Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of C.G. Jung. Stein, M. (Ed.) Open Court Publishing Company: Chicago, Ill.
Jungian Psychoanalysis, edited by Murray Stein, is probably the best contemporary compilation on the subject available.
It is an excellent illustration of the complexity and diversity in modern clinical applications of C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, tracing its development through various post-Jungian schools of thought. The very phrase “Jungian psychoanalysis” reflects the process of coming back to the roots and it seems to be aimed at reconciliation between different controversies in Jungian society. They touch on the issues like the one whether the practitioner of Jungian psychology should be called “Jungian analyst” or rather “Jungian psychoanalyst”. It is under the later rubric that the reader can find in this volume essays by authors of both classical, archetypal approach, and those identified with the so-called developmental school in analytical psychology, close to the attachment theory or Kleinian school.
The editor himself, a classical Jungian psychoanalyst from Zurich, in his preface states as follows:
Jung differentiated himself from Freud and Adler, two other pioneers of psychoanalysis, and founded a distinctive branch of depth psychology (or medical psychology, as it was called in the early days) called analytical psychology. This school’s physical and spiritual home was Zurich, Switzerland. (…) in the first and second generations Jungians marked the lines separating themselves from others with broad pen and heavy ink as the differences in fundamental perspectives and practices were emphasized in order to differentiate the field from its surrounding milieu. More recently the emphasis among contemporary Jungian authors has shifted to perspectives of convergence and dialogue. This may be takes as a sign of maturation in the field. There is less anxiety about identity.
The clinical practitioners in the school that took form around Jung have variously called themselves analytical psychologists, Jungian analysts, and Jungian psychotherapists. In more recent years they have increasingly recognized their historic, if not troubled, kinship with the greater family of psychoanalysis and have taken to naming themselves Jungian psychoanalysts. (…)
Jungian psychoanalysis is the contemporary name for the clinical application of analytical psychology.
from Introduction, Murray Stein
Areas covered by this volume involve clinical aspects of numerous ideas, such as: transformation, individuation, theory of complexes (including cultural complexes), techniques of analytic work (dream analysis, amplification, active imagination, typology, imaginal work, sandplay, body movement work), analytic process (analytic frame, containment, holding, mentalization, subjectivity, transference and countertransference, analysis of projections, fantasies and defenses, gender and sexuality, numinous experiences), modalities of work (analysis of children and adolescents, working with trauma, ethical attitude, religion, research, social dreaming matrix), training, training analysis and supervision.
We highly recommend this book to all those interested in practical application of the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung and in contemporary Jungian thought.
author: Małgorzata Kalinowska
translation: Tomasz J. Jasiński
