Topic: The cooking pot of theories

[Enjolras]

In an effort to to  keep tabs of my theorizing and to stop it swallowing up my dream work I said I would write
it up in another post, and indicated that I see potential (at least for me and my purposes!) for an encounter between some of Matt's work and that of Maria Torok and Nicolas Abraham. This for me will have to be undertaken in bite sized chunks, and will limit myself in this post to some preliminary sketches....

Whereas Matt situates himself regarding archetypes upon the innate side of things whereas if we are playing fast and loose at this early stage I put myself in the opposing camp. If I do position myself  in this manner it is also a nod to Matt's mode of engagement which I view as a kind of arrested  dialectics (i.e. without the sublimation that overcomes antagonism).

Though my thinking in this matter is influenced less by the intra/inter analytical psychology debate but the presuppositions that guide the debate which I consider problematic i.e. a natural immediacy verses a artificial mediacy. Matt states that he finds it illogical that archetypes can be constructed within the first year of life, I agree but would add that the archetypes need not be made at the level of the individual, and that the individual introjects various archetypes which necessitates drawing attention to the various practices of culture. Not only that, but classically 'culture' is viewed as the product of the conscious activity of Man. However with your Freud's and your Jung's... the moments  of singularity in their work are when this notion of autonomous subject of the enlightenment is picked apart. In this way we do not see culture and various artifices of Man as simply being the by product of Man's conscious activity, but in a sense that is not simply oppositional (otherwise it would reinforce the former position via reversal), agency of man 'emerges' if you like from a play of archetypes.

Enjolras.

[Matt Koeske]

Hi Enjolras,

In a fit of stupidity, I wrote a reply to you that took hours and then promptly (and accidentally) deleted it.  I'll try to "sublimate" my frustration into a more concise, summarizing reply.

1.) There was recently a discussion seminar on the IAJS (International Association for Jungian Studies) list presented by Jungian analyst and philosophy PhD George Hogenson on the topic of "emergence" . . . but it was largely about archetypes as emergent/developmental vs. innate.  Hogenson is an emergentist/developmentalist and one of the regular stars of the Journal of Analytical Psychology (the premiere Jungian journal, but it has a very strong developmentalist/psychoanalytic bent).  I challenged Hogenson on his misrepresentation of evolutionary psychology (and arguments for innateness in general).

This discussion is available online now and can be found here.  You probably don't want to read all 80 pages, but you might be interested in Hogeson's intro, my first reply (p. 39), his first response (p. 52), my second reply (p. 71), and his second response and final post (p. 74).

2.) I do not think archetypes are innate.  My perspective on archetypes is complex to say the least.  Essentially (like EPs) I am an "interactionist" and neither a nativist or a developmentalist.  I do not think archetypes as we perceive them are "inherited", nor do I think they are introjected from culture.  I think culture contributes "materia" which can get caught up in "instinctual" movements of psyche.  The spontaneous images we take from these interactions at times fall into or emerge into patterns.  The labels we assign (somewhat arbitrarily) to these patterns or trends of associated traits and dynamics are the archetypes.

So archetypes are abstract categories that we invent and assign to various emergent trends.  The way we differentiate these trends and assign categories is logical but not absolutely determined by the trends themselves.  I am not saying that the emergent patterns are "not really there".  I'm saying that they are massively interrelated and overlapping, and our choice to split them up into more strictly defined categories is somewhat arbitrary.

I do not think there is an "archetype in itself" or that whole images are inherited (or introjected from the environment).  So, really, like Hogenson, I am an emergentist of sorts.  But Hogenson is a developmentalist emergentist who wants to derive a magic theory of archetypes from a combination of emergence and complexity theory abstractions and a developmentalist ideology.  By contrast, I am more balanced and attempt to keep my thinking in line with science and scientific methodologies and values.  I have no tribal affiliation (to either the nativists or the developmentalists).

As I wrote in my messages to Hogenson, I advocate a psychological phenomenological approach to studying archetypes and the psyche.  That is, theorizing is of very little interest to me.  I study psychic phenomena that I consider (along with Jung) "real", and then I try to analyze the data from this phenomenological observation as scientifically and rationally as possible.  Hogenson is a theorist.  He's looking for a paradigm or "grand narrative".  I'm interested in collected data and learning from and about them.  What passes for theory in my thinking and writing is more accurately observation of correlations and patterns.  This means that my "theory" is based on what I have observed . . . and is merely a reiteration of that observation.  But as more data are accumulated and analyzed, my "theory" will continue to change to reflect this.  It is yoked to the data, not to "an idea".

3.) This orientation to data and skepticism about interpretations or paradigm constructions carries over into (or perhaps derives from) my dream work method.  In dream work, I'm interested in phenomena, in what is definitely there.  I am not interested in reading an "artificial" or non-native meaning into a dream.  The dream, the associations, the personal experiences and background of the dreamer . . . these things are the "native" elements of the dream text.  Usually, these are more than enough to make sense of the dream.  No theory or interpretation is required.  The dream says what it is and what it "means".

When I work with dreams (my own and other people's), I will use amplification.  Essentially, I will hold the few elements of the dream that typically fit into complex patterns up against those complete patterns.  It's like looking at stars at night.  If we look at the stars when its cloudy or when we are in a brightly lit area, we see only a few of the stars . . . the brightest.  We could then conclude that these were the only stars to see.  But an astronomer who views the skies in all kinds of conditions, during all times of the years, and over many years learns a great deal about the stars in the sky.  The amateur observer may see a few stars but not know the constellation they are a part of or how far from earth they might be or what kinds of stars they are, etc.  The astronomer knows these things, and it is not a "theory" or "interpretation" but a scientific observation.

That astronomer might be able to tell the amateur observer much more about the few stars the amateur expected were all.  Sometimes forming a premature interpretive paradigm can effectively make one an "amateur astronomer" of dreams.  That is, when one becomes so used to seeing dreams through a limited lens, one forms a belief that all dreams can be understood through that lens.  The full scope of the stars are not allowed to simply be what they are.  Then data have to be thrown out in order to protect the theory's integrity and consistency.  That's what happened with Freud, and to a much lesser degree with Jung.  Both men threw out data that did not accord with their personal biases and perceptual distortions (the clouds in the sky).  Freud was extremely ideological.  Jung had specific hangups, but was not fundamentally ideological.  His hangups had to do with common cultural prejudices: anti-Semitism, sexism/patriarchalism, colonialist arrogance, various mild forms of racism, a blind spot around heroism, and over-valuation of Christianity as "psychologically true" that ignored it as a socio-political and historical phenomenon, etc.  Jung had prejudices (that significantly impacted his ability to observe psychic phenomena without bias).  Freud had a dogma and a "Mosaic" relationship with his "God" as bearer of the True Commandments.

In my opinion, the Freudian approach to dreams is not revisable.  It is fundamentally fallacious.  Jung's approach to dreams was largely valid, but he often broke his own phenomenological rules.  He was personally inconsistent, but there are still many observations and ideas worth preserving or which can be salvaged with a bit of modernization and clean up.  Since Freud, many psychoanalysts have increasingly adopted "Jungian-like" ideas (almost always without crediting Jung, who has always been a major scapegoat in the psychoanalytic tribe).  Some of Jung's ideas just work better than Freud's (and are more compatible with scientific methodologies), and psychoanalysts are not stupid.  Jungians, although many have adopted post-Freudian psychoanalytic ideas, have not progressed as much.  And as much as it is a blind spot in psychoanalysis that Jung-like ideas can be adopted without crediting Jung, there is something to be said for developing these ideas from purely Freudian roots.  Jungians, by comparison, don't seem to have a fertile soil of their own.  They've been unable to grow anything "at home".  They merely import from psychoanalysis or academic postmodernism.

Hillman and Geigerich are original Jungian "mutants", but I'm not sure their mutations are really very useful outside of Jungian culture.

Alright, ending here for now.

Best,
Matt

[Sealchan]

I've had my own theoretical approach through dream and myth interpretation which I suspect is not original but not popular: namely looking for correlations between archetypal patterns and brain structure and function.  Since I've studied a bit in college in cognitive science, including neurobiology and philosophy of mind, I've been fascinated by the mind-body question or mind-body duality problem of Western philosophy.  How one approaches looking at the biology on the one hand and the noology on the other of the brain/mind lends itself to very interesting speculations. 

I have found it difficult to see anything too much more substantial in the notion of archetypes beyond archetypes as a kind of pattern found when two or more dreams or myths are comparatively analyzed.  But I have had a number of experiences of seeing archetypal patterns (without being able to clearly define them) by virtue of having had a dream and seen its numerous similarities with another dream or myth.  I could just as well describe the archetypal pattern as just a pattern choosing to ignore all notions regarding the inheretied similarities of our commonly human mind/brains.  But given the fact that I'm convinced that my sense of the significance of this kind of pattern and my deep appreciation of Jung's ideas that led me to look for this kind of pattern, I think it would be wrong to not add the word "archetypal" to that description to indicate my belief that the pattern is part of the common human psychological experience.

Believing as I do that "the mind is what the brain does" and that what the brain does is mainly exchange neural impulses between its neurons, I tend to see a large disconnect between evolutionary effects on the genetic inheritance of the human species and the products of the mind or psyche.  Knowing more and more about the structure and function of the organs and the regions of the brain will be, in my view, the best help toward understanding what is truly, definably archetypal in the psyche.  Of course, underlying these brain organs and regions are its genetics and its evolutionary development, but that would be, in my view, a contextual layer more complex than what I think current scientific understanding of the mind can adequately hope to address. 

I also think that Jung's conscious functions are vitally important to dream interpretation and to understanding the archetypes.  I think Jung must have undervalued this connection inspite of the fact that he had developed the idea of the conscious functions and their attitude.  Perhaps he did so for such closely personal reasons that he was never able to approach the idea in a more theoretical manner. I think Jung and I are/were both Intuitive Thinkers.  The idea of being able to go out into the wilds of the collective unconscious and identify various species and sub-species of archetypes has, for this personality type, a strong attraction indeed.  But in my resisting of giving into the one-sided attraction of this kind of effort, I have found it is better to stick with only those specific archetypes that show themselves with the greatest frequency...namely the ego-shadow-animi and what I have tentatively called by some such name as the shadow-animi (an approximately same age shadow figure of the opposite sex).  Outside of that I have seen repeatedly signs of a Wound-Gift archetype and Matt's more demonic Shadow figure which I see as a view of the ego from a non-ego perspective as a dictatorial power.  I suppose the further from archetypes which relate directly to the ego, the less substantial the archetypal patterns seem due to their less frequent occurrence.  Still these archetypal inner personalities clearly blend into each other and, in this way, show the seeming futility or limited value of attempting to definitively catalog that which is archetypal.

In terms of theory, I suspect that archetypes are the equivalent of the "qualia" of the intuitive function. Sensation function qualia, like the color 'red' to take a popular example from cognitive science, are the very idea of singular objects of consciousness.  But intuition is famously hard to describe in a similar way.  I believe that this is because as a perceptive function of consciousness, intuition does not actually have qualia.  In other words, intuiton does not have direct objects which it perceives in a conscious way. 

To illustrate this, consider what might be understood as the ultimate intuition: that all parts of the whole are all inter-connected.  We might call this the "root qualia" of intuition, a great mystical, perennial "truth"; a truth with a seemingly low practical value and not much to say for the virtue of "differentiation" of knowledge.  Sensation does not have an equivalent root qualia but is a great collection of infinitely differentiable conscious qualias.  For me intuition is what it is like to know with the brain (to wear brain-colored glasses, so to speak).  As my theory goes, intuition puts thoughts, feelings and sensations together because it is easy or practical to do so because of the design of the brain.  Archetypes are the closest you can come to a object of intuitive perception.

I'm also of a mind to put a very heavy stress on consciousness as a product of the collective culture, particularly through the medium of language.  The very words we use to think to ourselves with are the result of a cultural (as opposed to a biological) evolutionary process.  Our minds are, therefore, intrinsically of a collective nature.

One possibly testable hypothesis of my theory is an explanation of the number four as a numerical archetype of wholeness.  My theory on this nicely shows how sensation and intuition work as complementary opposites on the hardware that is the brain. I will list the ideas here the sketch out the arguement for the theory:

1.  The cerebral cortex can be sub-divided into functional regions which can be more or less called maps.  Some cortical regions literally map the body or the sensory environment.  Others less clearly make what we might recognize as a map.

2.  These cortical maps are interconnected.

3.  A large chunk of the cerebral cortex is devoted to the processing of visual information.  In other words, there are many cortical maps that process visual information coming from the eye.

4.  Coritcal maps of visual information cover the whole of the eyes' field of view.  Successive layers of visual processing more or less preserve this map of the full field of vision while providing differentiation and integration of visual information of various types. 

5.  Modern human language frequently uses metaphors related to the experience of vision

6.  Metaphors are linguistic signs the brain maps are strongly interconnected even as the intergrity of the differentiation of those same maps are maintained.

7.  The full visual field can be qualified in terms of the conscious phenomenon of color. 

8.  Color, at its simplest can be understood to be the brain's differentiation of a limited range of electromagnetic radiation (the visible spectrum) in terms of a pair of two complimentary opposite colors: red vs green and yellow vs blue. 

9.  The fact that the whole visual field can be experienced as a field that consists of two pairs of complementarily opposite qualities provides, through neural connections between cortical maps, an "inducement" to intuit other wholes as composed of the same qualitative four-fold subdivisions

So sensation reflects the design of the brain as a color differentiator (Google "color opponent process") building up the integrity of the various visual maps which process color vision.  Intuition works to create new conscious content from mapping to and from visual cortical maps.  Language, as always, mediates this process and allows it to enter consciousness and collective understanding.

[Enjolras]

Thank you for your reply, and the time spent on the lost post!

I think culture contributes "materia" which can get caught up in "instinctual" movements of psyche.  The spontaneous images we take from these interactions at times fall into or emerge into patterns.  The labels we assign (somewhat arbitrarily) to these patterns or trends of associated traits and dynamics are the archetypes.

I do not find much to dissagre with this outline.

As I wrote in my messages to Hogenson, I advocate a psychological phenomenological approach to studying archetypes and the psyche.

I would describe myself as something similar, though I would add that it is not necessarily unidirectional. 

Regarding your beef regarding theory, would it be fair in your view to make a distinction between 'bad' theory = originates from a subjective idea, 'good' theory based upon deduction from objective observation? In which case would you accept that there is a use for 'conceptualization' in order to organize data gleaned... hence the role for 'archetype' a concept to organize data. May we agree in which case to desribe an 'archetype' a form of concept?     

If we apply the distinction between good/bad theory it fits with your observation between good Jung and bad Freud. In a similar manner that you are able to save the good bits of Jung and disregard the bad, there are parts of Freud which gel with  my own observations. On my judgement it does seem to me that perhaps you over play the gulf between Jung/Freud which evokes for me the comment you made regarding the arbitrary splitting of archetypes when they overlap. From the degree of familiarity I have with each of their texts, differences not withstanding, they are interlaced.

Usually, these are more than enough to make sense of the dream.  No theory or interpretation is required.  The dream says what it is and what it "means".

 
Yes I agree, no 'bad' (as outlined earlier) theory, or 'bad' interpretation is required. The dreamer invents his/hers own grammar, there is a economic (capitalist) motive at work (which intersects with your other post regarding the rise of drug therapy) in the position that dream material has to be mediated through the analyst (- that ultimately is derived from Freud). Nevertheless, I believe it to be a congenital naivete of reflective (psychological) phenomenology that it overlooks a certain indeterminate opaqueness of the distance  that separates the reflecting subject from themselves. The space that separates the “I” from “me” necessarily escapes reflexive thematization. It is on this point that I find Jungain theory to be particularly lacking, and in Jung's work, the 'Self' archetype seems hell bent in paving over this distance.
 
Thanks once again,


Enjolras

[Matt Koeske]

Believing as I do that "the mind is what the brain does" and that what the brain does is mainly exchange neural impulses between its neurons, I tend to see a large disconnect between evolutionary effects on the genetic inheritance of the human species and the products of the mind or psyche.  Knowing more and more about the structure and function of the organs and the regions of the brain will be, in my view, the best help toward understanding what is truly, definably archetypal in the psyche.  Of course, underlying these brain organs and regions are its genetics and its evolutionary development, but that would be, in my view, a contextual layer more complex than what I think current scientific understanding of the mind can adequately hope to address.

I certainly disagree with you here, Sealchan.  I am pretty close to EP on this issue.  How can we talk about "the structure and function of the organs and the regions of the brain" without distinct valuation of the evolution of this structure and function?  What is any organ, any life form but a product of its evolutionary environment and the "designer", evolution by natural selection, that operates in that that specific environmental confine?  Why do we have eyes and vision?  Why do we have hands and fingers and opposable thumbs?  Why do my have the vocal cords we do and the capacity for language?  Why do we have the brains and minds you are devoted to understanding?  Environment, environment, environment.

The context for every feature, every trait, every genetic mutation is not merely some dismissible contextual layer current science can't hope to adequately address.  Context is the chief designer of all these features.  We are walking, thinking contextual histories.  These contexts are what define us.  They are us.

Granted, there is a significant problem in trying to construct the environment of Evolutionary Adpatedness (EEA) for the human mind (and especially for the specifically human features of the brain and mind).  That is an area of debate between developmentalists and EPs.  If we could know with scientific validity how each human feature of our brains evolved, in which environmental niche each one "took", we could expand our understanding of the brain and mind/brain relatedness immensely.  But as it is, we are left with only a few details of the mind's EEAs.  These details are nothing to sneeze at.  They tell us a lot.  But they don't dispel any subtle mysteries.

I would agree that investing ourselves in speculations about the precise EEAs for traits would be fairly intellectualist and ethereal, but I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that the brain is an evolved organ that owes its structure and function to specific environmental contexts (EEAs).

I also think that Jung's conscious functions are vitally important to dream interpretation and to understanding the archetypes.  I think Jung must have undervalued this connection inspite of the fact that he had developed the idea of the conscious functions and their attitude.  Perhaps he did so for such closely personal reasons that he was never able to approach the idea in a more theoretical manner.

I'm not sure on what basis you feel Jung devalued the connection between his type theory and dream interpretation/understanding archetypes.  Jung used his type theory as one of the major tools in his dream analysis method.  As far as type theory's relationship to archetypes, this may be more implied than deeply discussed by Jung.  We can take various attitudes toward archetypes as they present themselves (or as we define them based on what presents itself).  I'm not sure if these conscious attitudes toward archetypes consistently break down along Jung's type differentiation.  Even if they did, we would be talking about how different types of people/attitudes perceive and relate to the archetypal.  A "thinking type", for instance, might see them abstractly and develop a theory of organization for archetypes that assigned them laws and strict patterns of behavior (and there is a lot of this in Jungian thought).  A "feeling type" would respond more to the numinous and the affect associated with the experience of the archetype . . . seeing the archetype as defined by its value (to the ego).  A "sensation type" might be most interested in the component elements of the archetypes, psychological, historical, cultural, etc.  An "intuitive type" might be most concerned with the interrelational dynamics of archetypal systems and the emergent patterns produced by these dynamics.

Jung's own thinking on archetypes touched on all of these attitudes, but I think they mostly moved back and forth along a "thinking-feeling" axis.  He became increasingly fascinated by what he called "the approach to the numinous", which I believe he perceived and experienced as a "thinking type" might experience his or her "inferior function", "feeling".  Feeling was alien and numinous to Jung.  It was where "the god" came into his thought.  His attempts to understand archetypes both as genetic inheritance and also kinds of Platonic images I think could be linked to a "thinking-sensation" collaboration . . . where thinking is doing the bulk of the theoretical work deriving a grand theory (inherited "images") from a bit of biological observation.  And it was perhaps as a "thinking-intuitive" that Jung recognized some of the dynamic interrelation of archetypes (such as in his alchemical studies of a process of psychic transformation).  But again, as a "thinking type", Jung's intuition was chained to sets of abstract laws and assumptions (conflict of Opposites, Christen theological contexts, Germanic romanticism, etc.) that distorted some of the complexly interrelated dynamics of the archetypes.

I am less a "thinker" than Jung and more oriented to "intuition-feeling".  So, with this metaphorical lens it could make sense that my own archetypal theories deal even more extensively with complex interrelationships of archetypes and also with the value ("valuation") of the Self system's principle of organization (with "sensation" in the "inferior" position, it would also make sense why I treat that mode of intelligence so preciously and never take it for granted).  Jung saw the Self and psyche (as perhaps only a thinking type could) as both "light and dark", "good and evil".  He organized Self phenomena into two abstract categories that he inherited from cultural/intellectual laws.  He didn't have an adequate concept of complexity and its signature forms and behaviors, so the reductive and theological metaphor or abstraction of conflicted opposites was used.  Also like a "thinker" he assigned moralistic valuations to the polarized halves of the Self.  A "feeler" has a more subtle and sophisticated capacity to assign value.

As far as Jung's "closely personal reasons" for developing and using the theory as he did, one thing that is well accepted in the Jungian world is that Types was Jung's attempt to understand himself in relationship to (and differentiated from) Freud and Adler.  By the time Types was written (1921), Jung had split from Freud and there were very hard feelings on both sides.  Jung had also worked through his Red Book fantasies (the refined text itself was still being reconstructed, I think) in which some of the differentiations relating to Types were introduced.  He wanted to understand what differentiated him from Freud (and also, I suspect from what he at times called "Jewish psychology").  According to Freud and "Jewish psychology", Jung's reason for deviating from and splitting with Freud in such an emotionally-charged fashion was due to neuroses, pathologies, weaknesses, and aggressive unanalyzed fantasies about wanting to murder Freud-as-Father.  Jung balked at that pathologizing and "personalizing" approach to differences.  The way Freud and his closest followers used pathologizing diagnosis as a weapon to demean and dismiss their critics felt deeply flawed to Jung.  He wanted a better system of differentiation . . . and type theory was born from that.  It shouldn't be detached entirely from that historical context.

As you know, I do not find Jung's type theory to be valid outside of the poetic and metaphorical usage of terms.  That is, I do not see the types as inherited parts of the personality or as legitimate cognitive architecture.  Type theory does have some resonances with actual cognitive architecture, I admit, but when one starts trying to map one to one, type theory crumbles into dust.  It can be helpful in sorting out personages (or rather, relationships among personages) in dreams to some degree, so long as it isn't applied too dogmatically or as a "strict law".  If we go into every dream analysis insisting that we find this or that function, we eventually delude ourselves and miss some of the actual phenomena in the dream text (including the associations, that is).

I think Jung and I are/were both Intuitive Thinkers.  The idea of being able to go out into the wilds of the collective unconscious and identify various species and sub-species of archetypes has, for this personality type, a strong attraction indeed.

Of course, this is all perceptual and arbitrary, but I would align your cognitive disposition with Jung's more on the "thinking function" branch.  I think Jung's "intuition" was expressed more in his interest in and nose for massive interrelationship of archetypal phenomena.  He was able to see how various archetypal forms from numerous cultures had systemic parallels.  It wasn't the same think as proposing universal laws of psychic operations.  That kind of universalizing (more of a "thinking" tendency) was often treated by Jung with some skepticism.  He saw Freud as "guilty" of taking those kinds of paradigmatic laws too far.  This skepticism and self-restraint on Jung's part was especially interesting and important to his theories because it had to be achieved in contradiction to his "superior function".  Jung's personal psychology is one of fascinating self-conflicts.  He was a "thinking type" (with "intuition" secondary) that proposed many self-restraints on "thinking type" tendencies, and often placed more value on intuition or even feeling in his writing.  That is, he intentionally placed value on these other attitudes.  Unintentionally, or where he was less conscious, Jung wrote and thought like a "thinking type".

I'm also of a mind to put a very heavy stress on consciousness as a product of the collective culture, particularly through the medium of language.  The very words we use to think to ourselves with are the result of a cultural (as opposed to a biological) evolutionary process.  Our minds are, therefore, intrinsically of a collective nature.

You should really read Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, if you haven't already.  Your emphasis on the visual aspects of language are only part of the story.  Pinker writes extensively about the intuitive physics that underlies language (and composes the "stuff" or physical material we utilize in order to think as we do).  Pinker's role as an EP does not play extensively into this book.  Of course, there are hot debates about language in the field of linguistics, and Pinker is the captain of one particular camp, but I didn't find The Stuff of Thought to be all that oriented to the "inherited module for language acquisition" position that Pinker is associated with.  Rather, it was a very phenomenological (and very rich and detailed) study.

7.  The full visual field can be qualified in terms of the conscious phenomenon of color.

8.  Color, at its simplest can be understood to be the brain's differentiation of a limited range of electromagnetic radiation (the visible spectrum) in terms of a pair of two complimentary opposite colors: red vs green and yellow vs blue.

9.  The fact that the whole visual field can be experienced as a field that consists of two pairs of complementarily opposite qualities provides, through neural connections between cortical maps, an "inducement" to intuit other wholes as composed of the same qualitative four-fold subdivisions.

I think your leap here is much larger than your numbered list suggests.  You know far more about these areas than I do, but I still see a leap that is going to be very tricky to establish.

[Matt Koeske]

Regarding your beef regarding theory, would it be fair in your view to make a distinction between 'bad' theory = originates from a subjective idea, 'good' theory based upon deduction from objective observation? In which case would you accept that there is a use for 'conceptualization' in order to organize data gleaned... hence the role for 'archetype' a concept to organize data. May we agree in which case to desribe an 'archetype' a form of concept?

I should clarify that I do not have a beef with "theory", per se.  I have a beef with dream interpretation paradigms that neglect or reject some phenomenological data in order to too-rigidly preserve the paradigm.  I suppose it is fair to say that such an approach to paradigm-preservation (which I would consider unscientific or in violation of standard scientific research ethics) is bound to lead to "bad theory".  By contrast, sound scientific research ethics are likely to lead to comparatively "good theory".

This distinction and my opinion on interpretation do not have any bearing on the creation of hypotheses or on intuitive ideas that help orient us to certain correlations of data.  My personal research ethic is simple and can be summarized as this: always follow the data.  But how we get ourselves to the data and figured out which data to follow and how to go about that following are different matters entirely.  When we are starting with a relatively undefined and mysterious data set, "following the data" is likely to only get us running in circles, chasing our tails.

It's much harder to define the intuition that leads us to correlations, which can then be more scientifically investigated.  Such intuition is an unconscious faculty of cognition akin to pattern recognition (and pattern attribution).  As one who is more "intuitive" by nature than "intellectual", my theorizing begins in pattern recognitions, hunches, and "feelings" about the ways things (psychic phenomena) might be connected and interrelated.  Where I deviate from many Jungians is in the post-intuition stages.  Intuitions for me are the bloodhounds leading the hunt.  But once you get to where the object of pursuit is entrenched, there is no better method of knowing the object than the scientific.  Scientific methods can still be employed in the investigation of psychic phenomena so long as we don't make an interpretive leap into literalizing them or drawing one-to-one equivalences (e.g., anima is some specific, localized part of the brain).  As Jung would have said, we are dealing with "psychic facts" . . . so as long as they are kept psychic, they can be treated as facts or as empirical data.

Actually, under further reflection, I think there is another dimension to my particular bloodhounding for the most useful data groupings to investigate.  It's not only associative, interrelated patterns I have a nose for, but also ethical and valuative associations.  I am probably more concerned than most Jungians about the ethical implications of data analysis.  Valuating these data from what they are (granting the psyche autonomy and not dismissing its true complexity) is not merely a rational law for me.  It's an ethical obligation that marks the integrity of my participation with both the psyche and Jungian culture and thought as well as a kind of intellectual discipline that refines my thinking and theorizing.  In fact, I often find myself "offended" by the lack of Jungian scientific and research integrity and ethics.  This impaired integrity is equal, in my mind, to an impaired ability to valuate the Self-as-Other for egoic/selfish reasons (like comforting religious beliefs, dogmatic tribal affiliations, etc.).

The valuative intelligence (similar to Jung's "feeling" function, perhaps) is, like intuition/pattern recognition: an unconscious cognition process.  It is information processing "given" to us rather than intentionally calculated.  It could even be considered psychic data itself.

If we apply the distinction between good/bad theory it fits with your observation between good Jung and bad Freud. In a similar manner that you are able to save the good bits of Jung and disregard the bad, there are parts of Freud which gel with  my own observations. On my judgement it does seem to me that perhaps you over play the gulf between Jung/Freud which evokes for me the comment you made regarding the arbitrary splitting of archetypes when they overlap. From the degree of familiarity I have with each of their texts, differences not withstanding, they are interlaced.

I don't think Freud is "bad", and I certainly don't think Jung is "good".  I think Freud's dream interpretation theory was wrong, that it was fallacious and based on flawed assumptions (e.g., that dreams employ symbolism in order to censor sexual content).  Freud's contribution to psychology and to modernity in general was massive . . . and larger/more important than Jung's.  As a kind of heroic investigator of the autonomous psyche (the "unconscious"), Freud opened up a whole new world to the human gaze.  He succeeded at this through tremendous and beautiful audacity, guts, and contrarian vision.  But as a theorist, Freud impresses me less (and today, very few of Freud's original theories remain intact or are treated as credible by the scientific establishment).  He was terribly dogmatic and protective of his "Commandments", not suffering any deviation from his disciples, and this stunted psychoanalytic development (and continues to in somewhat transformed ways).  He also sought to preach and convert others to his psychoanalytic ideology in a truly religious (as opposed to scientific) fashion.

Perhaps what has been longest lasting of Freud's theoretic fallacies is his emphasis on the reductive infantilization of the adult psyche, which he both pathologized and also insisted upon seeing in every personality.  This infantilization is very seductive, because it offers a kind of rational and reductive explanation for very complex psychological dynamics.  It's a grand theory that seems to deliver up uncanny "Truths", as any extremely reductive theory will do.  Psychoanalytic infantilization blows away all the dark clouds and lets the sun shine through.  In this sense, it puts itself into the pattern of either miraculous insight/cure or utter fraud.  That is, if the magical Freudian reductions are "true", then psychoanalysis is an especially brilliant lens, ground by genius hands, and simply indispensable to anyone who would understand the psyche.  And if the paradigm is false, then it is all nothing but a perverse fantasy, a cultic delusion.

Freud and psychoanalysis have chosen this dichotomy; it wasn't thrust upon them.  Freud wanted psychoanalysis to be delivered to the world like Mosaic law . . . a divine object, and so it had to be either right or wrong.  Psychoanalysts, then, had to be utterly invested in the rightness of psychoanalysis.  The image of psychoanalysis as true and profound had to be preserved at all costs.  Psychoanalysis has always been modeled as a religious truth and has had to be justified religiously.

This stands in stark contrast to science, for which there are no real truths.  There are only data and probability, and as data are never finite, truth is never established.  Instead we have scientific facts, meaning they have been established empirically to be factual under scientific investigations thus far.  Still, the possibility remains that some data could come along that falsify a scientific fact, and that falsification is embraced by science.  It is scientific.  Psychoanalysis does not allow falsification of its core assumptions and beliefs.  They cannot be questioned.  You don't find psychoanalysts who utterly reject the infantilization of the adult psyche, because in order to be a psychoanalyst, one has to believe in that dogma and agree not to challenge it.

This is my real gripe with psychoanalysis.  I don't find it adequately scientific, nor capable of real science due to its religiosity.  It is a similar gripe to the one I have with analytical psychology, but in some ways I am more offended by psychoanalytic pseudo-science because it makes such a strong claim to science and rationality.  It is in a state of bad faith regarding its own religiosity, and until that hypocrisy is broken down, it disturbs me ethically.  Jungian religiosity is not a matter of much denial.  In fact it is often a point of pride, and Jungian disdain for science and rationalism is brandished like gang colors (especially outside of psychoanalytic/developmentalist Jungianism).  It's as if Jungians are stupid, but there is some degree of blissful psychic ease in this stupidity.  Psychoanalysts, on the other hand, are smart, but their intelligence comes with a heroic "fatal flaw" that is its ultimate undoing.  Developmental Jungians manage to suffer from both conditions simultaneously and without one really tempering the other significantly.  From what I've seen, many developmentalists suffer from the worst of both cultural complexes: Jungian pie-in-the-sky fluffy-headedness and psychoanalytic pseudo-scientific dogmatism.  I should say that there are certainly dogmatic Jungians, but analytical psychology itself is not fundamentally dogmatic nor did Jung want to make a dogma of it (he saw what Freud did with psychoanalysis and wanted to do the opposite).

The Jungian developmentalists also give up some of Jung's greatest contributions to psychoanalytic thought.  In contradiction to what you wrote in another post, I think Jung was one of Freud's greatest critics (if not the greatest).  His insight into Freud and into psychoanalytic fallacies was one of his most profound and deep-seeing psychological constructs.  In fact, analytical psychology owes a great deal to Freud and psychoanalysis (much of which Jung openly acknowledged throughout his life).  But this was not (as Freudians have tended to claim) really a matter of Jung making a few revisions and additions to Freud's core theory.  Jung had a core theory pre-Freud that was rooted both in the French dissociationist psychology of the time (Janet, for instance) and in German romanticism.  Freud's contribution to psychology from Jung's perspective may have been an especially rich mythologization of complexes and of the autonomy of the unconscious.  Freud gave the unconscious "complexity", despite his very reductive interpretations of it.  Just to imagine that something like the Oedipal complex was "instinctual" was to grant instinct a more valuated role than it had previously enjoyed.

I think Jung was attracted to this aspect of Freud's thought, because it was essentially "romantic".  It gave agency and intelligence of sorts to the "natural" and innate.  What Jung objected to was Freud's more reductive take on these "natural instincts".  Jung was an out and out romantic, boiling over with romantic vision and excitement.  Freud, by contrast was a closeted romantic who Demonically insisted he was a rationalist, and whose romanticism had to explode out through complexes and projections.  So Jung saw the romantic potential in Freud's libido theory, that it could be more robust than animalistic sex and aggression instincts and extended to religious instincts or individuation instincts, etc.

Freud unintentionally inspired Jung with Freud's closet romanticisms.  Jung's own romanticism, though abundant, hadn't really found a modern, "scientific" expression.  Freud lent that potential to Jung.  But Freud had no intention or desire to communicate such "nonsense" to Jung, and it no doubt bothered Freud that Jung kept urging psychoanalytic thought (God's Commandments!) in increasingly romantic directions.  With the eventual split between the two men, Jung's romanticism was free to break out from its Freudian prison cell, and we can see much of Jung's future work (even into his later years) as initially oriented by Freud's modernist romantic lens.

At least as significant in Jung's usage of psychoanalysis was its employment as foil to analytical psychology's growth and development.  Analytical psychology often fashioned itself (i.e., Jung fashioned it) as the "anti-psychoanalysis".  If Jung hadn't had the great insights into Freud's theoretical shortcomings, analytical psychology would not have taken shape as it did.  But Jung could look at what Freud-the-heroic-pioneer had done and was doing and scrutinize this, figuring out where Freud's religious dogmatism have blinded him.  But Freud still got to be the bloodhound sniffing out the dark crevices of much of the unconscious.  Jung merely had to follow behind and tidy up or compensate and correct for Freud's particular biases (which, again, Jung had a great deal of insight into).

Of course, Jung did some of his own pioneering as well, but I would argue that the core of Jung's valuative approach to the unconscious as Other derived from his construction of autonomous libido, and it was in Symbols of Transformation (initially published in 1912 as Psychology of the Unconscious and contributing extensively to finalizing his split with Freud) that Jung presented a correction and expansion of Freud's libido theory.  Jung extensively revised this work in 1952 (when it became Symbols of Transformation), demonstrating that he was still developing his libido theory, still, therefore, building (albeit compensatorily) upon Freud.  Jung's entire theory of the psyche (archetypes and the collective unconscious and so forth) develops out of this conception of the "complexly libidinous" unconscious and attempts to explain the dynamic autonomy of the unconscious in terms of its organizations of libido.

As a compensatory "anti-psychoanalysis", analytical psychology ran into problems during the Nazi rise to power.  Jung seemed to be seduced by the Nazi determination to discredit and dispose of anything "Jewish".  Freud and his followers had viciously attacked and berated Jung for years, always claiming that Jung was anti-Semitic, and that this prejudice was the cause of his split with Freud (there is absolutely no evidence for this).  Jung did seem to view the Jews as "other", and certainly had prejudices and fallacious generalizations about Jews and Judaism, but it is a stretch to consider him a full-blown anti-Semite (where I would interpret this term to mean someone who would like to see the Jews prevented from obtaining power, subject to fewer rights than gentiles, and essentially acted against in some way).

Still, as an anti-psychoanalyst, Jung was definitely tempted by seeing an opportunity to depose it and open up psychotherapy and psychology to other modes of development (especially his own contributions).  His statements about "Jewish psychology" (which muddily seemed to mean both psychoanalysis and the psychology of Jewish people that could be "explained" psychoanalytically) were definitely bolstered by vengeful projections onto the Freudian establishment that had set Jung up personally as enemy and scapegoat.  Jung's statements only "proved" that he was enemy and scapegoat of psychoanalysis.  He acted precisely as such an enemy and scapegoat would, even demonstrating that he was indeed "anti-Semitic" (just as psychoanalysts had always claimed he was).

I think Jung clearly regretted these statements about Jewish psychology in the 30s.  During this time, he had many Jewish friends and colleagues, and it is pretty clear that the "Jewish psychology" he tried to discredit was specifically Freudian and not universally Jewish.  Although it is important for Jungians to be conscious of Jung's statements about Jewish psychology and to condemn its anti-Semitic aspects and its untimely contribution to anti-Semitism in the 30s, I think it is also important for Jungians to understand that Jung, perhaps against his better judgment and conscious awareness, was for decades at war with Freud and psychoanalysis.  Jung's prejudicial statements about Jews must be understood within the context of this war (even more so than as a general Swiss Protestant cultural prejudice).  I think Jung felt he was given (by the Nazi phenomenon in Germany) a kind of secret weapon against his Freudian enemies and persecutors.  He was tempted, and he used this weapon . . . and of course it was a devil's bargain.  Nothing haunts and discredits analytical psychology more today than Jung's statements and actions regarding the Jews and the Nazis.


All of this seriously complicates interaction and potential merger between analytical psychology and psychoanalysis.  There is no easy and logical "compatibility", despite similarities and some shared roots (especially unconscious/autonomous libido).  I'm not sure that Jung's libido theory can ever be made compatible with Freud's.  Each deconstructs the other.  I think developmental Jungians are going down a dead end road in their pursuit of a merger between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology.  That just leads to a bastardized, watered down patchwork of both, a chimera (as one of the IAJS members once said and was then soundly thrashed for).  The question we should be asking is not how we can compromisingly form a merger (which itself might be based in a fantasy of reconciliation between Jung and Freud, a kind of childish whitewashing of two problematically conflicted "parents") . . . but how we can continue to learn from the fundamental conflicts between Freud and Jung, psychoanalysis and analytical psychology.  That is, taking sides or trying to form a neutered compromise (actually a drive toward negation) allows us to conveniently fail to see certain Jungian and Freudian arguments that can't coexist.  Either one or the other or neither must be valid.

Infantilization is, I think, one of those arguments.  Either Freud was right that the adult psyche is determined by infantile attitudes and structures or Jung was right that adult and essentially non-infantile attitudes and structures can emerge or be achieved . . . or else neither perspective is valid or represents an adequate psychological languaging.  As I think I've mentioned somewhere previously (?), I feel this particular morass can be resolved through the introduction of complexity theory.  That is, yes, early psychological structures are of course "infantile", and these infantile structures (which are adaptations, I believe), do serve as an elemental foundation of sorts for later structural adaptations.  But the personality is not a house (that must not be built "upon sand") . . . nor fossil layers of earth stacked chronologically.  "Psychic foundations" are always being built and rebuilt with each new adaptation.  The infantile psychic foundation does not remain always as it was, and to "locate" it psychoanalytically is not a scientific observation but a therapeutic languaging fantasy of questionable value.  This particular fantasy does not grant the psyche true complexity (a capacity to form an emergent whole that is not clearly and only the sum of its parts).

Inadequate adaptations or developments at earlier (infantile) stages are likely to have a "butterfly effect" on later structural collapse or dysfunction, but this is hard to measure since environmental (often parental) destructiveness or inadequacy can rarely be temporally fixed.  Most traumatization occurs consistently throughout childhood and as long as the child lives in the parental environment.  Numerous developmental stages are compromised and re-traumatized by the same toxic environment . . . including (perhaps most importantly to adult psychology) the transitional stage before adulthood can occur: adolescence.  What psychoanalysts would have to prove is that children who are inadequately "mothered" in the first few years of their life but have "good enough" parenting after that are just as likely to develop adult personality disorders and neuroses as children who have been consistently traumatized or mis-parented throughout their entire childhoods and into adolescence.

As far as I am aware (and I admit to inadequate knowledge here) psychoanalytic studies and hypotheses do not concern themselves with the potential resiliency of the child psyche.  Psychoanalysis cannot take up such a concern, because evidence that resiliency outweighs inadequate early mothering jeopardizes the entire psychoanalytic (object-relations) paradigm and dogma.  If child psyches are resilient (in a complex adaptive systems sense), inadequate early mothering and perhaps even trauma are not as all-determining of adult psychology as psychoanalytic models suggest.  But this is the bread and butter of psychoanalytic theory, and if it went up in smoke, crisis would ensue (by the way, similar crises have ensued in Jungian culture, I think, although the Jungian bread and butter is a different variety altogether).

Jung on the other hand (and no doubt partly out of compensation for psychoanalytic emphasis on the infantile), positioned analytical psychology as a "midlife psychology".  This is equally a mistake, in my opinion . . . especially because analytical psychology owes so much of its mythology to and takes so many of its data from the adolescent environment (where, for instance, initiation hunger and proto-individuation play large roles).  It is not clear to me at this point that there can be a true "midlife psychology", because midlife roles in various cultures throughout various eras have deviated so much.  Culture seems to be the largest determinate of midlife psychology and identity.  But in infancy, pre-adolescent childhood, and adolescence, the body and brain are still growing and changing.  Biology and perhaps "instinct" are major factors in the shaping of personality, even when it is only in the sense that "biology" makes the individual especially susceptible to certain environmental influences on personality construction.

I can't help but think, in light of its obsessions with adolescent structures of psyche, that analytical psychology artificially emphasizes midlife as a reaction to Freudian infantilization.  Jung saw his embarkation on his "midlife" individuation journey as coming just after his split with Freud (in Jung's mid to late 30s).  Subsequent Jungians have emphasized one's 40s, 50s, or 60s . . . probably the ages at which they began feeling the stirrings of individuation and the resurgence of the repressed adolescent psychic structures.  But as for Jung, his individuating split from Freud was also a personal and highly emotional turning away from Freud's pathologizing infantilization.  That is, infantilization was an ideology to which Jungian individuation psychology was diametrically opposed.  Jung's split from Freud and subsequent maturation as a psychological theorist marked his own turning away from the infantile structures in his personality (as can be seen in some of the outbursts in his late correspondence with Freud) and the attempt to see these structures reorganized into a post-adolescent (and post Freud-as-inadequate-father) state.  Jung's Red Book individuation work was (among other things) a way to process and move away from his pre-adolescent connection to Freud.  So, individuation for Jung became another anti-psychoanalytic compensation.

I think there is, then, a strong argument for considering psychoanalysis and analytical psychology together or in relation to one another.  But I'm not sure that the dialectic model is the best one to apply to this relationship.  If psychoanalysis is seen as thesis and analytical psychology as antithesis, could synthesis really be a merger of the two?  I don't know.  The biggest problem I have with that metaphor is that a synthesis made entirely out of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology would not contain enough in its "prima materia" to create a viable modern psychology.  Neither tribe has a satisfactory relationship to science.  Neither has a truly modern social and identity-construction model (i.e., both are largely anti-modern, somewhat cultic tribes).  Neither has a functional concept of the heroic or an adequate way of languaging religion (as a phenomenon that is socio-historical as well as "spiritual" and "mystical").  Both share the use of the term "unconscious", which has become increasingly problematic.  Neither has a viable model of psychic structure (id/ego/superego or ego/personal unconscious/collective unconscious).  And neither has an adequately modern or universal "treatment" for mental distress and illness (each model is useful only for certain types of individuals).

Much would have to be taken from outside this thesis and antithesis to formulate a viable "synthesis" (which then wouldn't be a true synthesis).  There are aspects of Jung's thinking or ways of translating and developing his psyche-valuating attitudes that I find to be more useful and functional than anything I have seen coming out of psychoanalysis.  I think there is something to individuation that is important to modernity . . . not in the precise terms Jung used (nor in the individuation model he proposed), but there is a special relevance that is not a part of psychoanalytic thinking.  There is a potential for understanding the important core archetypes in Jungian prima materia, although radical revisions would have to be made.  In psychoanalysis, there are no "archetypes" outside of the Mother/Breast, the Father (which has fallen out of favor a bit), and the Infant.  Or we could say these are the core psychoanalytic archetypes.  That is very limiting, and it prevents us from understanding an archetype like the hero outside of a movement of infantile desire and wish fulfillment or an archetype like the animi outside of the Mother or Father.

That limitation feels "Demonic" (overly superegoic) to me, restrictive in an unhealthy and ultimately destructive way.  There has been a long-standing criticism of the psychoanalytic method by Jungians that holds that psychoanalysis is only capable of adapting or conforming its analysands to the standards of society.  I.e., that it is fundamentally superegoic.  But is this kind of treatment enough?  How can an individual be healthy in a sick world/environment?  Romantically, Jungianism would strive for something more, for the ability to "heal" the soul of the individual and thereby treat the world/environment.  It is a grand, shamanic hope, and Jungianism is not, in my opinion, even remotely equipped to treat the "anima mundi" even indirectly (through the individual soul).  But, as grand and un-actualized as this fantasy is, I think there is something there worth seeking or striving toward.

Psychoanalysis doesn't really treat the "soul".  It treats the ego.  This is one of the many criticisms of psychoanalysis that Jung introduced that is very insightful.  It is a great challenge to "re-introduce" treated patients to the world that can contribute to the betterment of the world.  With some people, all one might be able to do is save them from self-destruction.  We can't legitimately expect to turn patients into missionaries or infuse them with productive righteousness . . . and the attempt to do so is certainly misguided.  But I remain hopeful that the treatment of the individual soul can infinitesimally contribute to the treatment of "the Tribe".  That is the shamanic ancestral stem on which the leaf of modern psychotherapy has grown.  The shaman of a tribe treats the tribe through the individual soul.  The shaman is not really am individual soul doctor, but a facilitator and regulator of the tribal soul.  S/he treats the tribe as a living organism that needs to be self-regulated but also dynamically and constantly reorganized in order for it to stay adaptive in its environment.  Neither psychoanalysis nor analytical psychology has figured out how to make the modern soul adaptive to the modern environment.

Jungianism is a failed attempt at modern shamanism, but psychoanalysis rejects or disbelieves in shamanism altogether.  It cannot produce or resuscitate the shamanic aspect of therapy.  A drastically revised Jungianism could, I think, resuscitate the shamanic element, which I suspect is essential to the health and healing of modern tribes.  But Jungianism as a whole shows no signs of being able to recognize its shortcomings and make the kinds of revisions I think would be necessary to reconstruct the shamanic.  I have no real hope in the Jungian tribe today . . . but I have some residual hope still in some of Jung's precedents and valuative approaches to the psyche.  There is no other approach that contains these particular essential elements that I am aware of.

Nevertheless, I believe it to be a congenital naivete of reflective (psychological) phenomenology that it overlooks a certain indeterminate opaqueness of the distance  that separates the reflecting subject from themselves. The space that separates the “I” from “me” necessarily escapes reflexive thematization. It is on this point that I find Jungain theory to be particularly lacking, and in Jung's work, the 'Self' archetype seems hell bent in paving over this distance.

I'm afraid you lost me here.  Could you elaborate?

Best,
Matt

[Enjolras]

Yes I agree it is important to emphasize data, but on the other hand data is yoked with a series of commitments that allow itself to be presented as data as such, and so cannot be radically separated from theory and paradigms. The lack of awareness of this, reifies data (which is its purpose – the litmus test of reality) but also these commitments that go along with it which have a particular history of its own. These commitments are ontological, which explains why data and theory can not be radically separated.

I am particularly influenced by Heidegger on this point, in that the investigation of metaphysics is conducted along the lines of 'a being' rather than 'being' itself, which is underwritten by the notion  that 'being' itself is that which is most banal and not worthy of investigation in it's own right. Wiki entry on Heidegger is actually pretty good if you are curious to know a bit more. I think it specificity deals with the problem you point to regarding chasing data/tails. If I was to summarize, I would consider more problematical than you would the separation between psychic facts and empirical facts as it dodges the issue of facticity in general.

This would have ramifications on your schema between the relative worth of Jung/Freud, in that Jung respects the difference between different sorts of fact whereas Freud doesn't which on your reading leads to a situation that whilst Jung is ostensibly more religious he is in fact more scientific and visa versa for Freud. The weight of your argument seems to fall upon the scientific consensus, which is only indirectly applicable due to analogy of psychic fact with empirical fact and secondly on the issue of Freud not 'confessing' to his religiosity whilst Jung does. The two contentions are intertwined, I have already indicated why I have problems with the former contention, but I wish to draw attention to its effects on the latter as it is only on the basis of the analogy of psychic fact with empirical that confession to religiosity becomes the barometer of merit.

I find your description between the personal differences of the two compelling, but I would question the degree of pertinence you attribute to their differences and how it manifests theoretically. On this point the (familial?) spat, the (fraternal?) squabbling between the two, if indeed it is an intra-familial spat - as that is what is in question - that you outline and hold that it constitutes a barrier to any merger. On this point I would note that this could potentially have personal significance for me, in that the potential for merger of different paternal lineages is a displacement for my own  situation in not accepting  my joint heritage satisfactory. In which case what you view as my attempt to merge Jung/Freud would be a fantasy caused by unmet desire. However, what I am suggesting is not to do with theories as an expression of authorial intent, but that both operate  within a shared historical lineage of western science which in some sense conditions and socializes individuality of both Jung and Freud and operates on a level other than that which we attribute to conscious intent. In other words I have problems with your implicit methodological individualism.

Nevertheless, I believe it to be a congenital naivete of reflective (psychological) phenomenology that it overlooks a certain indeterminate opaqueness of the distance  that separates the reflecting subject from themselves. The space that separates the “I” from “me” necessarily escapes reflexive thematization. It is on this point that I find Jungain theory to be particularly lacking, and in Jung's work, the 'Self' archetype seems hell bent in paving over this distance.

I'm afraid you lost me here.  Could you elaborate?

I will come back to this when I feel better able to put it in a way that does not presuppose the comprehension of the reading material that I have read and you have not!

Enjolras. 

[Sealchan]

I would agree that investing ourselves in speculations about the precise EEAs for traits would be fairly intellectualist and ethereal, but I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that the brain is an evolved organ that owes its structure and function to specific environmental contexts (EEAs).

On reflection I think I overstated this perspective.  I have an as of yet immature intuition that needs more development behind my statement here.  Your critique is convincing to me.

[Sealchan]

As you know, I do not find Jung's type theory to be valid outside of the poetic and metaphorical usage of terms.  That is, I do not see the types as inherited parts of the personality or as legitimate cognitive architecture.  Type theory does have some resonances with actual cognitive architecture, I admit, but when one starts trying to map one to one, type theory crumbles into dust.  It can be helpful in sorting out personages (or rather, relationships among personages) in dreams to some degree, so long as it isn't applied too dogmatically or as a "strict law".  If we go into every dream analysis insisting that we find this or that function, we eventually delude ourselves and miss some of the actual phenomena in the dream text (including the associations, that is).

At this point I'm fairly convinced that brain architecture and conscious functions correlate although I don't think that they do in a black and white fashion.  Also, I find myself pushing the model of the four conscious functions onto a dream but not always finding it stick.  But when it does it serves as a profound explanatory device.  I suspect that with time I may discover what contexts this is appropriate for.

[The Old Spirit]

Usually, these are more than enough to make sense of the dream.  No theory or interpretation is required.  The dream says what it is and what it "means".

 

That sounds more like what Medard Boss thought of dreams, and wanted in some way to let go of the interpretive violence that analysis entails.

[Enjolras]

Usually, these are more than enough to make sense of the dream.  No theory or interpretation is required.  The dream says what it is and what it "means".

 

That sounds more like what Medard Boss thought of dreams, and wanted in some way to let go of the interpretive violence that analysis entails.

Thank you for the heads up, I never had come across him before! 

[Matt Koeske]

Hi Enjolras,

• Sorry for the long rants.  I could try to edit this down to something more pallatable, but I'm way behind on my correspondence, so I'll just open the bomb bay doors and let 'er rip . . .

I am going to be a hard sell where postmodern rhetoric is concerned.  I feel like I've been immersed in it much of my adult life, and I have yet to "dissolve" in its solution.  I'm insoluble in postmodernism . . . and I've had many arguments with its advocates.  But while I am admittedly not well read in postmodernist thought, I do not think I am ignorant of its ideas and values.  I could understand them "more" (where "more" is "more like an acolyte"), but I think I understand them enough.

And I actually have some agreements with postmodernism's tenets.  I am not a true modernist.  The bulk of my resistance to postmodernism (despite significant compatibility) is emotional and intuitive.  For one thing, I refuse to belong to its tribe, which I find regressive.  It lacks the integrity that I feel I need to identify with.  And my experience with postmodernism and postmodernists is that they divide people up into members and other.  They don't scrutinize members, and they scorn others.

In other words, I have a social psychological approach to postmodernism.  It is not a loose trend in academic thought, but a very strict identity group.  That postmodernism has (to the best of my knowledge) neglected to turn its ideas of social and identity construction upon its own groups and identities is the height of hypocrisy.

So, I'm sure you can see a trend in my thought: I tend to see schools of thought as tribal (whether Jungian, Freudian, postmodernist, or otherwise).  The rhetoric of these tribes, from my perspective, is dogma.  It is not directed at "truth-seeking" or knowing objects.  Rather, it is a matter of constructing identity.  Use the right words (and invoke the right authorities) and you belong to the tribe.  Identity is language.

I should say preemptively that the signature retort of the postmodernist who is accused of hypocrisy, fantasy spinning, and generally poor thinking is "Well, I'm not a 'postmodernist'.  I'm a Heideggerian/Lacanian/Derridean/Foucault-ian/etc."  It's always the other guy, or else one claims to just be "read in" postmodernism, not indoctrinated.  But unless one is capable of joining in (on both sides) of a critical conversation about postmodernism, and unless one is able to speak about postmodernist ideas without using postmodernist jargon, I remain unconvinced.  Besides, it is not absolute agreement among thinkers that unites them in the same tribe, it is how they construct identity and relate to "others".

The postmodernist approach to science is to level much the same charge against science that I level again postmodernism.  Postmodernism claims science is not really a "truth-seeking" enterprise and scientific objectivity is a construction or fantasy unconsciously drawn from the context of social identity, etc.  There are two main flaws with this charge.  The first is that, however true this might be of the "tribe of science", it is many times more true of postmodernist tribes.  You see, I do not reject the critique outright as "absurd"; it is more a projection than an absurdity.  These hypocritical critiques of science are perhaps justified (in the postmodernist imagination) because science is seen as the "Goliath" to postmodernism's "David".  But I've been a humanities student in the modern university and socialized in intellectual cultures ever since . . . and postmodernism is no boy David (King David, perhaps).  Yes, in the sciences, postmodernism is not taken seriously.  But in the humanities (and even in segments of the social sciences), it continues to hold as much or more power than any other tribe.

In the Jungian world (which is more or less extra-academic), science is a peon.  It has no power and influence and hardly any advocates.  Postmodernism, on the other hand, has a substantial and growing contingency in Jungian ("post-Jungian") thought.  So postmodernism is persisting in bad faith where it claims to be sniping at giants.  It is well past the time that postmodernism needed to start looking at itself as an empowered and elite social structure composed of arbitrary constructions.

The second main flaw with postmodernist attempts to deconstruct and depose science is that modern science, as far as elite academic tribes go, is probably the most fit and least "tribal" group.  In contrast to postmodernism, philosophy, depth psychology, and various other humanities tribes, science strives for objectivity and a capacity to investigate objects outside of a restrictive and arbitrary dogma.  Built into the scientific method is a strategy for factoring out as many of the egoic errors of perception and interpretation as possible.  Science uses this methodology to be always growing, always progressing, always self-correcting.  At any given point in time, a particular scientific theory or observation could be wrong.  But what eventually discovers this error and corrects it is science itself.  Not some other, not some thinker from the world of humanities with a clever idea.  The scientific method, over time and when properly executed resolves errors.  And to date, no other methodological tool of truth-testing succeeds at this self-correction anywhere near as much as Science does.  It may even be the case that no other truth-testing tool works at all (but I'd be willing to hear arguments to the contrary).

Postmodernist philosophy has no mechanism for self-correction.  And with no mechanism for self-correction, it cannot be anything but dogmatic.  In a dogma, what is thought to be right and wrong is established not by testing or logic or trial and error, but by power of personality.  Whichever personality has the highest status, controls the most resources is "right".  We could equally say that whoever is in vogue as a thinker is right.  And their "rightness" is determined entirely by the number and zealousness of followers they have.

Science has historically been plagued by the very same problem . . . but it has a built in mechanism of self-correction.  Scientists are every bit as human as philosophers and literary theorists.  All humans are subject to the compulsions of tribal participation and group identity construction.  In the 19th century especially, there was a lot of narrowminded clubbishness in science, a cult of "rationality" marked by rigid positivism and materialism and dominated by upperclass men.  Postmodernism's critique of "science" is fitting for a lot of the science done at that time.  And some of this trend does continue on into the present.  But science has changed, and postmodernism (like Jungianism) hasn't realized this, because postmodernism isn't really critiquing science itself but actually a projection of the postmodernist other onto science.

That is, I'm saying that the "science" that postmodernism has attacked and tried to deconstruct and "demote" is a fantasy.  It is not equivalent to real science.

So when you say:

Yes I agree it is important to emphasize data, but on the other hand data is yoked with a series of commitments that allow itself to be presented as data as such, and so cannot be radically separated from theory and paradigms. The lack of awareness of this, reifies data (which is its purpose – the litmus test of reality) but also these commitments that go along with it which have a particular history of its own. These commitments are ontological, which explains why data and theory can not be radically separated.

I don't think this is actually valid.  I.e., I don't think it is valid that a lack of awareness of the way data are yoked to a series of commitments that allow data to be presented as data, "reifies data".  This I take to be a statement of dogmatic belief that is not based on actual evidence.  And the real irony of such a statement is that, if it were to be substantiated and validated, the method by which that validation would be done would be none other than the scientific method.  But if we have to use the scientific method to verify the truth claim of a postmodernist "hypothesis", that would seem to effectively negate the very argument postmodernism means to make against scientific "reification".

In fact, science doesn't even really deal in capital T "Truths"; only philosophy does.  It is philosophy that is constantly in danger of reification in ways that science is relatively immune to.  Scientific methodology is the least reifying tool of verification that we have.

I am not claiming that you are wrong that data and theory are in separable, but I do not agree (with the postmodernist program) that this essential relationship inherently invalidates scientific inquiry.  It is in this (unverified) belief of postmodernist critics of "science" that a leap into nihilism is made.  That is, I see in the postmodernist program a tendency to see the interdependence of things or components of ideas as some kind of indication that these ideas are not only fragile but "false".  There is in this mentality a kind of naive and fairly adolescent shock to the insubstantiality of our mental existence.  So, if we deconstruct anything long enough, it collapses into nothingness . . . and therefore this "proves" that nothingness is the secret foundation of everything.

But it is very likely that the exact same thing is true of matter itself (and not merely ideas and human creations) when we break it down to the subatomic level.  Where is its mass, where is its solidity, its particularity?  Basic interaction is not nothingness.  Emergence from this interaction is reality and not an illusion.

As for theory, any theory is composed of almost innumerable assumptions.  Some of those assumptions have been truth-tested more than others.  Where science and human thought in general have struggled is in the evaluation and "proofing" of many unconsidered assumptions that go into making up a theory (especially those assumptions that come from habitual human mentalizations).  Postmodern theories suffer just as much from this constructive, interactionist structure as scientific theories do.  But, as I said above, over time, science has a built-in mechanism that attempts to proof these assumptions.  As a result, scientific theories become more verifiable, more testable, and more functional.  This doesn't mean they are perfect, but in science, nothing is ever entirely complete (because data are infinite).

Where psychology is concerned, many more theoretical assumptions remain unverified than in, say, physics.  This is probably due to the difficulty of verifying psychological assumptions.  But I choose to follow Jung in the idea that psychic data (the phenomena or representations of the human psyche) should be collected and analyzed by psychologists in a style similar to the empirical collection and analysis of data in physical sciences.  When we make a psychological theory, it can only be one that is meant to explain these data.  Otherwise, what kind of theory would it be?  It wouldn't be a genuine theory, then, but merely a belief, a guess (based not on the data as objects but on the believer's subjectivity).  The validity of a psychological theory is a matter of its ability to, as elegantly as possible, explain the data collected.  The theory shouldn't fudge the data or willfully or heavy-handedly force the data to fit a preexisting paradigm illogically.

So, for instance, where Freud claims that dream images are disguised sexual thoughts, he ignores the data that demonstrate undisguised sexual thoughts in dreams and the data that suggest dream images are not "disguised" at all.  He assumes that 1.) dream images are disguised, and 2.) dream images are predominantly sexual.  But a thorough analysis of the data (through the collection and recording of dreams, and of the dreamers' associations) does not support Freud's assumptions here.  But Freud didn't revise this theory to fit the data; he continued to interpret the data to fit his theory.  It is like what happened when Freud was challenged about his Lamarkian use of biology.  Instead of acknowledging that his flawed assumption would require him to revise his theories based on that assumption, he said "so much the worse for the biologists".

I am particularly influenced by Heidegger on this point, in that the investigation of metaphysics is conducted along the lines of 'a being' rather than 'being' itself, which is underwritten by the notion  that 'being' itself is that which is most banal and not worthy of investigation in it's own right. Wiki entry on Heidegger is actually pretty good if you are curious to know a bit more. I think it specificity deals with the problem you point to regarding chasing data/tails. If I was to summarize, I would consider more problematical than you would the separation between psychic facts and empirical facts as it dodges the issue of facticity in general.

I think the issue of facticity is overblown by the philosophy that meets it with such anxiety.  Scientific thinkers (including many philosophers) do not hold fact or truth to be "perfect" or ideal in the way an abstract thought might seem to be.  There is a high tolerance for imperfections "on the quantum level" especially.  But when we become so fixated on facticity itself, we are not really arguing with those who speak in terms of "scientific facts" (which are contextual and imperfect).  Instead, we are arguing with a phantom of ideal truth-claiming that exists only in the mind of the one who so anxiously criticizes such idealism.  In material and living reality, "facts" are indicated by very high consistency in previous experience.  Does that mean that tomorrow the "fact" will be true?  No, but the probability is extremely high that it will be.  Even in quantum physics, where we as yet have no laws to understand certain subatomic structures and behaviors, probabilities of these behaviors are extremely high and are therefore considered scientific.

A "psychic fact" in the sense that Jung meant the term is not a theory that predicts where situation A exists for a mind, the mind will produce B.  Rather, a psychic fact is an observed phenomenon like a dream or a text, a representation.  It is phenomenologically factual.  It exists.  But the "fact" is "psychic", because what the representation represents (if anything) is not material, unknown and perhaps unknowable.  Again, Jung here is arguing with Freud (among others).  Freud declares that a dream image of a hat means a penis.  Jung counters that this cannot be determined.  The "psychic fact" is that the dreamer dreamed of the image of a hat.  That hat-fact exists in a context (e.g., kind and color of hat, worn/unworn, its place in the narrative of the dream, etc.).  That context is also psychically factual.  Jung says that these psychic facts are all the we can really know and are what the psychologist should be primarily concerned with.  That the hat means a penis is not a fact but an interpretation . . . although, that one might consistently interpret dream hats to mean penises is itself a psychic fact.

In Jung's dream analysis theory and his archetype theory in general, we can not only study the context of an individual dream or other text or representation/image psychologically (as a "psychic fact"), but we can compare parallel contexts to one another.  So someone might dream something that has a parallel logic or narrative structure or contextualization to a myth or fairytale or religious story.  Jung posited that holding these parallels up to one another could create a functional resonance, enabling the psychologist to better understand the dream in relationship to the myth, etc.  That is "amplification".  The danger of this is that the parallel logics are themselves often dependent on interpretations and may very well have nothing to do with one another.  That's another topic, though . . . and I will only suggest that functional amplification is an art form, perhaps more like poetry than science.  But if an analyst offers an amplification to a patient's dream, and the patient is moved by this amplification in a way that helps them make a functional life or attitude change, it would be fair to say that the "therapeutic effect" was psychically factual and quite possibly connected to the amplification, but not in any provable, causal way.

This would have ramifications on your schema between the relative worth of Jung/Freud, in that Jung respects the difference between different sorts of fact whereas Freud doesn't which on your reading leads to a situation that whilst Jung is ostensibly more religious he is in fact more scientific and visa versa for Freud. The weight of your argument seems to fall upon the scientific consensus, which is only indirectly applicable due to analogy of psychic fact with empirical fact and secondly on the issue of Freud not 'confessing' to his religiosity whilst Jung does. The two contentions are intertwined, I have already indicated why I have problems with the former contention, but I wish to draw attention to its effects on the latter as it is only on the basis of the analogy of psychic fact with empirical that confession to religiosity becomes the barometer of merit.

I don't think you capture my reasoning here.  It sounds pretty foreign, so I don't really know what to say about it.  I will say this: analysis (Jungian of Freudian) is, in my opinion, a languaging process.  The language that comes out of analysis (the dialog between patient and analyst) is largely arbitrary and often experimental.  Ideally, both analyst and patient are trying to find and develop a language in which the patient can "heal" or gain/regain some desired existential and relational functionality.  Fact has very little to do with the language of analysis.  The language has no basis in "truth", but acts as a vessel that contains experiences in a way that allows those experiences to be useful, dynamic, and not destructive to the patient.

But where analytical languaging is overly constrictive or "reductive", the therapeutic effect is more likely to be diminished.  That happens in both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, and I have no guess as to whether it is more common in one than the other.  I suspect that the individual skill and art of the analyst determines the outcome more than the methodological tenets.  But where a theory of psychology underlies psychotherapeutic technique, and that theory is simply incorrect (refuted by evidence), we might expect therapeutic effectiveness to be diminished.  Although, this correlation seems to be surprisingly limited . . . as we can discern from studies of different psychotherapies that seem to show no significant difference in their effectiveness.  Yet, they can't all theoretically be "correct" when they disagree with one another.  I think the general feeling (though it is sometimes hard for true believers in their theory to admit it), is that the therapeutic effect relies mostly on the rapport between analyst and patient.

But this "dirty secret" of psychotherapies also has the unfortunate effect of enabling flawed theories to persist as dogmas.

I find your description between the personal differences of the two compelling, but I would question the degree of pertinence you attribute to their differences and how it manifests theoretically. On this point the (familial?) spat, the (fraternal?) squabbling between the two, if indeed it is an intra-familial spat - as that is what is in question - that you outline and hold that it constitutes a barrier to any merger. On this point I would note that this could potentially have personal significance for me, in that the potential for merger of different paternal lineages is a displacement for my own  situation in not accepting  my joint heritage satisfactory. In which case what you view as my attempt to merge Jung/Freud would be a fantasy caused by unmet desire. However, what I am suggesting is not to do with theories as an expression of authorial intent, but that both operate  within a shared historical lineage of western science which in some sense conditions and socializes individuality of both Jung and Freud and operates on a level other than that which we attribute to conscious intent. In other words I have problems with your implicit methodological individualism.

I think you are saying that both Freud and Jung are the products of their cultures, and their cultures overlap significantly.  No doubt.  Although the really big cultural division is the Jewish/Christian one.  Judaism was an extremely important cultural construction for Freud and psychoanalysis, and Christianity for Jung was the central myth of selfhood.  Those are massive (and fascinating) topics that I won't go into (I wrote a paper that dealt with this in grad school for a literature class taught by a classical Freudian analyst).

As far as the fantasy that many (Jungians, not Freudians!) hold of merger or reconciliation between psychoanalysis and Jungianism, that is something to be posited through a complex and detailed analysis.  It is "reasonable" superficially, in my opinion, but fundamentally delusional.  It is a defense against anxiety ("defense mechanism"), a desire to sublimate something that is muddied and painful.  My general position is that in regarding any relationship between Jungianism and psychoanalysis, the whole complex history has to be taken into account.  The individual who seeks a Jungian/psychoanalytic hybrid is like a neurotic patient with significant parental issues.  Once these issues are adequately addressed, then maybe some kind of Jungian/psychoanalytic relationship can be discussed in earnest.  Until then, as you point out, we have a fantasy to contend with and to analyze.

Psychoanalytic Jungians haven't really been doing this, and I find that both troubling and overtly complexed (because, after all, they are trained analysts and should think analytically about this rather than neurotically or compulsively).  The very idea of merger (dreamed up by Michael Fordham, founder of the London school of Jungianism) is, on the most basic level, simply not necessary.  Just because Jung and Freud split does not mean they are "estranged" or that their children "must" reunite . . . nor does it mean that their children must be bitter enemies.

What I'd like to see is intelligent criticism of psychoanalytic theory by Jungians . . . not affect-driven attacks.  As for those psychoanalysts willing to associate with Jungians, well, I don't know.  That's an issue that needs to be understood from within the psychoanalytic tribe.  I can only speak to this from the Jungian tribal perspective.  Should Jungian analysts study psychoanalytic thinkers?  Of course!  But they should not strive to be assimilated into the psychoanalytic tribe.  Rather, where a Jungian studies psychoanalysis, a self is meeting with an other, and a relationship is formed.  Jungianism should strive to understand psychoanalysis from a Jungian perspective, and if we find that this Jungian perspective is filled with delusional prejudices or is functionally criticizable from the psychoanalytic other's perspective, then Jungianism should seek to find a way to grow so that its Jungianism can more functionally relate to both its blind spots and the psychoanalytic other.

What I object to is the Fordhamian reaction, which claims that Jung's undeveloped and blind spots should be filled with psychoanalytic ideas, which are the "most compatible".  This is fallacious on so many levels.  Jungians first need to take a Jungian looks at Jung's blind spots and see if they can develop a Jungian way of resolving these problems.  Reading psychoanalysts on similar issues may very well be useful, but I am opposed to a kind of incautious eclecticism.  Jungians need to develop their own ideas, and that creative development can have a relational context.  But just taking other tribe's ideas as if they were interchangeable parts doesn't work.

But perhaps an even bigger problem than the fallacy of eclecticism is Fordham's contention that Jung's theory was blind of weak in certain areas.  That remains a purely dogmatic claim of the developmental school.  There are many valid reasons to disagree with Fordham's insistence that Jung's theory was lacking in certain ways.  It is quite likely that Fordham merely didn't understand Jung's reasoning for making some of the choices Jung made.

Ultimately, I feel that Fordham allowed his personal feelings to put him on the Dr. Frankenstein path.  His desire to create life seemed valid superficially, but the method (and perhaps the core of the motivation) was monstrous.

The last thing I'll note is that, as a Jungian, I am looking at the psychoanalysis/Jungianism chimera from a Jungian perspective.  I don't have an organic psychoanalytic perspective, but I imagine (with confidence) that if I were a psychoanalyst, I wouldn't feel that what psychoanalysis needed was an infusion of a few Jungian ideas.  Psychoanalysis can come up with its own solutions to those blind spots of Freud that Jung may have better addressed.  And . . . it has!  Winnicott, Bion, and other psychoanalysts have ventured ("heretically") into Jungian territory to develop post-Freudian theory.  In fact, they did this without giving any credit to Jung whatsoever.  Not that they stole from Jung, but they never considered that pieces of Jung should be taken into psychoanalysis to fill out its gaps.

Psychoanalytic Jungians are always going on and on about these psychoanalysts with Jungian-like ideas and implying that this is a demonstration of growing merger between the two tribes.  But this interpretation doesn't jibe with the fact that these same psychoanalysts with "Jungian" ideas gave no credit to Jung for them.  And who really cares if they had Jungian-like ideas?  Jung's thinking on the same issues was still at least as sophisticated.  I don't think Jungians need Winnicott or Bion anymore than Winnicott and Bion needed Jung.  The whole courting of psychoanalysis just seems complexed to me.  There shouldn't be a courting.  There should be a professional relationship with a thorough understanding of the history of Jungian/Freudian relations.

Best,
Matt

[Matt Koeske]

That sounds more like what Medard Boss thought of dreams, and wanted in some way to let go of the interpretive violence that analysis entails.

I haven't read boss, but looked up this summary of his dream theory by Dr. C. George Boeree.

Dreams

Boss has studied dreams more than any other existentialist, and considers them important in therapy.  But instead of interpreting them as Freudians or Jungians do, he allows them to reveal their own meanings.  Everything is not hiding behind a symbol, hiding from the always-present censor.  Instead, dreams show us how we are illuminating our lives:  If we feel trapped, our feet will be bound by cement; if we feel free, we will fly; if we feel guilty, we will dream about sin; if we feel anxious, we will be chased by frightening things.

For example, Boss discusses a man who was having sexual difficulties and feeling quite depressed.  During the first months of his therapy, he dreamed only of machinery -- not unusual for an engineer, but not terribly exciting, either.  As his therapy progressed, his dreams changed.  He began to dream of plants.  Then he dreamt of insects -- dangerous, perhaps, and threatening, but at least alive.  Then he dreamt of frogs and snakes, then of mice and rabbits.  For some time, pigs were featured.

Two years into therapy, and finally he began to dream of women!  This man was sad and lonely because he had retreated to a world made up only of machinery, and it took a long time before he could dream of anything quite so warm-blooded as a woman!  The point to notice is that the pigs don't represent anything -- not hidden wishes, or archetypes, or inferiorities -- in the therapist's pet theory.  They belong to the engineer; They are what his evolving illumination brought to light at that time in his life!

This quote misunderstands Jung's dream theory as being like Freud's.  Obviously, this author isn't really familiar with Jung's thought.  Jung was constantly banging his drum about throwing out psychological theories about dreams before engaging in a dream analysis.  Each dream has it own internal logic.

And as for archetypes, they aren't read into dreams like Freud's Oedipal theory was.  They are used in amplification of dreams.  In other words, they are held up as parallels.  Jung, typically, is by no means perfect in his adherence to his own insistence that dreams say what they mean (albeit in densely packed or symbolic language).  Also, one cannot entirely throw out all one knows about dreams before engaging in the analysis of one (nor should one).  But on an intuitive level, I think he was right.  Dreams should define the theories about them, not vice versa.

We shouldn't look into every dream for an anima or shadow or hero of Demon.  But sometimes, patterns in dreams emerge that parallel archetypal categories.  This happens especially during individuation events.  And an analysis that holds up the archetypal patterns to the individual's dreams astutely may be able to help shed light on the dreams for the dreamer.  I've seen this happen time and again.  It doesn't require an interpretation.  It's like making a metaphor.  The dream says s/he dreamed such and such, and the analyst says, "That reminds me of this fairytale pattern", etc.

[The Old Spirit]

  The dream says s/he dreamed such and such, and the analyst says, "That reminds me of this fairytale pattern", etc.

Thats quite accurate, But I think that that's the sort of mechanics or analytics of pattern is what he Medard Boss contests. For example, he would not see any significant difference in Freud's analysis and Jungs Analytics in so far as the understanding of that understanding goes.

Medard Boss problematizes Plato and post Platonic or neo-platonic methods by which one arrives at an understanding of being, or by which an understanding of being is achieved through the metaphysics of eidos. In Jungs case this would be his Analytics and positing of various meta concepts and neo-logism such as the psyche, the collective unconscious on which the signifier and the signified relation is achieved by the access enabling eidos.
 
Taking hints from the pre-Socratic understanding of Being, for example Heraclitus statements such as : "This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep. (DK 22B1)

    For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding. (DK 22B2)"
He Medard Boss, thus arrived at the understanding that analysis is already guided from the outset and so forces knowhow rather than letting things arrive on their own,  by projecting, or already from the outset superimposing a meaning "over and above" what is concealing the being which Heidegger called "Presence-ing"  where the answer is already answered by posing the question in a certain sort of way, which gives rise to epistemic violence.

I would translate the above background of intelligibility or Being as something like this:
For example, when someone hands you a coke bottle you know what to so with it, you may politely refuse it or you may drink the content, and throw the bottle away, but suppose you give the bottle to a African tribe who knows nothing about coke bottles…Like in the Film “Gods must be crazy, where the character does not know what to do with it because one of the ways things become things, or meaningful is not through their own intrinsic self-sufficientness as in Descartes or through the -in itself, but rather they always stand in relation to context of other things to divine their being, in itself they are No-thing. Or nothing. To know is to understand of stand -under the Being that grants background intelligibility.

Its thing-ness (the coke bottle) is something dependent upon the totality of relations within which it has a being…you take them out of the totality of context in which it is what it is, it looses it being-ness. So the coke bottle in the film "Gods must be crazy" we see an aeroplane pass over head and the coke bottle landing, The Man picks it up but does not know what to do with the coke bottle and so in one sense, the coke bottle is not coke bottle anymore in a culture that lacks the background intelligence which grants the the coke bottle is a coke-bottle-ness. Its is a whistling device, a hammer etc, but never a coke bottle.

I don't think Jung fully understood what this Dasien is, though by mid 30's he did become aware of the Phenomenological position or stance but still preferred to walk in Descarten or Platonic dualism of subject and object, or the dualism of psyche and soma etc.

"...we are absolutely incapable of saying how the world is constituted in itself - and always shall be, since we are obliged to convert physical events into psychic processes as soon as we want to say anything about knowledge.But who can guarantee that this conversion produces anything like an adequate "objective" picture of the world? That could only be if the physical event were also a psychic one. But a great distance still seems to separate us from such an assertion..Till then, we must for better or worse content ourselves with the assumption that the psyche (like Platos eidos) supplies those images and forms which alone make knowledge of objects possible." (CW 9.i,par.116).

and we can already see a shift in his position.

"Suppose I ask you to stay in my house. I tell you that it is well built, comfortable; that our life is pleasant; that you will have good food. You can swim in the lake and walk in the garden. With these beliefs in your mind you decide to come, and you enjoy your stay. But suppose, when I ask you, I say to you: 'This house is unsafe. The foundations arc not secure. We have many earthquakes in this region. Besides all that, we have had illness here. Someone recently died of tuberculosis in this room.' Under those conditions and with these ideas in your mind, do you enjoy your stay in that house?...Naturally enough, in a world of this sort, everybody gets neurotic. Even if the house you live in is really safe, if you have the idea that it is not, you will suffer. Your reaction depends entirely on what you think. -“The soul of Modern Man” for the magazine “The Modern Thinker” NewYork august 1934.)

Further down:

“Jesus, you know, was a boy born of an unmarried mother. Such a boy is called illegitimate, and there is a prejudice which puts him at a great disadvantage. He suffers from a terrible feeling of inferiority for which he is certain to have to compensate. Hence the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, in which the kingdom was offered to him. Here he met his worst enemy, the power devil; but he was able to see that, and to refuse. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world.' But 'kingdom' it was, all the same. And you remember that strange incident, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the Cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body.
We all must do just what Christ did. We must make our experiment. We must make mistakes. We must live out our own vision of life. And there will be error. If you avoid error you do not live, in a sense even it may be said that every life is a mistake, for no one has found the truth. When we live like this we know Christ as a brother, and God indeed, becomes man. This sounds like a terrible blasphemy, but not so. For then only can we understand Christ as he would want to be understood, as a fellow man; then only does God Become man in ourself.
That’s sounds like religion, but it is not. I am speaking just as a philosopher. People sometimes call me an (eccentric psychologist) or a religious leader. I am not that. I have no message, no mission; I attempt only to understand.
We are Philosophers in the old sense of the word, lovers of wisdom.
So be human, seek understanding (not rules) seek insight, and make your hypothesis, your philosophy of life….We must ultimately become brothers of Christ. ( Jung, “Dream Symbols of the individuation process”, Five meetings Seminar NewYork ,. Speaking on: “Is analytical psychology a religion”. 16 to 26 October 1937(copyrighted material NewYork analytical club 1972).

Ps: The above concept of authentic living and resolute (individuated)Being has a parallel in the existentialism of Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” and “Heidegger phenomenology in “ Being and Time” and Nietzsche’s Zarathrustra (Ideas that were in air and in circulation in the philosophical circles.

Further Down: From his last public interview.
Question] Mustn’t we define the term “religious” rather more closely, or at least define the way you use it?
Jung] Well, we have to take it in a pretty wide sense.
Question] I was only thinking that when you say “God” it could also mean “Idol”
Jung] Yes, naturally it can mean all sorts of things, it can also be a mere word. But they still belong to the sphere of religion. (Interview of Jung on his eighty-fifth birthday 7 June 1960 by Georg Gerster, and broadcasted in 1966 5 June in remembrance of Jung’s death on 6 June 1961 (copyright _Georg Gerster)

I think Jung never could fully understand what the Phenomenal Background Intelligence was and how its coloured and saturated all our interpretation and understanding from the very outset.

[Enjolras]

Thats the problem chucking around a label 'post-modernist' it is a catch all phrase that allows for  carpet bombing. A straw man is being created when you can speak in terms of post-modernist values and ethos that paves over the many, many differences. Whilst I may agree with your criticism  on the level of individual theories, or how particular tenets of thought has developed in academia warning sirens sound when you think you can grasp ideas and values independent of actually reading the various works.

“In other words, I have a social psychological approach to post-modernism.  It is not a loose trend in academic thought, but a very strict identity group.  That post-modernism has (to the best of my knowledge) neglected to turn its ideas of social and identity construction upon its own groups and identities is the height of hypocrisy.”

This analysis is certainly something I agree with (asides from reservations already mentioned regarding your employment of post-modernism) with regard to particular theorists, some of which are quite prominent with what gets labled as post-modernism. Focualt immediately springs to mind in this regard, but then Spivak criticized Foucault specificly on this point – yet this does not mean that Focault's work has no use or that this tendency is confined with what is called 'post-modernism'. 

“I am not claiming that you are wrong that data and theory are in separable, but I do not agree (with the postmodernist program) that this essential relationship inherently invalidates scientific inquiry.”

I never claimed such a thing. How you characterise 'post-modern' approach to science certainly is applicable to how some theories are developed yet bears no resemblance to great swathes of what I have read.


“So, I'm sure you can see a trend in my thought: I tend to see schools of thought as tribal (whether Jungian, Freudian, post-modernist, or otherwise).  The rhetoric of these tribes, from my perspective, is dogma.  It is not directed at "truth-seeking" or knowing objects.  Rather, it is a matter of constructing identity.  Use the right words (and invoke the right authorities) and you belong to the tribe.  Identity is language.”

What is interesting for me about your concern with tribes (dogma) is how it taps into a well established platonic lineage, between the loaded distinction between philosophy/sophistry. Governing this distinction are presuppositions regarding a natural plenitude verses artificial supplement,from the inside of truth verses outside of truth. My interest is not in disputing what belongs on  what side, but in showing how the latter (the external artificial supplement) is considered as a unnecessary supplement to plenitude (of truth, objects) can nevertheless be seen as supplementing a lack. Derrida's Dissemination I found particularly compelling on this point, this link... http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/pharmacy.html does a reasonably good job of a summary of the different steps of the argument.

As an example of such a displacement in yours (and Jung's) thought we do not need to look further than...

“That is "amplification".  The danger of this is that the parallel logics are themselves often dependent on interpretations and may very well have nothing to do with one another.  That's another topic, though . . . and I will only suggest that functional amplification is an art form, perhaps more like poetry than science.”

Here, poetry and art (also alchemy) supplement science, but whose supplementary movement is obscured by recourse to theory/practice divide. The elephant in the room of course the distinction made between individual/collective unconscious.

“I think the general feeling (though it is sometimes hard for true believers in their theory to admit it), is that the therapeutic effect relies mostly on the rapport between analyst and patient.”

Yes we agree, this is where I find the limit to both Jung and Freud and why I  find phenomenological psychology interesting as it grapples with the implications of this.   

“I don't think this is actually valid.  I.e., I don't think it is valid that a lack of awareness of the way data are yoked to a series of commitments that allow data to be presented as data, "reifies data".  This I take to be a statement of dogmatic belief that is not based on actual evidence.”

What you are conflating here, from my perspective, is the difference between Being/beings. You do not explore the conditions of possibility of a particular being i.e. evidence.  This supposes a granting of pertinence to transcendental arguments. 'Reifies data' is perhaps poor on my part as it assumes the presence of data which then goes on to become fixed, when it is actually a question of what The Old Spirit called 'presencing '.

Billy