Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2003, 48, 523–542

Journal reviews

Edited by Sam Naifeh and Norah Smith

SAYERS, JANET. ‘Marion Milner, mysticism and psychoanalysis’, International Journal

of Psychoanalysis, 2002, 83, 1, pp. 105–20.

This rich and readable paper explores the life and work of psychoanalyst Marion Milner
(1900–1998) with emphasis on her contribution to understanding mystical states of
mind in relation to psychoanalysis. Sayers skilfully traces the evolving threads of
Milner’s ideas as they weave through the course of her long and wide-ranging life, leav-
ing the reader with a real sense of their relation to Milner’s own individuation process.
These ideas are concerned with ‘drawing attention to the potential for health and crea-
tivity in undoing the obstacles to mystical oneness with what she sometimes referred to
as God, the unconscious or the id’ (p. 106). Mystical states are presented as experiences
of ‘union’ which transcend the boundaries of self and other, past and present, inner and
outer. The central thread of Milner’s thinking, which Sayers extracts from various
writings, is that ‘creativity and psychological aliveness generally involve returning to the
infantile illusion of inner-outer fusion with our mothers and the world around us’
(p. 113). Sayers refers to other psychoanalysts, notably Bion, Winnicott, Coltart and
Eigen, who think about the capacity for experiencing mystical states as an aspect of psy-
chological aliveness. She also mentions the wariness of many psychoanalysts’ attitudes
to mystical experience and other regressive states characteristic of primary narcissism,
but does not elaborate. The basis for this seems to me to be an equation between patho-
logically narcissistic states such as psychosis, and those which are more benign in nature.
Milner’s understanding of the difference was hard won through her experience of her
own regressed states of mind, and the reader is left with a deep impression of her jour-
ney. Her ‘mystical’ perspective on regression is also offered by Bion’s ‘O’ and by Jung’s
‘Self’, and Sayers draws attention to the resonance between Bion’s and Milner’s work.
From this perspective, the ego’s capacity for ‘embracing nothingness’ which is funda-
mental to the creative psychological activity described in different ways by all three, is
rigidly defended against by the delusional elements characteristic of psychotic and other
malignantly regressed states. Milner thought that ‘obstacles’ to psychological aliveness
originate in insufficient experience of the illusion of fusion in infancy, premature
separation from it, or the fear of fusing with a mother experienced as dangerous. Hatred
and envy are also linked with environmental failure, and the environments of love, of
art, and of analysis offer the potential for these failures to be remedied in later life.
Although she was deeply influenced by Klein during her training, she apparently
departed from Kleinian thinking in this area by disregarding the idea of the death
instinct and its influence.
Milner had many psychological ‘obstacles’ of her own with which she contended.
Significantly, when she was 11, her father had a psychotic breakdown. This ‘made her

0021–8774/2003/4804/523 © 2003, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
524 Journal reviews

want to be clear about facts’, and she developed a capacity for detailed observation by
keeping nature diaries. Sayers implies that father’s breakdown, coupled with mother’s
tendency to depression and emotional unavailability, contributed to Milner’s wariness
in relation to her inner world and the emotional life inhabiting this world. Her vulner-
ability presented itself in the form of somatic illness, while her search for facts helped
her to maintain a manageable distance from the world of her feelings. Sayers suggests
that Milner was increasingly aware that ‘there was a gap in herself between knowing
and living’ (p. 108) while writing A Life of One’s Own, published in 1934 under a
pseudonym. What emerges in the paper is the courage with which she faced and sought
conditions within which these early splits in herself could heal. She found her work, her
creative activity as an artist and her experience of motherhood profoundly healing, as
well as her experiences of analysis.
Milner’s first experience of analysis, at the age of 27, was with a Jungian, Karin
Stephen, in Baltimore. Although this only lasted for four months, the resonance with
Jungian thinking which emerges in her ideas, as presented in the paper, suggests that
this influenced her deeply. Winnicott was evidently a figure with tremendous arche-
typal significance for Milner, whose significance was not analysed. She first met him in
1938 at a public lecture and this prompted her to go into analysis – not with him, but
with Sylvia Payne. She apparently described him as ‘Pegasus’, and was profoundly
influenced by him throughout her psychoanalytic training. Later, when Milner was
established as an analyst, he referred Susan, the schizophrenic patient who forms the
subject of her book The Hands of the Living God’ (1969), to her. At the time of the
referral, Susan was living with Winnicott and his wife.
Susan exemplifies the patient who fears and rigidly defends against the experience of
fusion, because fusion in infancy meant being one with a psychotic maternal object
who wished her dead. Milner felt that Susan needed analysis to be an environment
which could allow her ‘to go to pieces in order to come together in a new way’ and,
after 16 years of analysis, Susan said that she was now ‘in the world’ (pp. 116 & 117).
Milner went into analysis with Winnicott soon after starting Susan’s analysis.
Winnicott saw her in her own home, and terminated the analysis after a short time.
Sayers writes: ‘Milner reputedly burst into tears, to which he replied, “I didn’t know you
cared’’’ (p. 116). Over the next few years, the Winnicotts divorced, and Susan moved
out of their home. The ‘muddle’ with Winnicott and his wife seemed to form part of a
complex problem which analysis helped to resolve for Susan, and possibly for Winnicott,
but not for Milner. She went ‘briefly’ into analysis with Clifford Scott when the analy-
sis with Winnicott broke down, but it seems to me that her need for Winnicott to
offer her the kind of regressive experience she was able to offer to her patients went
unrecognized. Sayers reports that Milner was ‘worried’ when Susan rang her many
years after the end of her analysis and said ‘Winnicott failed you, and you failed me’
(p. 118). Apparently she was still worried on the eve of her death.
Sayers presents Milner’s approach to analysis through vignettes from some of
Milner’s published case material. A paper published in 1952 vividly illustrates the links
she was discovering between psychoanalytic and mystical thinking in her analytic work
with an eleven year old boy, Simon. Sayers summarizes Milner’s understanding that
‘what he found most helpful in his analysis with her was her making it into a setting in
which it was safe illusorily to fuse with, mould and treat her as though she were a bit of
him so he could bear to recognise her and external reality generally . . . as separate from
and other than himself’ (p. 114). She understood that the early experience of ‘a distress-
ing gap between the beginning and end of his feed’, which came about because his
mother had insufficient milk and the supplementary bottle was often not prepared in
time for him to have a continuous feeding experience, had thwarted his developmental
requirement of the ‘cosmic bliss’ of being one with his mother. He defended against the

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 525

‘catastrophic chaos’ threatened by his longing for fusion by becoming prematurely

separate from his mother and others, seeking ‘to bully them into conforming with his
will’, in order to obliterate the experience of separation (pp. 113 & 114). Sayers describes
vividly aspects of Simon’s use of the analytic setting which enabled him to experience
the illusion of fusion with Milner. These included the use of substances and objects.
Having engaged meaningfully with doodling, drawing, and painting herself, Milner
was aware of the benign regressive potentials afforded by these activities within analysis
and was eventually a significant influence in the evolution of the art therapy profession.
It is impossible to do justice to this paper’s masterly exposition of Milner’s life and
work here, and I would suggest that it is well worth reading. Not only is this a portrait
of a talented and influential analyst, it is also an investigation of the nature of mystical
states of mind, and of the potential role of art within analysis. As a final comment,
however, I marvel at the fact that Sayers makes no reference to Jungian thought despite
the fact that Milner, as described in this paper, presents a Jungian perspective so clearly
and consistently. This leaves us to make the links ourselves.

Katherine Killick
Society of Analytical Psychology

COHEN, MIRIAM. ‘Convergence: maturation and integration in the course of a religious

conversion’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 2002, 30, 3,
pp. 383–400.

This paper by Dr. Cohen looks at the process of religious conversion from a psycho-
analytic perspective examining a book by Judith Bruder (1993), Convergence: A Recon-
ciliation of Judaism and Christianity in the Life of One Woman. In this narrative,
Bruder described her relationship to God as beginning in an early identification with
the Judaic God of her father experienced in the presence of men at temple and the
resplendent light emanating from the ark, which she referred to as God’s Shekinah. At
the same time, she described her mother’s God as fearsome, associated with magical
things in an unsafe world: ‘household idols’, jealous of ‘all human happiness, beauty,
and accomplishment and who must be constantly propitiated with protective rituals’.
During her life journey Bruder was introduced to Zen meditation and the mystic poetry
of John Donne, had several ‘big dreams’ that gave her direction, and recounted several
visionary experiences of the feminine aspect of God, imaged as dark woman or the
Virgin Mary. She also reported several powerful ‘epiphanies’ in which she felt that God
spoke directly to her.
Bruder preferred to use the word ‘convergence’ rather than ‘conversion’ to denote
her movement to Catholicism. She did not experience it as a reversal of who she was
but as a convergence in which ‘two things ordinarily thought of as incompatible were
meeting’ (p. 395). In this convergence not only was there a reconciliation between her
childhood Judaism and adult Catholicism, but also an integration of the patriarchal
God image of father and Church with the missing feminine of mother through her
visionary and dream experiences.
Cohen’s review of the current psychoanalytic view of religion is worth the price of
admission. It appears that the reduction of religious experience to an illusion based in
infantile origins still holds sway with many psychoanalysts. Although now this stance is
tempered by the acknowledgement that the ‘oceanic feeling’ often associated with
religious and/or mystical experience can be adaptive as well as defensive. Cohen goes so
far as to state, ‘Freud did not seem to consider that a deeply held religious faith might
integrate the maternal (experiential) and paternal (intellectual and ritualistic) or that

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
526 Journal reviews

religious experience might serve more adaptive functions, that is that the ‘illusion’ may
reflect a deeper psychological reality and might be based on something very basic to
human nature’ (p. 385).
Cohen also states that some object-relational thinkers have used Winnicott’s concept
of transitional space as a way of approaching religious experience. From this point of
view, religious experience can be seen as a creative act similar to the creation of tran-
sitional space ‘between the infant’s original psychological sense of omnipotence in a
mother’s protective embrace and the reality of its need for protection’ (p. 385). They also
posit the existence of an internal psychological structure that represents the individual’s
relationship to god, a god representation if you will, and that this structure undergoes a
developmental sequence throughout life. Cohen even notes a provocative argument by
one theorist that this internal god image must reflect an objective reality – ‘God is not
merely father (or mother) and cannot be reduced to the image of an individual’s parents
or one’s cultural images’ (p. 387). A god representation, an imago dei, in the psyche
that has objective reality! Those wacky psychoanalytic theorists! Where do they get
such ideas?
Most Jungians would be quite at home with the material presented by Bruder. While
genetic material regarding the parental complexes may be worked on in a regressive analy-
sis in order to understand their part in her childish notions of religion, the tension of
the opposites, ‘coniunctio’ energy, manifesting in the polarities of the masculine and
feminine is readily identifiable. The struggle with holding this tension throughout
Bruder’s life could finally manifest in Self experiences: the voice of God directing her
to change, resulting in a personal type of Catholicism that unites the opposites as seen
in her description of the symbol of the blood of Christ. For Bruder, this image united
the masculine and feminine: ‘Didn’t anyone ever notice the femininity of Jesus as he
hung helpless on the cross pierced by a soldier’s spear thrust, spilling his water and
blood?’ (p. 395). Her use of the word convergence echoes the operation of the tran-
scendent function as described by Jung. As a matter of fact, she mentioned Jung as an
early influence and stated that she had been in psychotherapy for some crucial parts of
her transition. Her use of ‘big dreams’ and focus on the polarities of the masculine and
feminine suggest that she actually may have been in a Jungian-oriented therapy.
Cohen mentions that some of Bruder’s material, particularly the experience of the
direct intervention of God, could be interpreted as psychotic. But Cohen backs off this
view and states that some of her material is ‘mythic’ with a ‘numinous quality’ and
seems ‘to be not the product of her own personal unconscious but something that
comes to her’. Later Cohen states that some of the content of Bruder’s experiences
could have been from something she had read, studied or learned somewhere ‘as well as
from the common source of mythic images that Jung termed the collective uncon-
scious’. Finally, a direct reference to Jung in an area extensively explored by analytical
psychology. But when one looks at the list of references not a single Jungian, let alone
Jung himself, is noted. Now where is the academic and scholarly integrity in that?
Granted, that if Cohen searched for ‘inner god representation’ in the Jungian literature
she would have been inundated with material. But that hardly is a reason to leave out
any Jungian references.
The problem with relegating religious experience to yet another instance of tran-
sitional phenomena, though light-years beyond the ‘nothing but’ reductionism to infan-
tile origins, is that it still harkens back to the successful navigation of the early
mothering relationship. Albeit the new ‘illusion’ of the omnipotent infant is given more
positive connotations, it still emanates from a basically grandiose infantile situation.
Object relations theory has great facility in helping to understand how an object or
person functions to fulfil early relational deficits, but fails miserably at explaining why
a particular content can assume such personal power.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 527

The beauty of Jung’s schema is that it acknowledges objective content arising from
collective sources and not just from grandiose/omnipotent spaces. This material, when
it appears, provides the individual with images that are not solely determined by early
childhood experiences. The tension between holding how objects function and the
specific form that they take can begin to create an inner sense of direction for the indi-
vidual. The overall process is called individuation. It is the integration of the parental
complexes and other dominant complexes as well as the transformation and matur-
ation of the internal representation of the God image – the Self.
Perhaps there is a ‘convergence’ happening between the psychoanalytic and other
analytical schools, at least regarding the function of religion and spirituality in the
psyche. Now if only those psychoanalytic thinkers could acknowledge it.

Reference
Bruder, J (1993). Convergence: A Reconciliation of Judaism and Christianity in the
Life of One Woman. New York: Doubleday.

August J. Cwik
Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts

HAYNES, JANE. ‘The dread and divinity of dreams’, Journal of the British Association of
Psychotherapists, 2002, 40, 1, pp. 1–14.

One of the most wondrous things about dreams, for Jane Haynes, is their autonomy:
‘Did my imagination really create this dream, or was it created for me?’ (p. 9). Imagin-
ation? Objective psyche? Created from where? The questions are mine rather than hers,
but this engaging paper brings them and others crowding in, and stimulates other
amplifications too. This is what dreams do, perhaps. They can not only ‘bring analyst
and analysand into a new and unique relationship to themselves and to one another’
(p. 2), but also kindle – as anyone who has participated in any dream discussion has
surely experienced – a unique shared energy among the participants.
Haynes is clear about what her own approach is not: ‘Like Freud I regard dreams as
a, if not the, royal highway to the unconscious. I make use of his technique of free
association and pay attention to the latent content of dreams, but that is where our
agreement ends’ (p. 1, her italics). She is not convinced that The Interpretation of
Dreams was the gift that depth psychologists have considered it, not least for the way
in which it has, she feels, obscured much of the dream theory that preceded it. She
herself honours the Romantics, and in particular Coleridge’s theory of the imagination,
in which she sees a convincing forerunner of Jung’s technique of active imagination.
I am also grateful to her for a delightful quotation from William Hazlitt’s essay on
dreams, which predates Freud’s by a clear century and, as she says, offers its own the-
ory of dream censorship and repression: ‘We are not hypocrites in our sleep. The curb
is taken from our passions and our imagination wanders at will. When awake we check
these rising thoughts, and fancy we have them not. In dreams we are off our guard,
they return securely and unbidden’ (Hazlitt 1900, quoted p. 5).
The provision of a space in which dreams may once more ‘return securely’, and now
invited, are surely central to the psychotherapeutic task. Haynes evokes the ancient art
of incubation to describe her own work of analysis as ‘an ongoing dream incubator’
and to see that ‘the setting of the consulting room, the protected space, or Jung’s
concept of the temenos has a function similar to those sacred theatres in Greece where

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
528 Journal reviews

the citizens also incubated their dreams’ (p. 5). The comparison is irresistible to me too,
but I suspect it takes us in rather different directions. For those citizens who after ritual
purification stretched themselves out in drugged sleep, it was the visitation of a God
that they prayed for, and the divine message would itself be the healing, without any
discussion or interpretation. For me, this leads directly to Jung’s own theories: ‘night
after night, our dreams practise philosophy on their own account’ (Jung 1953/1968,
para. 247). My own starting point is that in all our dreams, called or not called, the
gods who are now archetypal energies are somewhere imaged; and that ‘the dream is
a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the uncon-
scious’ (Jung 1960/1969, para. 505; his italics). So the amplification of dream images
is an essential honouring of those energies, which is in itself probably more healing
and energizing than any conscious ‘understanding’ of the dream.
So Haynes and I would certainly agree that leaping in ‘with a subjective comment or
an interpretation’ (p. 9) is hardly to do honour to the dream. I share her recognition of
how often she can make links between people’s dreams and other narratives they claim
to have forgotten – and her ensuing willingness ‘to assist in the linking of their unique
chain of being’ rather than to make an independent interpretation (p. 10). For her,
however, ‘the most important element of dream work is not so much in interpretation
as in the ways in which the dream may function as a unique object in the intersubjective
analytic discourse’ (p. 9). How far is this from a comment of Jung’s in a letter to James
Kirsch in 1934: ‘In the deepest sense we all dream not out of ourselves but out of what
lies between us and the other’? (Jung 1973, p. 172; his italics). It all depends what the
deepest sense means here. At the level of the collective unconscious, Jung’s statement
cannot but be true, and it is this level that accords with my own predilection for the
dream as portrayal of ‘the actual situation in the unconscious’ – itself always unplumb-
able. Haynes is talking of something different, however, and this is where she and I
may take somewhat different paths. She takes the dreams that some analysands have at
the beginnings of analysis as of great significance vis-à-vis the transference for instance
(p. 10); my own preference is to see these initial dreams as above all time-defying
statements about the work of objective psyche that the analysis will unfold.
Of course transference (and countertransference) will also play their part in that
work, and there are some moving examples here of how the analyst – and also her
‘imagined husband’ – have appeared in analysands’ dreams as healing figures. But for
me, there is a question too. One of these examples offers both a ‘starting’ and an
‘ending’ dream in the analysis of a woman in her early twenties. In the second, the
figure of the analyst is unambiguously present, and her handing back of the analysand’s
dropped purse, its wrinkles smoothed, is a beautiful image of the work’s completion. In
the first dream, however, the helpful figure is not the analyst, but rather an old house-
keeper: ‘as she narrates she looks shyly across at me and says, “Like you”’ (p. 11). That
comment, together with the housekeeper’s crucial role in finding the dreamer’s specta-
cles, may make the identification almost indisputable. But ‘like you’ is still not ‘you’. I
find I want to hold on to the difference, to the psychic truth that there is, in this young
woman, and from the start of the analysis, an inner ‘housekeeper’ who is independent
of the analyst.
None of this is to say, however, that Haynes is interested only in transference aspects
of dreams. Her other examples can take us very far in speculation about their nature.
One man’s dream that his mother’s ghost returned to demand the burial of her ashes
heralded valuable work which culminated in his becoming ‘a more creative mother to
himself’ (p. 8). For me, such dreams at least raise the sorts of questions Jung was
addressing at the end of his autobiography, when his understanding of ‘ghosts’ as
inevitably only inner figures was no longer so sure (Jung 1963). In another example, a
man dreamed of a terrifying descent into his parents’ grave; the possibility that this was

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 529

in fact a premonition of his own unexpected death within a year, is one that Haynes,
with hindsight, does not dismiss (p. 13).
Such speculations, like Bottom’s dream, like psyche itself, are bottomless. I have said
enough here, I hope, to indicate how much there is in this paper to entice and engage us
in exploring those depths to which dreams themselves invite us.

References
Hazlitt, W. (1900). The Essays. London: Odhams Press.
Jung, C. G. (1953/1968). Psychology and Alchemy. CW 12.
—— (1960/1969). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. CW 8.
—— (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
—— (1973). Letters. Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Ann Shearer
Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists

CAMBRAY, JOSEPH. ‘Synchronicity and emergence’ American Imago, 2002, 59, 4,

pp. 409–34.

In this paper published in a psychoanalytic journal founded by Sigmund Freud and

Hans Sachs in 1939, Joseph Cambray expands the analytic approach based on synchron-
icity. Synchronicity shows how scientific thought on emergence and adaptation works
in psychology. Exploring emergence, Cambray discerns psychological depth in syn-
chronicity not previously realized. Understanding his new synthesis of clinical practice
with scientific conceptions requires review of the technical terms relating synchronicity
to emergence.
Synchronicity and emergence denote developmental change. Developmental dynam-
ics in the context of psychic energy have thematically dominated analytical psychology
from its founding, with its model of individuation in the context of adaptation.
In synchronicity or meaningful coincidence, change happens through accidental
occurrence of a psychical with an outer event in which connections emanate through
perception of meaning, potentially motivating change.
In emergence, evolutionary development shows successively higher levels of complex-
ity coming out of lower levels, and the higher level cannot be reduced to the lower one.
Generally, higher level properties are regarded as emergent. A motor car is an emergent
property of its interconnected parts. That property disappears if the parts are disassem-
bled and placed in a pile. Further, the lower level does not necessarily ‘cause’ or deter-
mine the higher level of complexity. Thus development takes place by a new order or
pattern supervening a prior one, much as psychology of archetypes recognizes how a
new order of psychological reality supervenes a previous personality organization or
complex.
An emergent developmental concept is not new to analytical psychology, which
conceives of growth occurring holistically, such as the archetypal pattern of sacrifice,
death, and rebirth. Rebirth means the supervention of a new image envisioned as a new
life (a new order) emerging out of the old. The organizing operation of the self
generates a new order of reality as a response to new demands or needs to adapt via
new creation.
Novelty or newness is an essential component of emergent development. Emergence
as a developmental concept is compatible with evolution and adaptation. Biologists like

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
530 Journal reviews

Stuart Kauffman (1995) utilize emergence as a means of understanding evolution from

simple physico-chemical forms to complex systems of adaptation:

Life in this view, emerged as whole and has always remained whole. Life, in this view, is not to
be located in its parts but in the collective emergent properties of the whole they (the parts)
created.
(p. 24)

The other key concept often associated with complex adaptive systems (CAS) and
emergence is that of a self-organizing property. Anyone familiar with physics, chemis-
try, and evolutionary biology quickly recognizes that both simple and complex systems
‘self-organize’, e.g., chemical reactions such as atoms forming into simple molecules
(H2O = water) and then simple molecules forming into complex molecules, and so on.
Each new step in evolutionary growth of complexity may initially occur at random;
however, the new patterns are orderly (self-organizing) and seem to recur within new
order ‘laws’ of nature, e.g., complex molecules into cells, one cell organisms organizing
into multi cell organisms.
Demonstrating the importance of perception and interpretation in science, scientists
have empirically observed that matter arrives at lower levels of energy (entropy) in an
orderly (self-organizing) manner. The common illustration for entropy is a closed
heated house in which a window or door is suddenly opened. Heat escapes the house in
an efficient and ordered (self-organized) rather than disordered, disorganized manner.
Consequently, scientists have revised the interpretation of matter’s so-called tendency
to disorder or, more aptly, toward lower energy (entropy) to focus on how matter
organizes itself efficiently in the process of arriving at lower energy states. Thus basic
physics deepened the understanding of the self-organizing property operating in
complex life systems by discerning evidence for the same characteristic in behaviour of
fundamental energy systems. Analytical psychology, consistent with emergence and self-
organization, addresses the complex psychological system with its central concept of
the self’s regulating function ordered in archetypal patterns – thus a self-organizing
system.
Jung introduced synchronicity to account for the role of accident or random acausal
events in development in contrast to reliance upon determinism or causality for under-
standing psychological processes. Synchronistically connected events do not happen so
that a new meaning will occur. That would be deterministic or causal. Quite the oppo-
site, if a synchronistic occurrence happens, the meaning that follows may turn out to
foster a new level of psychological understanding. Accidental events create potential for
something new in the individual’s life, which could produce a new possibility (rebirth)
or a new adaptive significance for the individual. Synchronicity is essentially an adap-
tive concept. In adaptation, random change in organisms may allow opportunities to
meet relentless environmental changes. Synchronicity shows accidentally connected
events providing opportunities to find new meaning for the individual.
Cambray demonstrates how art meets science in keen clinical observation and use of
synchronicity. He proposes new ways of perceiving operations of synchronicity not
confined to the coincidence happening to the patient but in coincidence which may
occur in the analyst and carry meaning for the analytic process. He opens up this field
of consciousness as follows:
The core of analytic work, I would argue, involves opening oneself to and experiencing emer-
gent properties of the psyche, i.e., coming into contact with levels of psychological organization
that transcend ego psychology and can be detected through meaningful coincidences. In effect,
all discovery of unconscious mental life stems from observing and ascribing meanings to ‘coin-
cidences’ between patterns in conscious life and unconscious dynamics. The manifestations of

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 531

emergence that are potentially transformative from a Jungian perspective involve a constellated
archetypal field.
(p. 419)

Cambray cites analytical psychology’s literature grouping in two broad categories –

synchronistic occurrences furnish evidence of: 1) archetypal process; and 2) inter-
subjective features understood as a commentary on the state of the transference/
countertransference relation. He carefully notes that the first can become static and
ungrounded; and the second can fall prey to seeing synchronicity as pathologically
associated, thus distorting the phenomenon. Jung did not use synchronicity in either
manner. He synthesized the concept to observe acausally connected events which in
turn may evoke archetype, affect, and meaning, not the other way round. Fordham
(1985) explored synchronicity, investigating how this acausal event may influence the
analyst – patient interaction, by which he meant a wider field than transference/counter-
transference. Both Jung and Fordham wrestled mightily with keeping clarity about the
acausal feature of synchronicity, as that is key to new, or emergent, order.
Clinical vignettes demonstrate how Cambray’s insights open access to the analytic
field beginning with highlighting the non pathological feature of synchronicity: He pre-
planned a phone meeting with a patient at the beginning of a vacation. She asked him if
he were in Germany while on travel because her anxiety dream placed him in the Black
Forest. He calmly informed her that he was not in Germany. Then heading out to an
underwater dive, he was told that the undersea area they were to explore was called the
Black Forest. The dramatic synchronicity had its impact on his sensitivity to this
patient’s psyche. The random event had no causal explanation, but reordered his view
of his patient.
Somatic image and experience entered an analysis with a patient’s dream of a child in
a closet at the end of session. After the session Cambray experienced influenza symp-
toms. He subsequently investigated the claustral, somatic features of the dream, ascer-
taining from the patient that he had regularly had allergy, flu-like symptoms as a child,
which closeted him off from the outer world via loss of spontaneity and obsessive
defences. Attending to the synchronistic events enabled Cambray to penetrate into psy-
chological depth.
An anecdote illustrating enactment and reverie occurred directly within the analyst–
patient interaction in which Cambray, while listening to a patient elaborate painful
affect, found himself recalling a dream involving image 13 from the Splendor Solis of
the sealed vas hermeticum containing black, white, and red birds. He immediately
noted a glazed look in the patient’s eye. Inquiring about where the patient was, he
shared the field phenomenon between them. The patient talked of his shame, sense of
exposure, and disappearance culminating in his revelation of being in a state of abject
loneliness as a child when he fell into an empty swimming pool, losing consciousness.
Attention to the acausally connected events led to affective elaboration and new
insight.
In sum, Cambray has deepened consideration of synchronicity as an important
feature of the analyst–patient interaction which can point to an affective emergence,
deepening the analytic process. Synchronicity opens the psychological field to the
unknown so that new orders of reality may more readily emerge in the analytic context.
He promises in future additional ways of understanding synchronicity for analytical
psychology. Cambray’s paper observes convergence between thought in analytical psy-
chology and the scientific realm in the form of a non-linear, open systems conception of
emergence. Science appears to grow more accepting of open system means of con-
tacting order within chaos in the context of adaptation. Adaptation in development
(individuation) provides central focus for analytical psychology as well.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
532 Journal reviews

References
Fordham, M. (1985). ‘An interpretation of Jung’s thesis about synchronicity’. In
Explorations into the Self, Library of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 7. London:
Academic Press.
Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home In the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-
Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sam Naifeh
Society of Jungian Analysts of Northern California, San Francisco

CHRISTOPHER, ELPHIS. ‘Whose unconscious is it anyway?’ Journal of the British Asso-

ciation of Psychotherapists, 2002, 40, 2, pp. 131–44.

Christopher’s provocative question provides the linking rationale for a paper with
three distinctive areas of interest. She explores ‘Whose unconscious is it anyway?’ in the
clinical context of confidentiality and publication, in the various competing models of
the psyche within the different analytical groupings, and in the inter-disciplinary arena
of the neurosciences, where there has been increasing interest in and research into the
dimensions of consciousness and unconsciousness.
Christopher’s paper starts and finishes with the contemporary ethical controversy
concerning confidentiality and publication. She vividly and honestly describes the thera-
peutic ‘risk’ of involving a patient in the decision as to whether, and what, to publish
about his treatment – her best conscious intentions swept into a maelstrom of negativity
and conflicts both conscious and unconscious – necessitating further intensive psychic
work by both therapist and patient.
Risky too, she thinks, is the challenging approach she decides to take when asked to
prepare this paper for a conference of colleagues coming from both the Jungian
Analytic and Psychoanalytic schools. The choice of these themes arose in the context of
the 50th Anniversary Conference of the British Association of Psychotherapists (BAP)
in 2001, ‘Changing Times in the Analytic World’. (The BAP is unique in Britain, com-
prising three analytic sections: Jungian, Psychoanalytic and Child and Adolescent).
Christopher sets out her versions of the ‘topographical models of the psyche that
were produced by Freud and Jung and later Klein and the Object Relations theorists’
(p. 133) with their potential for intra-professional controversy and also inter-professional
rivalry, preceding this with the rallying assertion that ‘as analytic clinicians we are
collectively united in our acceptance of the notion of an unconscious mind and that our
purpose is to study and analyse it’ (p. 132).
As a participant at the Conference, I found the scope of the paper very impressive
and it was well received. From a Jungian perspective it was important that psycho-
analytic colleagues had a Jungian model of the psyche (including Michael Fordham’s
developmental model) set fairly and squarely alongside the familiar Freudian and
Kleinian models, whose clear descriptions are valuable in this Jungian journal
now. Moving beyond the all too frequent oppositional stereotyping of Freudian or
Jungian models, Christopher introduces the wide-ranging developments in the
neurosciences. We are invited to consider the potential for theoretical development
beyond current analytic differences and the traditional body mind split (cf Solomon
2000).
The term ‘the unconscious’ is so easily reified until it becomes a structure rather
than a whole set of complex processes. The dominant research paradigm and view of
reality is centred on ‘the accurate technique of measurement, quantification and

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 533

experimentation’ (p. 133, referring to Ellenberger 1970), while qualities, experience,

intuition and imagination are all undervalued or deemed ‘irrational’. It is well known
within the analytic world that both Freud and Jung used their personal experiences,
both conscious and less conscious (and more disturbing), within a systematic ‘scientific’
frame of reference and in association with their clinical work, as the source of their
analytical theorizing.
While admiring the Conference presentation, I became aware, on reading the written
paper, of an omission. Given her specific challenge ‘whose unconscious is it anyway?’
Christopher does not draw out the extent of the dynamic interplay between many of
the major figures: between Jung and Freud, Klein and Freud, Winnicott and Klein, and
between Fordham, Klein and Jung, all driven more than they would have wished by the
very processes they were studying.
In her third area of interest, Christopher (a medical doctor in the National Health
Service as well as an analytical psychologist), is excited by the ever-widening fields of
the neurosciences. She focuses on work that provides ‘proof or supporting evidence
about some of the unconscious processes found and described by depth psychology’
(p. 136) and also on its implications for therapeutic work.
As a clinician coming from a social science rather than a natural science or medical
background, I am far less familiar with developments in the neurosciences, and indeed
I found the whole field of discourse far more demanding than the analytic material.
However, Christopher seems to strike a good balance in her choice of material. Starting
with the breathtaking complexity of the neuronal substrate of the brain, particularly in
the early years of development, she moves on to research into the structure and
functioning of the adult brain and highlights work which has clear associations with
analytic theory and practice.
She describes two particular fields of research, both of which have attracted ana-
lytically informed researchers: firstly, research into infant development and the inter-
subjective states of infant and mother and secondly, the impact of brain damage in
adults that has revealed the functioning of different areas of the brain, particularly the
differential functioning of the left and right hemispheres. Both areas of research
highlight the significance of the right hemisphere for unconscious functioning and the
processing of emotions, while the left brain is specialized for cognitive-linguistic
functions. Kaplan-Solms and Solms (2000) combine neurological and psychoanalytic
approaches, formulating their results in terms of psychoanalytic understandings: for
example, people with right hemispheres intact ‘seemed to have their ego, ego ideal and
superego intact’ and so were able appropriately to mourn their situation despite con-
siderable left brain damage (pp. 138–39).
A developmental approach is taken by others, in particular Schore, a psycho-neuro-
biologist, who integrates ideas from the developmental and behavioural sciences as well
as from the brain sciences. He too focuses on the right brain, which matures during the
first two, preverbal, years of life, before the left hemisphere. This seems in line with
Freud’s assertion that primary process thinking ontogenetically precedes secondary
process thinking. Drawing inspiration from Bowlby, a key area of Schore’s research has
focused on the significance of secure attachment between the infant and primary
caregiver for optimum development of the right hemisphere, attachment being ‘fostered
by “reciprocal mutual influences” between mother and infant – right brain to right
brain’ (p. 140). This is a particular example of the more general understanding that the
multitudinous connections between brain cells (neurones) are neither completely
random nor totally predetermined: the ‘wiring’ depends on activity and experience.
These formative processes are clearly at their height in infancy; however, certain special
later life experiences seem capable of further altering the wiring, hence reassuringly
‘proving’ the potential of therapeutic interventions.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
534 Journal reviews

Christopher also introduces work of particular interest to Jungians, regarding the

complex understandings of self. She refers to the ‘neurobiological self’ ‘understood as
“nested hierarchies” of meaning and purpose’ (p. 138) posited by the neurologist and
psychiatrist Feinberg and offers the contrast of the ‘multiple drafts model of conscious-
ness’ proposed by Dennett. These differences correspond with the complementary per-
spectives on the self in the Jungian world, linking unity with plurality and structure with
process. Christopher clearly relishes an evocative summarizing quote by Winson (1990):
‘Rather than being a cauldron of untamed passions and destructive wishes, I propose
that the unconscious is a cohesive, continually active mental structure that takes note of
life’s experiences and reacts according to its scheme of interpretation’ (p. 140).
In conclusion, I am pleased to recommend this paper for its breadth of focus and
openness of dialogue. In addition, I hope it will encourage others to search out the
recent volumes of papers from the Jungian Analytic Section of the BAP: the more
theoretical Jungian Thought in the Modern World (Christopher & Solomon 2000) and
Contemporary Jungian Clinical Practice (Christopher & Solomon 2003). For this
Conference paper Christopher drew on work in these volumes and on her own paper,
‘Reflections on the process of seeking to obtain permission to publish clinical material’
(Christopher & Solomon 2003), which provides a very comprehensive discussion of the
various current professional positions on this ethically sensitive topic.

References
Christopher, E. (2003). ‘Reflections on the process of seeking to obtain permission to publish
clinical material’. In Contemporary Jungian Clinical Practice, eds. E. Christopher &
H. M. Solomon. London: Karnac.
Christopher, E. & Solomon, H. M. (eds.) (2000). Jungian Thought in the Modern
World. London: Free Association Books.
Christopher, E. & Solomon, H. M. (eds.) (2003). Contemporary Jungian Clinical
Practice. London: Karnac.
Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. London: Allan Lane,
Penguin.
Kaplan-Solms, K. & Solms, M. (2000). Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis:
Introduction to Depth Neuropsychology. London: Karnac.
Sayers, J. (2002). ‘Intersubjective unconscious: two weddings and a funeral’. In Journal
of the British Association of Psychotherapists, 40, 2, 145–58.
Solomon, H. M. (2000). ‘Recent developments in the neurosciences’. In Jungian
Thought in the Modern World, eds. E. Christopher & H. M. Solomon. London: Free
Association Books.
Winson, J. (1990). ‘The meaning of dreams’. In Scientific American, Nov., 86–96.

Penelope Holland
British Association of Psychotherapists

SANDER, LOUIS. ‘Thinking differently: principles of process in living systems and the
specificity of being known’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2002, 12, 1, pp. 11–42.

Louis Sander’s article is the centerpiece of a symposium on infant research and its
relevance to adult psychoanalytic treatment. It is commented upon by psychoanalysts
Stephen Seligman, Jessica Benjamin, Arnold Modell and the late Stephen Mitchell. All
attest to the importance of Sander’s infant research, spanning five decades, intended to

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 535

help us understand the biological, neuropsychological, and developmental processes

which emerge during the first year of life, and which have a significant impact upon
later development. In addition Sander theorizes that the study of infancy can help to
better understand the complexities of the analytic process which are common to all
theoretical orientations. In this respect, while he was trained as a Freudian psycho-
analyst, Sander’s work does not draw upon either Freudian or Kleinian theory, but
rather on the systems theory of Ludwig Von Bertalanffy, complexity and chaos theory,
the developmental psychology of Vygotsky, and the study of biological processes in the
neonate.
Sander’s work will be of interest to Jungians, as he emphasizes that the major
motivating force within the individual is a striving towards wholeness and coherence,
and talks about the brain as having a meaning-making function. This striving towards
wholeness and the quest for meaning occurs through innate (archetypal) processes of
self-organization and self-regulation. The brain is constantly trying to ‘put it all
together’. According to Sander the initiation of these self-organizing and self-regulating
processes occurs through the infant’s contact with the ‘(m)other’ through shared states
of recognition and awareness. The ever-developing brain, through the infant’s experi-
ential engagement with its world as a self-initiating agent, creates new meanings and is
able to achieve new levels of organization and integration. From my own experience
utilizing the Tavistock method of infant observation, I would call these states ‘moments
of being’, a metaphor which was first introduced by Virginia Woolf to describe sig-
nificant moments of profound affect and understanding which form the unconscious
scaffolding of the mind. These are often ordinary moments of shared experience
between infant and caregiver that become etched in the mind somewhat like the
‘shroud of Turin’. They are impressions and feelings that are not quite clear or con-
scious in memory, but which provide the emotional background of everyday experi-
ence. Sander gets at this through his study of the rhythmic biological patterns of infants
(wakefulness – sleep – hunger – feeding etc.). According to Sander each infant is a self-
organizing system that creates its own states of consciousness. These states of brain
organization can be expanded into more coherent and complex states in collaboration
with anotherself-organizing system. When the collaboration between the two brains is
successful each fulfils the systems principle of increasing its coherence and complexity.
The infant becomes capable of performing actions in the dyadic system that the
infant would not be capable of performing alone. What I found especially interesting in
this article was Sander’s emphasis upon the infant’s experience of agency, and his
discussion of how the infant’s brain organization can be expanded into more coherent
and complex states in collaboration with another self-organizing system (the caregiver).
According to Sander, when the collaboration between two brains is successful each
fulfils the systems principle of increasing its coherence and complexity. This collaboration
between two minds, resulting in the growth and development of the infant, is akin to
Vygotsky’s notion of mental growth taking place in the zone of proximal development,
i.e. in the shared area of infant and caregiver.
Sander’s work is of major importance to American infant researchers, but his discus-
sion of the relevance of all of this for adult analysis is still rather sketchy. His employ-
ment of current topics in some scientific areas such as complex adaptive systems, chaos
theory, and self organization along with von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory does
not take into account the different usage of similar terms in each area, making his use of
that terminology unclear. In attempting to apply theory to practice, he subtly switches
to metaphorical use of scientific terms. He does not credit origins in psychology of the
same or similar ideas or terms such as the self, wholeness, and pattern repetition used in
clinical practice of analytical psychology. Such lack of recognition becomes especially
curious, since the text regards infancy and life appreciatively with such terms of awe as

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
536 Journal reviews

‘mystery’ and ‘miracle’ apparently referring to a transcendent quality in the observa-

tions evoking such ideas. Analytical psychology offers much useful critical evaluation
as well as long standing traditions of practice utilizing lines of thought regarding matur-
ation of consciousness in the context of emotion, which Sander has begun to discover.
Both analytical psychology and the interpersonal schools of psychoanalysis stand to
gain from engaged dialogue with fully reported scholarship. I also think that it would
be helpful if Sander were able to integrate into his work findings from the Tavistock
model of infant observation studies which has been most useful in contributing to
developmental work in analytical psychology. This would ground his highly theoretical
study in actual observations of infant/caregiver relationships over time.

Brian Feldman
C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco

BRIGHT, GEORGE. ‘Dangers de la compréhension psychanalytique’, Cahiers Jungiens

de Psychanalyse, 2002, 105, Automne, pp. 61–78.

George Bright continues in the spirit of his paper ‘Synchronicity as a basis of analytic
attitude’, published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology in October 1997. Here
again he states in positive terms the specificity of the Jungian approach. In this paper he
pursues his interest and appreciation of the non-ego, in the unconscious dimension of
the relationship between patient and analyst. Here too he is concerned with the analytic
attitude: with technique. Again Bright demonstrates his analytical identity as clearly
post-Jungian, in that, while going back to Jung, he also redefines the Jungian approach,
making his own contribution to it. It makes me think of Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’: in
Lacan’s claim that his work is a return to Freud, he is seeking legitimacy and parentage,
but, as a well-parented son, predictably ventures his own way.
The beauty of Bright’s paper is to marry the intensive frequency of analytic work as
valued by the Society of Analytical Psychology with an affinity for something specifi-
cally Jungian, which he both discovers and defines. This is not a text that leans nostal-
gically towards psychoanalysis for inspiration. Bright clearly positions himself within
his ‘extended family’, referring to the writings of several analysts from the Society of
Analytical Psychology, but again, he has something of his own to say.
It is a militant text, in that it takes up an area of controversy between psychoanalysis
and analytical psychology, and does not aim for a rushed reconciliation of opposites.
The French title – with the words ‘la compréhension psychanalytique’ – could wrongly
give the impression that Bright’s point is merely to contrast a (bad) Freudian under-
standing with a (good) Jungian one. It might be helpful to emphasize that in France,
Jungians call themselves ‘psychanalystes Jungiens’, while in the U.K. we call ourselves
‘Jungian analysts’, the ‘psych(o)’ being restricted to Freudian/post-Freudian analysts.
The aim of Bright’s paper is therefore wider.
Bright starts by challenging David Black’s views as expressed in his paper ‘The fear
of analytical understanding’ (1995). Both Black and Bright refer to Jung’s letter to
Hans Schmid, written in 1915, in which Jung states his view that understanding is the
work of the devil, a murder of the soul. (At that time, Jung was indeed talking about
Freudian understanding, and was intent on differentiating his approach from Freud’s).
Black links this to Jung’s pathology and lack of containment. Bright opposes this view,
and the article is his attempt to outline the positive legacy of Jung’s contribution in this
area. He points out that Jung’s mistrust of understanding in the analytic setting is only
one side of the coin, the other side being Jung’s considerable contribution in terms of
the self, individuation and the transcendent function.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 537

Bright refers to a rare vignette of Jung’s clinical work, in which Jung was very
concerned that he was not grasping the material of his female patient – particularly her
dreams – and was doubtful about continuing the treatment, feeling he was not helping
the patient. Writing about this in hindsight, Jung commented that this piece of work
was nearer to the authenticity of his specific approach than a brilliant case would have
been. We have come to view such experiences as fairly commonplace in our present
practices, and Bright does indeed view Jung’s experience in terms of counter-
transference, although he does not use the term projective identification at any point in the
article. He emphasizes that Jung was the first to value experiences of fusion/confusion,
and to take the lead in tolerating them. Bright wrestles with the paradox of respecting
the ‘mystery of the patient’s otherness’ (Jung 1954/1966, ‘The realities of practical
psychotherapy’), and the deepened ability of the analyst to make sense of what is being
communicated to him/her. Jung’s point seems to be precisely not to rigidly differentiate
ourselves from our patient, and therefore one could say that it is the whole notion of
otherness that can no longer be taken for granted.
Bright’s understanding of Jung’s position is that as long as the treatment goes on,
knowledge and understanding belong neither to the analyst nor to the patient, but are
best thought of as a dynamic process that emerges between them. Again Bright
acknowledges that there has been a bridging of the clinical practices of the different
schools, in that we all now engage in longer analyses overall. But he insists that, as
Jungians, we are well equipped for this aspect of clinical work where darkness is more
fruitful than clarity/illumination. Here, he contrasts the theoretical grounds of Jungians
and Freudians, Freudians viewing the (partly conscious) ego as the unifying principle in
the psyche, while Jungians think of the (totally unconscious) Self in those terms. This
impacts on technique, where, for Jungian analysts, the basis of the work shifts from the
ego to the Self.
But, later in the paper, Bright bridges again the theoretical and technical differences
by pointing out that analysts of all schools expect to find in the transference something
of the undifferentiated state between mother and infant; what Jung has referred to as
unconscious identity. Bright’s point is that Jung pioneered the interest and tolerance in
this area of analytic work, and that it is of great value that over the last century the
analytic community as a whole has embraced this perspective. He does not mention the
fact that there is hardly any acknowledgment in the Freudian world of Jung’s lead in
this area. However this paper can be seen as such an attempt at acknowledgment, albeit
from within the Jungian camp, and, as I read it, an attempt at strengthening Jungian
identity, and creatively continuing to nourish it.
There is then a second phase in the paper: we are back to considerations about tech-
nique. Bright now tackles a problem: refraining from imposing on the patient a know-
ledge that is outside or independent of him or her is likely to result in the opposite of
what the analyst intended. To translate: ‘for the patient, the one who is at one with him
and approves of him is necessarily experienced as an analyst who understands him’
(p. 66). Bright’s thesis here is that a therapeutic relationship should do justice to two
apparently incompatible dynamics, making it feel both like a war and like a marriage.
After a succinct tour of the philosophical approaches to knowledge, Bright concludes
that Jung was close to Henri Bergson in that both of them viewed reality as movement.
This leads him to state now that misunderstanding, discord, disagreement, and not just
refraining from ‘applying’ understanding, are a necessary aspect of the relationship
between patient and analyst.
At this point, Bright illustrates his point ‘negatively’ by describing a ‘therapeutic
relationship’ in which the tension between psychotic fusion on the one hand, and
opposition and conflict on the other hand, had not been maintained, resulting in the
death (probably a suicide) of the ‘patient’. This is not a short clinical vignette but is half

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
538 Journal reviews

of the paper in itself. And when Bright reveals who the ‘patient’ and the ‘analyst’ are,
one is intrigued and charmed – I will say no more here so as not to spoil the effect for
the reader.
The ‘clinical vignette’ seems to be a warning against overvaluing differentiation and
interpretation, and possibly a plea for deep analysis of analysts. In the vignette, the
‘analyst’ is both at fault for too much ‘oneness’ with his ‘patient’, but also for departing
from this oneness; in growing, rather abruptly uncomfortable with it, the ‘analyst’ then
resorts to manipulating the patient through interpreting his dreams in terms of what the
analyst thinks is good for the patient. I find that the main value of this ‘vignette’ is that
it gives Bright the chance to touch on related concepts and thoughts, in a way that gives
depth to his paper. He ‘circumambulates’ the themes of individuation, the ego-self axis
and the coniunctio, the Jungian view on the repetition compulsion, the risk of possession
by the ego when working in confrontational transference, and the risk of possession by
the unconscious when working with psychotic transference. In relation to this last point
Bright, earlier in the paper, makes an interesting passing comment about the recent
studies on erotic transference and countertransference being a reflection of the dangers
and the struggles of such work.
Bright ends by inviting us to reflect on the difference between ‘handling’ and ‘manip-
ulating’, making a link between the handling of the infant/patient by the mother/analyst,
and the mother/analyst’s art in moving between identification and differentiation.
This paper will be valued by clinicians who, whether naturally inclined to work with
the psychotic transference or not, are in any case prepared to hold the tension of oppos-
ites, and to think about technique. Being published in Cahiers, it also contributes to the
discussion about technique across different Jungian schools or traditions.

References
Black, D. (1995). ‘The fear of analytical understanding’. Journal of Analytical Psych-
ology, 40, 1, 77–90.
Jung, C. G. (1954/1966). The Practice of Psychotherapy. CW 16.

Claire Bruas-Jaquess
Society of Analytical Psychology

ZABRISKIE, BEVERLEY, ‘Destructive devotion: with friends like us, does Jung need
enemies?’ Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, 2002, 4, 1, pp. 5–17.

This is Zabriskie’s wake-up call to Jungians: her keynote address at the IAAP Congress
in Cambridge, 2001. The call is a call to speak out, to voice our work, to stay true to
our own language: the language of the authentic clinical work; and to be fluent in other
tongues: the languages of discourse.
It is also a call to be realistic: to stay with the realities of today’s world, and take on
board current discoveries in neuroscience, molecular physics, computer technology: to
move on from the mire of fundamentalism and a preoccupation with Jung the man and
his words, into a multi-theory interchange and interfertilization: to create a vibrant,
modern animated being, not a dinosaur.
She asks tough questions:
Can Jungian practice remain an applied depth psychology if we do not tell it from the ‘inside’?
Can we have a viable voice, and make a vital contribution to the life of mind and psyche, without

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 539

a recognizable, professional tongue?. . . . If we cannot transmit the relevance of our theories and
the efficacy of our perspective, what we have to offer will not be heard, nor made available to
those who would benefit.

(p. 12)

She addresses ‘Language’, ‘Practice’, ‘Pop Jung’ and ‘Image’ (pp. 7–12), and examines
Jungian practice in the larger context, urging us to move on and to voice the dynamic.
She begins by observing that destructive devotion restricts the use of language to com-
municate and describe our practice and our understanding. It obstructs discourse and
feeds secrecy. Our identity as Jungians depends not only on our in-house talk, but on
our ability to communicate in and with the outer world. Otherwise we mummify a
secret code which excludes non-believers and avoids accountability. Jung said that
‘speech is a dance’ (Jung 1997, p. 1075). A dance that is performed without being seen
risks becoming moribund: perhaps an obsessive ritual, a defensive perversion.
Zabriskie alerts us to the paucity of published contemporary Jungian case process, of
the scarcity of texts which convey ‘the excited points of the analytic hour, the charged
field of the analytic relationship’ and reminds us that as well as ‘a discipline and practice,
there must be witness’ (p. 8). She highlights the cracks and fault-lines that we can fall
into: the ‘either-or’ split where, for instance, ‘developmental’ is seen as contrary to
‘progressive’, rather than as on a continuum; and ‘clinical’ is supposed separate from
‘archetypal’. She warns us that ‘If revisioned and reframed therapy is deemed apostasy,
and analytical psychology’s language rigidifies into an arcane dialect, some of us
become occult’ (p. 9).
Belatedly, the author reminds us that ‘when professional muteness leaves a vacuum,
a “dumbed down” nightmare version of a “pop” Jung is taken as modern analytical
psychology’ (p. 9). The current fashion is of dumbing down, of sound-bites and quick-
fixes, and it is easy to be seduced into joining the allure of the short-cut. There is no
easy way to avoid the tough work of staying authentic while remaining active and
involved with the external, present-day world and, at the same time, the internal
realities. She writes of speaking out from within, and avoiding trivialization; of using
language, our body-mind tongue, rather than words that can spin and obfuscate, and
distance us from reality and truth. Our longing to be ‘popular’ can deteriorate into
‘populist’ and cut us off from the well-spring: the person in the consulting room; the
relationship in the vas; the interactive field.
Zabriskie acknowledges that the ‘analytic hour is filled with images as well as words.
It is arduous, after a session, to recount how instincts and images, emotions and projec-
tions, mythos and logos translate into the other. It is an ordeal to describe the interplay
in any given session, between transference and relationship, and among affect energy
and symbol’ (p. 12). We are accountable mental health professionals, striving to make
our work transparent and seen, while acknowledging and wrestling with the limitations
of language and the tension of paradox. How to communicate between ourselves and
with the wider world is the ongoing struggle.
Zabriskie believes that if we ‘talk the talk and walk the walk’ (p. 8) (of Jung? the
Freudians? the neuroscientists? the authoritative others?) all shall be well: rather like
King Canute believing that if he got the words right, he would hold back the tides. But
times change, and yet repeat familiar patterns: the paradox of same-and-different.
Analysts and psychotherapists of every persuasion are facing the same sea-change,
singing the same lament: how to describe in two-dimensional words a multi-
dimensional practice, how to talk to each other, how to talk to health care managers,
the health insurance firms, the government; believing that if we get it right our practice
will survive. Ours is a clinical art-and-science practice where the authentic language of

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
540 Journal reviews

conscious-and-unconscious communication between analyst and patient is the

language: the deep source, the same well that all therapists draw from, the same water.
The stories we tell to each other – in professional meetings and in published works – is in
a different tongue: the language of re-telling. Long before translations are available, it
is the authenticity of the experience that communicates. It is the clinician steeped,
soaked, immersed in the work who gets through to others. Our individuation as a
Jungian group has its bedrock here, in an ongoing process with forms which resonate
with the work, and a knowledge that, when we speak to each other, and to other
colleagues, this second language is make-do, always inadequate, always in revision.
My memory of this address when given at the Congress was that it was also an
eloquent plea for Jungians to shift the focus from our internal squabbles and divisive
use of language, to emerge from our internal power-struggles, wake up to the present
and embrace the realities of working with our fellow explorers: health professionals,
scientists and artists, with open, less defensive arms.
To conclude, what we say about the clinical work is the story, which must be worded
in present day, accessible language, as close to the real as is possible, and continually
re-spoken, re-worded, re-shown. What really happens between therapist and patient:
that reality is the witness to our practice.
The oral language of the Congress address is not the same language as the written
version or the version that meets your eyes as reader. I have tried to convey the
vibrancy of this story, of this article, in the context of also hearing it live. I can only urge
you to read the original article. Use it as rich food for thought. Digest it and meld it with
your practice, and use its energy: inside-and-outside your self and your Jungian identity!

Reference
Jung, C. G. (1997). Visions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Shielagh Finlay
Society of Analytical Psychology

HADAR, BRACHA. ‘The therapeutic approach to the body in psychoanalysis’, Journal of

the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 2001, 29, 3, pp. 483–90.

Bracha Hadar addresses what she calls the professional split in psychotherapy referring
to her ‘great loneliness among my verbal colleagues’ leading to her ‘two therapeutic
identities’ – ‘verbal and body’. Historically, Hadar suggests, this split has its origins in
Freud’s reaction to a patient whose symptoms he had cured through hypnosis. This
patient threw her arms around his neck to embrace him. Although Freud did not
respond physically to her overture, and understood it as a phenomenon of the transfer-
ence, Hadar believes that he took fright, or was confused, and dealt with his feelings by
deciding that the body should be left out of psychotherapy. In Hadar’s opinion, this
attitude led to two false attitudes in psychoanalytic thought: first, ‘There is a relation-
ship between treating the body and the danger of temptation and eroticism’, and second,
‘Body psychotherapy is a suggestive therapy’. Perhaps it was felt that to include the
body as a point of reference could be seen as supporting a regressive tendency in which
the physical expression of affect would override verbal communication. Certainly, the
decision not to include the body in a more overt way, by focusing on verbal communi-
cation and the use of the couch, left out the patient’s experience of his own body as a
vehicle for unconscious expression.

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
Journal reviews 541

Hadar, who has studied movement therapy and trained in Bioenergetic Analysis,
originally developed by Alexander Lowen following Wilhelm Reich, presents a model
which allows the patient to include the body more actively within analytic work.
Historically, she suggests that a theoretical break occurred in psychoanalysis when
Reich shifted the idea of the libido as a metaphorical concept to a physical one. Reich
postulated a relationship between muscular tension and the development of the defense
mechanisms. When the environment is unable to respond appropriately to the infant’s
needs, the reaction is one of shutting down. In this process, the resulting muscle
contraction becomes a kind of ‘body armour’ which the ego then utilizes for self preser-
vation. Since an alive body threatens the armour, the individual responds by lessening
self awareness. Reichian work seeks to undo the armour by allowing the patient the
opportunity for the expression of emotions through physical movement.
In terms of setting an historical context, Hadar describes the work of Michael Balint
who recognized that some crucial human experiences could only be communicated via
their original container, the human body. She reports Masud Kahn’s frustration that he
was unable to find any paper which addressed the physical nature of the body as a
means of learning about a patient, although he realized that this could be important.
Presumably, neither came into contact with the work of Lowen who addresses this
topic specifically. Finally, she quotes psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu: ‘Here [in the body]
there is material that needs to be taken into account and elaborated!’ Each of these ana-
lysts had an intuitive understanding that there was more to be learned from the body.
In the past thirty years, but perhaps more so in the last ten, there has been an increasing
amount of literature by clinicians such as relational psychologists, psychoanalysts,
analytical psychologists, and dance/movement therapists writing about the body in
analysis. Some of the areas of study have included the patient’s experience of his own
body in the room, the somatic countertransference, non-verbal communication, the
interactive field, the development of the symbolic function, movement as a form of
active imagination, the use of imagery and psychosomatic issues.
In describing her own method, Hadar gives a clinical illustration which spanned
several years of analytic psychotherapy. Hadar’s patient, Rachel, a woman in mid-life
who suffered from chronic psychosomatic illnesses, including asthma, came to therapy
because she was overwhelmed with feelings that she was unable to express. Although it
was evident to both patient and therapist that feelings of rage were beginning to
emerge, it was difficult for Rachel to allow herself to feel the anger in any sustained
way. When Hadar asked her how she might like to express her feelings, Rachel replied
that she would like to throw a ball. Hadar carefully arranged the environment so that it
would be safe and Rachel began to throw balls against the wall. One accidentally hit a
picture, shattering the glass. Rachel was horrified, as this confirmed her fear that her
anger caused terrible things to happen. When Hadar took responsibility for leaving the
picture on the wall, Rachel was free to have her own reaction, which included fear,
relief, and a desire to try again. Working directly with the body allowed these feelings
to emerge and be expressed within the context of the analytic relationship. As these
feelings became more integrated over time, Rachel’s asthma attacks significantly
lessened.
It is my understanding that Bioenergetics utilizes directed movement sequences
designed to help patients express feelings which are locked in the body. While this
approach may be helpful with some patients, the author does not discuss other less
directive ways of working with the unconscious as it manifests in the body. For example,
some analytically trained psychotherapists, both Freudian and Jungian, are also trained
in dance/movement therapy. In dance/movement therapy, the emphasis is less on enact-
ment or catharsis, and relies more on the patient’s ability to tolerate holding the tension
while moving between image and affect. The Jungian approach utilizes authentic

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter
542 Journal reviews

movement, a form of active imagination developed originally by Jung, in which the

patient is asked to focus inward and to notice any bodily sensations, images, and
feelings which serve as the impetus for spontaneous self-directed movement.
I have found that when patients begin to focus attention on their internal bodily-felt
experience, this seems to evoke material from the personal unconscious, including pre-
verbal experience in the form of affective or somatic memory. My clinical experience is
that often the body communicates what the mind cannot hold. In these situations, the
affect goes into the body where it can generate psychosomatic symptoms as well as
anxiety states, depersonalization, and dissociation. Using movement as a kind of kines-
thetic free association allows both analyst and patient to observe that gradual unfold-
ing of the unconscious at a body level. In the process of giving form to these inner
images and feelings, there is an opportunity to observe the process by which image and
affect become linked in their original container, the human body.
Perhaps this paper generates a larger issue – that we more carefully consider ways to
include the patient’s bodily experience within the analytic context. When might it be
helpful to ask patients to give physical expression to their emotions as Hadar recom-
mends? When should our emphasis be more on internal reverie, creating a space in
which internal material can emerge and be expressed in movement?

Wendy Wyman-McGinty
Society of Jungian Analysts of Southern California

Copyrighted Material. For use only by fauzi. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see ter