ABSTRACT
In order to explore these ideas further, it is important to first contextualise the main theories of Jung and Bion as emerging initially from their work as psychiatrists and their profound study of psychosis, from which both extrapolated a deeper understanding of the mind in illness and in health. Jung was one of the earliest pioneers in the field of analysis to work with severely ill patients, and, towards the end of his life, he commented that in 1900 he was the very first to work psychothera-peutically with schizophrenia, which did not begin in psychoanalysis until the 1950s with the work of Bion and Segal. Jung’s conceptualisation of vertical splits in the psyche and feeling-toned complexes came from work with patients suffering with acute forms of psychosis, most notably schizophrenia. Jung was aware of the numinous power of these split-off contents and the way in which they appear to possess the individual and overwhelm the ego completely.
