ABSTRACT
In analytical psychology, the word ‘development’ tends to be connected to the Developmental School of analytical psychology. The connection between the Developmental School of analytical psychology and the images and narratives of development with which I am concerned largely rests on the diversity and ambiguity of the meaning of the word ‘development’. As in Jung’s work, so in the work of subsequent analytical psychologists there seems to be no clear-cut definition of the word ‘development’. Nevertheless, Michael Fordham and his followers at the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) are called the Developmental School and this classification is widely accepted. It is therefore debatable in what way the words ‘development’ and ‘developmental’ are connected with the Developmental School. This chapter will look at the formation and characteristics of the Developmental School and, in relation to them, attempt to identify some elements and rhetoric of development in analytical psychology. I shall examine the images and narratives of development which might be specific to analytical psychology and may be distinct from the general images of development which, as I have discussed earlier, largely imply progressive change and betterment over time. I shall also examine how the general images of development are adopted in the theories of analytical psychology and whether these images are explicitly connected with their theories, are repudiated and therefore hidden as the shadow of their understanding of development, or are accommodated through some kind of compromise.
