ABSTRACT
Throughout his career Jung claimed not to be a ‘Jungian’ in the sense of being narrowly confi ned to his own therapeutic method or outlook. Here he says he has ‘always felt the need for a conspectus of many viewpoints’ and has ‘given divergent opinions their due’ (§ 66). Jung is philosophical about the ‘plurality of contradictory opinions’ (§ 71) and does not see them as a threat to the coherence of the fi eld of psychotherapy. He argues that the psyche is complex and many faceted, and ‘such opinions could never arise, much less secure a following, if they did not correspond to some . . . fundamental psychological fact that is more or less universal’ (§ 66). ‘Were we to exclude one such opinion as simply wrong or worthless, we should be . . . doing violence to our own empirical material’ (§ 66). It is odd, therefore, that Jungian psychology has been charged by critics with being highly specialised and esoteric, given Jung’s own openness to other views. Andrew Samuels has argued in a number of places, including The Plural Psyche , that Jungian therapy is innately diverse and accommodating. 1
Jung argues that the aim of his therapy differs from that of Freud or Adler, in that they seek to make the patient ‘normal’ by treating a disordered pleasure principle (Freud) or power impulse (Adler). Jung is less interested in adjusting the patient to society than in helping the patient connect to his or her inner life. Jung’s interests are introverted and in his view neurosis arises because the conscious mind is out of relationship with the unconscious. He argues that Freud and Adler are helpful to younger patients, but less helpful to ‘persons over forty’. Most of his clients are of a mature age and adapted to society; they are ‘often of outstanding ability, to whom normalization means nothing’ (§ 84). Their problem is not how to fi t in with the social fabric, but how to overcome the ‘senselessness of their lives’ (§ 83). In such cases, therapy is ‘less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities latent in the patient’ (§ 82). The aim of this kind of therapy is not normalisation but individuation.
