ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a tendency to regard analytic material as belonging to either the personal or the collective unconscious. It shows the historical roots of the separation of the personal and collective unconscious, and suggests that how the two concepts can be brought together theoretically, C. G. Jung himself did not separate them in the arbitrary manner sometimes attributed to him and was aware of the dangers of doing so when treating patients. Jung remarks that as the contents of the personal unconscious are integral components of the individual personality, they could 'just as well be conscious'. It appears to have been hoped that personal problems requiring a reductive, that is a more Freudian; approach could be quickly disposed of so that Jung's synthetic method of approach to the objective psyche could be used. In Jungian psychology, the conceptual split, though necessary for purposes of exposition, since it may add to the splitting tendencies already operative in the psyche.
