that's what I shoot for.
As I read more and more psychoanalytic or "developmental" Jungianism, I came to see that many of the criticisms I had been banging drums about here on the forum had been issued (perhaps more passive-aggressively than overtly aggressively, as is my favored approach) by psychoanalytic Jungians. And not only in the last few years, but over the last few decades. Learning this, I started to feel a bit late to the party. And yet, I was not really in full agreement with the criticisms of classical Jungianism by developmental Jungianism . . . and I was in strong disagreement with the alternatives suggested by developmental Jungianism.
By the way (for anyone reading along who isn't familiar with these designations), the terms for the "classical" and the "developmental" schools come from mostly-developmental British analyst, Andrew Samuels. His book, Jung and the Post-Jungians (1986) is perhaps the most important piece of Jungian literature on contemporary Jungianism or post-Jungianism. Samuels originally broke post-Jungians into three ideological schools (which individual analysts may have varying degrees of sympathy with): classical, developmental, and archetypal. The classical school is characterized by an attempt or desire to stick as close to Jung as possible. I'm not sure they succeed, but that's the governing ideology. Marie Louise von Franz and her followers seem to be a good example (with the qualification below). Developmental Jungians are interested more in child development and have turned away from certain aspects of classical Jungianism (e.g., individuation, archetypalism, much of the spiritualism, etc.) in favor of the incorporation of post-Freudian, especially object-relations, theorists. They are also more focused on the issue of transference and countertransference in analysis, are more interested in developing a "method" with better-defined diagnostic categories, and see both psychological development and pathology in terms of the Mother/Infant paradigm (where healthy psychology comes from "good mothering" and pathology is always rooted in "bad mothering" or flawed or abusive parenting in general). The "founder" of developmental Jungianism was British analyst, Michael Fordham, who helped establish the Society for Analytical Psychology in England in the 50s (I believe). The SAP publishes the developmental Jungian Journal of Analytical Psychology.
The "archetypal" school is associated with James Hillman, and it deals more with archetypalist philosophy and polytheistic constructions of psyche than with practical psychotherapy. It has been just as critical of classical Jungianism's fundamentalist/non-innovative approach to Jung as developmnetalism has been, but Hillman especially has also been critical of developmentalist approaches.
In the 90s, Andrew Samuels published an update article ("Will the Post-Jungians Survive?") on his book, in which he stated that there have been further developments in the Jungian schools. He felt that the classical school had moved increasingly toward a narrower fundamentalism (perhaps more in line with von Franz followers then the more moderate classicalism) while the developmental school had moved toward more-psychoanalytic ideas and had discarded more of classical Jungianism. Polarized, in other words. Thomas Kirsch, Jungian analyst and author of The Jungians: A Comparative and Historical Perspective, agrees with or seconds this assessment. Samuels also felt that, since the writing of Jung and the Post-Jungians, the archetypal school of Hillman had mostly disappeared (at least as anything like an institutional entity), with a few of its ideas being absorbed into both classical and developmental Jungianism.
I've been trying to reposition my analysis and criticism of Jungianism since I've started better acquainting myself with developmental Jungian critiques and claims. What I've personally learned in recent readings is that, although my older criticism is still quite valid (for classical Jungianism), it's also largely moot for two main reasons. First, classical/fundamentalist Jungianism is a dying breed (in my opinion). It is unlikely to rebound or reinvent itself at this point. Beating a dead horse is perhaps the most apt expression. And as for the many internet and lay Jungians who are classical/New Age, well, my criticisms are really both too dangerous/ferocious and too sophisticated from their perspective (i.e., I am threatening their comforting belief system and tend to be much interested in scholarly reading in the field and more analytical/critical of the thinking in it than most lay Jungians).
And yet, from the developmentalist perspective (which seems to come from an almost completely professional/analyst community), were they even to stoop to read the bluster of one lay Jungian on an internet forum, I suspect they would see my flailing, emotive, soapbox attacks as aligned with the same kind of criticism they have received from the classical/fundamentalist camp. At least in my own mind, I remain an independent. I have a lot of respect for Jung himself and the spirit of exploration and analysis that governed his writing and creative life. Yet, I have a few, sometimes quite significant, disagreements with Jung . . . especially where his sexism, colonialism, and spiritualism are concerned (his alleged antisemitism does not, as far as I can see, influence his psychological theories, so I didn't list that among my "disagreements", but certainly his odd association with the Nazis during the 30s is condemnable . . . although I don't think we should fall into the trap of scapegoating him or projecting shadow on him because of this).
I have many more gripes with Jungians and post-Jungians, whether fundamentalist, psychoanalytic, archetypal or anywhere in between and among. I do think that which was greatest and most important about Jung and his contribution to human thought has been fumbled and distorted in all forms of post-Jungianism. Jungian theory has not, in my opinion, evolved. Rather, it has splintered, regressed, ossified, degenerated, and been diluted. Yes, Jung's theory needed to change and grow in many areas . . . but I feel Jungians have failed in most of their attempts to "treat" and nurture Jung's original theories. One gets the impression from reading Jung and the Jungians along side one another that the Jungians never really grasped some kernel of Jung's thinking. I don't blame them, really, because Jung made this exceedingly hard to do, but it is our Jungian legacy nonetheless. It is still the "Jungian problem". We have "failed the Father".
I started writing a book on the "anima work" almost a year ago now, and in it I intended to address the Jungian issue of inflation (which I think is both a significant one and one especially important in Jungianism). I was calling my book, "Memoirs of My Jungian Disease: the Anima Work and the Individuant's Inflation". During this project, I began to feel it was essential for me to write a chapter outlining my basic disagreements with and revisions of Jungian theory (as these, left unexplained, were going to cause a great deal of confusion for a Jungian audience as I went on to discuss the animi, a topic on which I deviate significantly from all schools of Jungian thought). After writing about 60 pages of this outline of fundamentals, I came up for air and realized that (rather unintentionally) I had developed what could be considered an entirely new psychological theory over the last few years of dabbling and digressing and reflecting. I had just never organized it before. This realization startled and confused me. I had always thought of myself, however heretical, as a "good Jungian" . . . and now I was questioning whether I could even envision the audience of my book as "Jungian" at all.
I still don't know the answer to that. But the "identity-crisis" gave me pause. That's when I started to read developmental Jungian literature, as well. Since then, I've been trying to figure out how I can position myself as a writer whose roots are deeply Jungian but who is not an analyst or any other kind of psychologist. I'm merely an autodidact and "ex-poet". At this point, I have begun working on a new book elaborating my fundamental arguments for a kind of neo-quasi-post-Jungian theory. The basis of this theory is what I call the Core Complex, which is a spontaneously represented (such as in dream images) psychic containment structure housing the following archetypal dynamics: ego, Self, personal shadow, Demon, and syzygy (the hero/animi pair). I don't have a title for this book yet or a clear idea of how I'm going to organize it, but I will be posting drafts and notes from the book in the near future. I mention this here mostly because the book will probably take on many criticisms of psychoanalytic/developmental Jungianism. At least, my drafts and notes so far have dealt extensively with this subject.
To get (finally) to your points above . . .
I agree, but where does this inflation stem from? What is it's purpose? I think that Matt hits the nail on the head when he said the analysis’s perspective s/he is to play the role of daddy/mommy, I think this is also intricacy bound with the question of the portrayed fixed unyielding subject.
Modern psychoanalysis and post-Jungian developmentalism make no bones about their assumption that the analyst must play Parent (or specifically Mother to the Infant) to the Child of the analysand/patient. They don't portray this as "insidiously" as I have, of course, and I have yet to read what I would consider a serious and probing examination of the power problems presented by such a role assignment. The developmentalists seem to think the projected role of Parent is less dangerous than, say, "shaman" or psychopomp. I'm not sure I agree. Of course, the identification of the Jungian analyst with the shaman (as is fairly common in some classical and much New-Age Jungianism) presents another kind of inflation problem. In some neo-shamanic approaches (not really Jungian), the shaman does all the work of healing while the patient is passive. I see this, frankly, as bullshit . . . and also as potentially quite dangerous, especially in modern individuals.
I'm a strong advocate of the idea that the patient does all the heavy lifting . . . and the analyst should do mostly languaging, helping the patient sort through psychic material and figure out its order and how to listen to its "voice" (i.e., the Self). My notion of analyst behavior is that it should be ethical, empathic (but without catering to the patients urges to undermine progress and healing), valuative, and loving. Identification of the analyst (by the patient) with a kind of magician-healer or spiritual "savior" is common (the so-called transference), and the analyst cannot argue too strongly against these projections without damaging the therapeutic effectiveness of the process. But the analyst should also strive to disentangle her or himself from these projections personally . . . and to depotentiate the literalization of the transference whenever possible (i.e., whenever it does the least harm). It is not the analyst's wizardry that provides the numinous quality of transformation in a successful analysis or individuation/healing event. That, in my opinion, belongs to the Self symbol of the patient. But there is wizardry of a kind in the way the analyst chooses to language the patient's journey and suffering. Overall, my feeling is that the analyst should strive toward a non-literalization of transference fantasies without in any way devaluing them.
The fantasies of the transference are the alchemical contents of the vessel and should be treated as especially sacred, volatile, important, and necessary. To the degree that the patient can internalize and accept the transference fantasies as play or theater or myth, they will stay dynamic (yet "in the vessel" we might say). But if the patient loses these fantasies in a projection that literalizes them, they will cease to have any healing or "alchemical" effect on the personality and simply become "delusions" that undermine analysis or any relationship where the projection dominates. Of course, this all goes equally for the analyst ("countertransference"). So, my feeling is that the analyst should strive to keep (and encourage the patient to keep) the fantasies plastic, dynamic, non-literal, and contained within the pact of the transference. That is, the mutual agreement between individuals in the relationship to focus on inner work and healing/transformation/individuation.
Of course, this is next to impossible to do with any deftness, so the analyst should also welcome a kind of humility and willingness to rebound from falls, mistakes, and explosions (if and when possible).
In this construction of analysis, I see very little room for identification with the role of Parent for the analyst. If the patient is much younger, perhaps this is inevitable to some degree, but my opinion is that this is extremely undesirable. I say this primarily because we Jungians generally believe that there is some kind of individuation to effective healing. That is, the patient must make a personal change of attitude and allow some degree of growth and reorganization of personality in order to "get better". The Jungian analyst is not simply handing out snake oil and magic cure-alls. No "method" is curative in psychotherapy . . . but almost any method can be effective for certain people. But where individuation of some kind is involved/required of a psychotherapy patient, there is (as I see it) only one ego-accessible dynamic that can help the patient . . . what I call the "hero". I define the hero quite a bit differently than other Jungians do. Simply put, the hero (archetype) is an attitude of facilitation and sacrifice toward the Self/Other. It is primarily ethical and has nothing whatsoever to do with might or conquering or empowering the ego. Basically, individuation can occur in anyone only to the degree that they accept into the set of honored egoic attitudes the orientation and value system of the hero. I believe there is some kind of instinctual drive behind this, so it isn't like "bucking up" or donning armor and sword for battle.
The archetypal hero (as I define it) is dedicated to the support of the instinctual Self system, and this means that the heroic attitude is distinctly in contrast to the infantile attitude that seeks absolute protection and empowerment from the Self. The heroic attitude does not want to see the Self as a provident Parent or usurp the Self with dependency. In the heroic attitude toward the Self-as-Other, all ethical orientation toward others is prefigured or reflected. That is, to be ethical, empathic, or "heroic" is to be willing to tolerate and even facilitate the Otherness of others. We do not, in this stance, try to conform them to our desires, projections, or expectations. We are willing to give others their space and to relate to them in their space. We do not narcissistically insist that they reflect us or our ideas or feelings. They are "allowed" to be Other but without being judged or criminalized for it. All of these ethics are lost in the infantile or narcissistic orientation toward others and Otherness.
This isn't to say that we can ever expect to be free of our narcissism and infantility . . . and that dream of freedom is a great temptation to anyone identified with the hero overmuch. The heroic attitude also seeks to be empathic toward the personal shadow, toward what is most un- or anti-heroic in the personality. It does not disdain the shadow even as it objects to the "ways" of the shadow. Any disdain for the shadow tends to result in some degree of inflation (a state in which the Demon hijacks and impersonates the hero, acting as a forceful, imprisoning super-ego). This means the heroic path is very hard to walk, and slips constantly occur (which, if one is doing dream work, one will see noted in one's dreams). It is not the objective of the ego to become the hero (nor is that possible). The ego is too multiplex for this. But to honor (among others) the heroic attitude of Self-facilitation consciously and perhaps devotedly can keep the personality flexible, dynamic, adaptive, and healthily functioning.
The developmental Jungians do not define the hero as I do. In fact, they have a generally negative view of the hero, associating it with extreme egoism, defensiveness, fortification, and resistance to analysis and otherness. The problem with this is that it defines the hero by the standards of patriarchal epics and myths without giving enough credence to the hero or heroic Fool of folktales. Essentially, all the instinctual and valuable qualities of heroism are lost by such a definition. This failure to differentiate the hero from the Demonically inflated ego is a problem that plaques all orientations of Jungianism. It is all but forgotten that, according to Jung, the heroic spirit is the spirit of individuation. The classical Jungians fail to grasp the value of the hero, because they have no effective treatment for the inflation, no differentiation of the Demon from the shadow and hero. Classical Jungianism is prone to spiritualistic inflations that stall the individuation process . . . and it has "dealt" with this through fundamentalist ossification, totemization, and denial of the problem. Developmental Jungianism (in its signature fashion) has lumped all things heroic in with the pathologizing diagnosis of "borderline personality disorder". Positive heroic elements can still surface in later stages of analysis . . . but I wonder if these are not surfacing in spite of the method of analysis and not because of it.
But attempts to parent (or infantilize) adults will very commonly repress and attack the hero in the patient. The heroic instinct will then act out against the parenting of the analyst through the shadow (as repression essentially means forcing something into the shadow). In its fusion with the shadow, the heroic instinct (only minimally developed) will seem especially childlike. It will manifest as the puer or trickster or the prodigal son or daughter, the "bad one" or misfit who just can't get right as mommy and daddy want. I'm not saying that the puer or trickster or prodigal rebel is equivalent to the hero and should be treated as heroic. I mean only that repression of the hero tends to turn the heroic instinct into a bit of a terrorist in the psyche. It encourages grandiose but childish overestimations of self, which come continuously crashing down. The puer is hard to love, especially for Jungians who are artificially identified with the senex. The puer can wreck anything stable and established, introduce chaos into order, and open the gates of the kingdom to shame, plagues, and other invasions.
In other words, the repressed or undeveloped heroic instinct tends to halloo for destruction of the personality (albeit, often through the false erection of grandiose ideas and flights and Towers of Babel). The puer draws special attention to its dependence on the Parent (even as it might vigorously deny that anything can tether it). The puer is all about setting up the personality for a Fall, and although it's easy to look negatively at that, I think we can also see it as the roaring to life of the dissolution engine. That is, the personality, in order to transform or reorganize, needs first to dissolve . . . just as we see in alchemical creation of the "prima materia" from the Coniunctio and death of the differentiated Sol/Luna or Sulfur/Mercury pair (the syzygy). The Work begins only when the vessel is filled with the "black, blacker than black" . . . and no one does blackening like the puer.
Later on, the whimsical, mercurial aspects of the puer are valuated and re-associated with the syzygy. The animi figure usually carries some kind of seductive dissolution with it, while the budding hero is portrayed as increasingly open to greater flexibility and "contamination" with its Opposite. As the figures of the syzygy become more and more like mirrors for one another (as will happen when the animi are pursued and valuated), the heroic attitude will more closely resemble the wise or holy Fool of many fairytales. It is characterized by openness to possibilities, lack of fear or self-concern, tremendous trust in and willingness to engage with others (even enemies), and remarkable resilience and survivability. The "wisdom" and unshakable rootedness associated with the senex is expressed in the Fool as a perseverant sense that it is connected or rooted to many things in a complex way. It is part of a whole, and cannot lose that "partness" by being shifted from one place to the other. The Fool has great tolerance for movability and the forces that act upon him or her from without. The Fool is just as old as s/he is young, as much an infant as a crone or old sage. So the Fool is the conjunction of the puer and the senex. The Fool is ideally facilitated instinctual energy . . . without the prescriptions and proscriptions of socialization that state that an individual must behave in such and such a way in order to qualify for one status or another.
Much to their detriment, Jungians have failed to understand the resolution of the puer/senex split . . . or even the fact that the split into two archetypal characterizations is a dissociation or wound and not a necessity. James Hillman has perhaps done the best at valuating the puer in the Jungian shadow, but Hillman himself is guided by compulsion, because he is seized by the puer persona. He doesn't know how to merge the puer and senex . . . and Jungians have not learned as much about themselves as they should have by allowing themselves to identify with Hillman's example of dissociation. Instead, a few have celebrated Hillman's leaps and flights and turnabouts as intellectual athleticism while many more have rejected Hillman due to his puer, shadowy behavior and mercurial lack of fixedness. He offended many Jungians by 1.) being involved in a highly publicized (in the Jungian community) sexual indiscretion with a patient, 2.) saying outrageously critical things like "Jungians are mostly second rate people with third rate minds", and 3.) eventually "selling out" to popularization instead of staying "properly esoteric" and senex-like. Jungians have often chosen to see him as an excommunicable element rather than a mirror of their own shadows (as I feel he would be better understood). Hillman's great contribution to Jungianism is not in what he has written or stated or claimed, but in what he has represented and reflected through identification and projection. He is a channel of the Jungian soul . . . and the inability to incorporate Hillmanism effectively into Jungian thinking reflects the Jungian failure to deal adequately with its own puer shadow. Instead, Jungians can only accept what they are told to think (senex-style) . . . ideas and laws. They got annoyed at Hillman, because to take Hillman and his ideas literally in this sense is to swallow a bunch of mercury, sloshing about meaninglessly in the belly, perhaps even poisoning a bit. It is a failure both of imagination and of shadow work in the Jungian tribe. Hillman, like any extreme puer, presents a wonderful opportunity . . . just not "as is". That is not what puers are good for. But as dissolutionists, they are fantastic.
Developmental Jungians will tolerate Hillman only to the degree that he shares their dislike of classical Jungian fundamentalism. But they have no patience for his hijinks or concern for his influence.
The economical context in which psychoanalysis/analytical psychology (P/AP) arose was capitalism. Capitalism produces neurotics as just as well as it produces plastic crap. Originally (P/AP) has the privilege of disciplining the chewed up individuals on the margin, a role it still occupies but largely supplanted by the economical pill-popping and CBT. A degree of familial comfort is needed to produce docile oedipalized subjects, when that is lacking P/AP is there to pick up the remainders to mould the daddy-mommy-me triangle. This triangle is not a reflection but a production, hence the dogmatic way in which the analyst assumes the role of daddy/mommy and a fixed notion of what a subject is. My individual fantasy is hardly that within the strict confines of the Oedipus triangle, a way of integrating the individual into a group. My boss is not my daddy, but that is the attempted result of the production within the dictated confines of what daddy/mommy is or should be.
The developmental Jungians have a curious relationship to capitalism in regard to the modern issue of health management by either state or corporations. The greatest general problem facing psychotherapies today is that they are too expensive for most people to afford and can only remain viable if heavily subsidized by health insurance. But health insurance institutions are always extremely suspicious of psychotherapy and are constantly seeking to do away with or at least dismantle it. They insist that psychotherapies prove their effectiveness . . . and this is very difficult to do. Still, in order to survive, psychotherapies have to jump through the hoops. This is especially problematic for classical Jungianism, because its attitude toward psychotherapy is very esoteric and it eschews "method" and pathologizing diagnosis (more than other psychotherapies). Jung frequently advised analysts to throw out the textbook before analyzing any individual patient. Every analysis should be creative and establish its own rules and needs. Well, one can hardly say such things to the auditing board of a health management organization. I think Jung was right, but it sounds like total BS to someone whose bottom line is profit.
Well, enter Jungian merger with psychoanalysis. Developmental Jungianism adopts from psychoanalysis an increased appreciation of diagnosis and method. It likes that psychoanalysis has a "book of laws and commandments" (that old Mosaic tendency of Freud still lives on). Also, developmental Jungianism takes psychoanalysis's greater willingness to pathologize conditions. One cannot sell the HMOs on the idea that a person needs psychotherapy for general existential malaise. But if one tells the HMOs that the patient suffers from a medical-sounding disease, well, then health insurance sounds much more appropriate. Of course, many Jungian analysts, even developmentalists, hate this. But the fact remains that developmental Jungians are more willing to diagnose and pathologize and appease the HMOs. Diseases have treatments, sometimes chemical ones . . . and the HMO's love this, because drug companies sell goods for profit and one hand scratches the other.
The result of the greater willingness of developmental Jungianism to cater to the desires of the HMOs is that classical Jungianism that is less diagnostic and more flexible about methodology becomes less survivable in the contemporary health care climate and is in much greater danger of dying out. This threat to classical Jungianism bolsters the tribal rivalry and opposition of developmentalism. Developmentalism protests and complains about the intrusive meddling of HMOs, but it still has bettered its classical "enemy" by making a better pact with the "devil" it claims to abhor. If it turns out that any Jungianism that fails or refuses to be pathologizing and diagnostic enough dies out, developmentalism will completely capture the Jungian crown and the right to call their brand of analysis "Jungian" psychology. They won't bother maintaining a critical attitude toward pathologization and diagnostics and will therefore lose one of the core values of Jung's psychology. The situation is very shadow-provoking, and from what I have seen, developmental Jungianism is not adequately reckoning with this shadow. Rather, it seems they are quietly celebrating their ascendancy in the Jungian tribe. That is, it is not a moral concern that they will probably take over the right to the term "Jungian" largely because of their greater affinity with the screwed up way health care management has developed in our modern culture.
In other words, they might be utterly wrong about the pathologization and diagnoses they champion, but "higher powers" have enabled them to put off deeper reflection on the matter.
Another "brush with dysfunctional capitalism" to note regarding psychoanalytic and developmental Jungianism can be seen in the insistence in these particular schools that analysands have sessions 4 to 6 times a week. So, the more sessions, the more cost. I personally find this level of frequency ridiculous, even outrageous. I could understand it if the argument was that analysis should be intense but relatively short in duration . . . perhaps a few months in all. But that is not what the developmentalists are saying. Developmental school analysis typically goes on for years. Yes, there are periodic "vacations from analysis", but I worry that this intensity of analysis is meant to work like a kind of deep conditioning ("brainwashing" to put it more cynically). It is no wonder that the developmentalists and psychoanalysts are so concerned about transference/countertransference issues and "resistance to analysis". The smothering of the patient would definitely contribute to resistance . . . and rightfully so. If I was going to analysis and my analyst insisted that I go 5 times a week, implying that analysis would not be effective unless I did so, I would instantly and rationally think I was being jerked around.
This psychoanalytic insistence on high frequency, long duration analyses makes these analysts all the more dependent on the HMO breast, and therefore more likely to cater to HMO demands even when seen as impractical and un-therapeutic.
