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July 22, 2018
The various stages of the alchemical process suggest to a therapist aspects of the therapeutic process: fermentatio, when something is brewing up as the ‘chemical’ reactions of the therapy process get under way, involving changes in both participants; nigredo, a darkening of mood and a realisation of the problems ahead, often taking the form in therapy of a depression occurring soon after its commencement; mortificatio – something must die in the client (i.e., change, wither away, shift) and probably in the therapist as well before any healing or change is possible.
(For a fuller treatment of the topic of alchemy see Samuels 1989: 175–193; Schwartz-Salant 1995; and Chapter 12 by Stanton Marlan in this volume.)
The Plural Psyche
Sexuality, intercourse, anatomy, are all intended to be taken as metaphors for aspects of psychological development.
he writes of eros as an archetypal principle of psychological functioning – connectedness, relatedness, harmony and named for Eros the lover of Psyche and son of Aphrodite. Sometimes the principle of eros is referred to as a ‘feminine’ principle and this implies a complementary relationship with a ‘masculine’ principle, logos – the word, rationality, logic, intellect, achievement).
in a consideration of the therapeutic process one has at least three important relations to consider – the interactive one, and the two internal ones.
Being ‘in’ the therapy also emphasises the woundedness of the therapist. When referring to the idea of ‘the wound healer’, there is more involved than the ordinary idea that therapists are damaged persons who have become therapists for good unconscious reasons of their own.
The idea of the wounded healer implies that the therapist must be wounded, recognise that, and do something constructive stemming from those wounds in relation to the client.
writer who has best expressed this phenomenon is the psychoanalyst Harold Searles (1975) in his seminal paper ‘The pat...
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when working with a client, the therapist will be aware that the client needs opportunities to help or heal the therapist – without such opportunities, a crucial p...
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the therapist has to be open to the possibility of really being healed by the client which may mean accepting at depth that the client’s perceptions, far from being ‘transference projections’, may be accurate.
The therapist projects his or her wounded parts onto the client. The client projects his or her healthy/healer parts onto the therapist.
Arrow 4 signifies the therapist’s connection to his or her personal wounds.
we are referring to the therapist’s whole apperception of his or her life.
The client needs to get in touch, over time, with his or her healthy/healer parts, not only to be able to project them onto the therapist as part of an idealising transference.
there is a problem which is the mirror image of sexual misconduct when the therapeutic relationship is overly deprived of some kind of ‘erotic’ content – meaning something in the areas of warmth, intimacy, intensity and trust rather than overt sexual expression.
Moving on, the second specific topic I would like to address is how the transference-countertransference dynamics of the therapy couple may be addressed in supervision.
Therapeutic work is exceedingly stressful for both participants and both are subjected to the usual range of stress-related, psychogenic and psychosomatic illnesses, ranging from disorders of the musculature and the skeleton (the ‘bad back’ so many therapists suffer from) to heart disease, arthritis and, maybe, some cancers. Not nearly enough research has been done into this topic
let us not forget the vulnerability of the therapist in which the permeability of his or her ego boundaries that permitted the transference projection to penetrate also contributes to a real and sometimes awful suffering caused by the projection.
Some, including myself, would argue that this is indeed a simulacrum and a reprise of a relation to the divine.
the alchemists also prayed for the success of their work in another room – an oratorium and written above the door they posted the words Deo concedente
An exaggeratedly professional attitude not only misses the humanity of the analytical encounter but also leads to a state of hubris or inflation on the part of the analyst that can injure the work that she or he believes in.
Dieckmann, H. (1974) ‘The constellation of the countertransference’, in G. Adler (ed.) Success and Failure in Analysis. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Kirsch, J. (1995) ‘Transference’, in M. Stein (ed.) Jungian Analysis. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Papadopoulos, R. (1984) ‘Jung and the concept of the Other’, in R. Papadopoulos and G. Saayman (eds) Jung in Modern Perspective. London: Wildwood.
——— (1998) ‘Jungian perspectives in new contexts’, in A. Casement (ed.) Post Jungians Today: Key Papers in Contemporary Analytical Psychology. London and New York: Routledge.
——— (2002) ‘The other other: when the exotic other subjugates the familiar other’. Journal of Analytic...
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Perry, C. (1997) ‘Transference’, in P. Young-Eisendrath and T. Dawson (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Jung. Cambr...
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Peters, R. (1991) ‘Transference as a fetish’. Free Associ...
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Plaut, A. (1956) ‘The transference in analytical psychology’, in M. Fordham with others (eds) (1974) Technique in Jungian Analysis. London: Heinemann.
Aquí habla Plaut de la idea de encarnar le imagen Arquetipal en la transferencia
Plaut, A. (1970) ‘Comment: on not incarnating the archetype’, in M. Fordham with others (eds) (1974) Technique in Jungian Analysis. London: Heinemann.
——— (1989) The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father. London and New York: Routledge.
——— (1993) The Political Psyche. London and New York: Routledge.
En las páginas 43 a 46 Samuels habla de la dificultades de entender la contratransferencia como un órgano de comunicación:
So there are these five anxieties about countertransference: Anxiety
about the analyst’s neurosis, anxiety about the political legitimacy of
using countertransference, anxiety about the ethical consequences of
breaking the frame, anxiety about the accuracy of depending solely on
countertransference which could also feed patients’ fantasies about
the analyst’s magical powers, or persecute the patient, anxiety about
getting confused. Yet, in spite of the existence of these anxieties, many
if not all of the clinicians that I know continue to understand their
subjective reactions to the patient as if they were, in the broadest
possible metaphorical terms, communications from the patient’s
unconscious. In other words, in spite of the anxiety and the shadow
issues, we go on working with countertransference, no matter what
terms we use to define this process or what caveats we enter about it
Schwartz-Salant, N. (1984) ‘Archetypal factors underlying sexual acting-out in the transference/countertransference process’. in N. Schwartz-Salant and M. Stein (eds) Transference/countertransference. Wilmette, IL: Chiron.
——— (1995) ‘Introduction’, in N. Schwartz-Salant (ed.) C.G. Jung on Alchemy. London: Routledge; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sedgwick, D. (1994) The Wounded Healer: Countertransference from a Jungian Perspective. London and New York: Routledge.
Totton, N. (2000) Psychotherapy and Politics. London: Sage.
Young-Eisendrath, P. and Dawson, T. (eds) (1997) The Cambridge Companion to Jung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Explica en extensión lo quité cada escuela junguiana significa de cara a la práctica (89-222)
Introducing the term in his esoteric, anonymously published little book Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead) in 1915, Jung deepened and expanded the idea in the much revised work, also begun in the same period, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW 7) and in the summary work of the early period, Psychological Types (CW 6). Later he added further substance to the notion in his studies of archetypes and especially in his researches on alchemy. He detailed individuation clinically in his seminars (Analytical Psychology, Dream Analysis, Visions and Nietzsche’s ‘Zarathustra’) as
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Individuation was taken up as a central theme by nearly all of Jung’s important students. Major contributions were made to the theory by Fordham (1969), who studied individuation in children, and by Neumann (1955), who saw individuation as unfolding in three major stages, each containing several sub-phases.
Hillman, a Jungian deconstructionist, has vigorously attacked the notion of psychological development in general and individuation in particular, holding a view that such ideas are nothing but fa...
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Most of the basic concepts of analytical psychology come from Jung’s experiences with active imagination.
Jung referred to active imagination as his ‘analytical method of psychotherapy’ (1975: 222).
Active imagination may include work with the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship, that is, the transference as active imagination (Jung 1916/1958: par. 186; Davidson 1966).
Davidson, D. (1966) ‘Transference as a form of active imagination’. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 11(2):135–146.
