Carl Gustav Jung

177 Pages·2001·9.79 MB·English

by  Carl Gustav

CARL GUSTAV
Key Figures in Counselling
and Psychotherapy
Series editor: Windy Dryden
The Key Figures in Counselling and Psychotherapy series of
books provides a concise, accessible introduction to the lives,
contributions and influence of the leading innovators whose
theoretical and practical work has had a profound impact
on counselling and psychotherapy. The series includes
comprehensive overviews of:
Sigmund Freud
by Michael Jacobs
Eric Berne
by Ian Stewart
Carl Rogers
by Brian Thorne
Melanie Klein
by Julia Segal
Fritz Perls
by Petrüska Clarkson and Jennifer Mackewn
Aaron T. Beck
by Marjorie E. Weishaar
Albert Ellis
by Joseph Yankura and Windy Dryden
Joseph Wölpe
by Roger Poppen
George Kelly
by Fay Fransella
D. W. Winnicott
by Michael Jacobs
/. L. Moreno
by A. Paul Hare and June Rabson Hare
Milton H. Erickson
by Jeffrey K. Zeig and W. Michael Munion
Carl Gustav Jung
by Ann Casement
CARL GUSTAV
Ann Casement
SAGE Publications
London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi
© Ann Casement 2001
First published 2001
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
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ISBN 0 7619 6237 9
ISBN 0 7619 6238 7 (pbk)
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Contents
Preface vi
1 The Life of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) 1
2 Jung's Major Theoretical Contributions 39
3 Jung's Major Practical Contributions 79
4 Criticisms and Rebuttals 103
5 The Overall Influence of Carl Gustav Jung 135
A Select Bibliography of Jung's Major Writing 161
References 163
Index 166
Preface
The past is terribly real and present. (Jung, 1963: 108)
Jung's contribution to psychology and to the history of ideas has
stood at the centre of my life since 1964 when I started my first
Jungian analysis in London. This led many years later to my
training as a Jungian analyst. I have often heard people referring to
Jung's writings as 'mystical'and 'impenetrable', and am only too
aware of the challenge of trying to make them accessible without
over-simplifying the essential complexity of his approach. Related
to this, it is vital not to do damage to these ideas by too hasty a
summary and, while writing this, I have tried to keep before me
what Jung wrote in Latin in one of my supervisors, Gerhard
Adler's, copy of the first book of the English Collected Works,
Psychology and Alchemy. 'All haste is of the devil'. This was an
expression of his dissatisfaction with the finished product which
had been years in the making.
It is also important to note here that although this account is
written with respect for a remarkable man, it is not a hagiography
but contains aspects of Jung's shadow. I have increasingly come to
realize how important his own work in the area of shadow is for
humankind's present and future. My own growing fascination with
shadow aspects of psyche has resulted in my writing and lecturing
about them. To quote Jung himself: 'It fares with us all as with
Brother Medardus in Hoffmann's tale The Devil's Elixir: some-
where we have a sinister and frightful brother, our own flesh-and-
blood counterpart, who holds and maliciously hoards everything
that we would so willingly hide under the table' (Jung, 1966: 39).
And elsewhere: 'Wholeness is not so much perfection as com-
pleteness . . . Recognition of the shadow is reason enough for
humility, for genuine fear of the abysmal depths in man' (Jung,
1966: 239).
On the other hand, this book is not an exercise in desecrating
Jung along the lines of the kind of tabloid sensationalism that has
been written about him in recent times. Although it touches on the
Preface vii
subject of the women in his life, it has to be said that there is no
clear-cut evidence to support allegations that Jung had affairs with
women patients and it is important to bear in mind that he was
above all a moralist. Another highly controversial area surrounding
Jung is the charge of Nazism combined with anti-Semitism and a
selective coverage of the responsible literature on the subject is
explored in the course of the book.
The Jungian community is a large, heterogeneous mix composed
of countless numbers of people. The specialized practitioners make
up a small proportion of this and, at the moment of writing, 2,300
analytical psychologists are gathered together under the umbrella of
the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP)
which has its headquarters in Zurich, whilst many other practi-
tioners are not members of the IAAP. These all use different titles to
describe themselves, for example, 'analytical psychologist', 'Jungian
analyst', 'Jungian psychoanalyst', 'Jungian psychotherapist', and
'therapist'. These practitioners mostly use the term 'patient' or
'analysand' for the individuals they work with therapeutically, so I
will be using these terms where necessary throughout the book.
I have made extensive use of the 20 volumes of the English
Collected Works of Jung published by Routledge. In some instances,
I have instead used the Princeton University Press edition. These 20
volumes were edited by Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham and
Gerhard Adler, and translated into English by R.F.C. Hull. They
encapsulate the evolution of Jung's interest as it transferred itself
from psychiatry through psychoanalysis and typology to the theory
of archetypes held together by his abiding interest in the psychology
of religious motifs.
I would like to thank Princeton University Press, Random House
Group and Taylor & Francis - incorporating Routledge - for their
kind permission in allowing me to use lengthy extracts from the
Freud/Jung Letters edited by William McGuire.
A word of caution is in order here with regard to all the pub-
lished writings of Jung, including the Collected Works. All of these
differ from the unpublished original manuscripts according to the
Jung scholar, Sonu Shamdasani, and, in some cases the difference is
marked. Another point worth noting is that there are in existence
more than 20,000 unpublished letters by Jung.
In this book, I am not attempting to cover Jung's vast opus or
the myriad formative encounters he had with other disciplines. I
have made my own selection in both these areas and hope the end
result might stimulate the reader's interest in analytical psychology.
Although many of the terms that Jung used in his approach to
the psyche are now in everyday usage, for example, extravert and
viii Carl Gustav jung
introvert, these are used by him in a specific way. In order to
elucidate what Jung was writing about, the book includes defini-
tions of his main concepts.
Finally, a brief word on the writing style adopted in the book: in
trying to avoid clumsy devices like 'his/her' or 'he/she', I have used
'their' or 'they' where necessary. Jargon terms are set in italics
except for those that are in everyday usage like 'ego'.
Although I have been steeped in Jungian thinking and practice
for many years, writing this account of Jung's life and work has
inevitably become a kind of journey of my own. I am grateful to
my friend and colleague, Windy Dryden, the editor of this series,
for affording me the opportunity of re-discovering and re-affirming
what drew me - albeit unwittingly, in the first instance - to Jung
and to the world of analytical psychology. Jung's writing is the
leitmotif that runs throughout this book but I am also indebted to
the many other writers whose ideas have contributed to it. I would
particularly like to thank John Beebe, Robert Hinshaw, Thomas
Kirsch, Robert Segal and Sonu Shamdasani, who have been an
invaluable resource whilst this book has been taking shape. The
responsibility for the final product lies entirely with myself.
Ann Casement
1
The Life of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my
wilful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my
subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of
my life for better or worse. (Edinger, 1986: 32)
The Symbolic Life
Jung's whole approach to living centred around leading a symbolic
life guided by the symbolic language revealed in dreams. In this way,
the individual could reach a degree of self-understanding which
would lead to a full and meaningful life. Jung's view was that any
individual coming into therapy was ultimately in quest of a spiritual
solution to their problems and that this resolution could only
come through developing a capacity for symbolization. It is this
that is at the centre of Jung's approach, which he called 'analytical
psychology'.
Jung was aware of the decreasing influence of religion and ritual
in the everyday life of most individuals and of the consequent
impoverishment of daily life. 'We have no symbolic life and we are
all badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can
express . . . the daily need of the soul. . . Everything is banal. . . and
that is the reason why people are neurotic' (Jung, 1977: 274).
Jung's definition of symbol is that it is 'the best possible descrip-
tion or formulation of a relatively unknown fact, which is none-
theless known to exist or is postulated as existing' (Jung, 1971:
474). Symbols are different at different historical epochs and, like
everything in life, symbols have their day and then cease to be. Their
function is to play a psychological mediatory and transitional role
through which they can add to the personality of an individual and
point attention to another position which may help to resolve an
individual's conflict.
Poignantly, Jung writes about the transitory nature of symbolism
in the following manner: 'We cannot turn the wheel backwards; we