ABSTRACT

The centenary of Carl Jung's birth brought a spate of anecdotes about him and his behaviour as a therapist. They were almost all unusual and do not apparently fit in with concepts already advanced about the setting of analysis or about counter-transference. They led to contemplate the unpremeditated behaviour of analysts and therapists, which was outside the usual practice and, one might say, idiosyncratic in the sense that the analyst's affects appear more significant than those of the patient. Though Jung was against classical psychoanalysis being pursued indiscriminately, it is a concept of analytical therapy which is sometimes a true picture of what takes place and is also valuable as a model of the basic requirements of psychotherapy. It is in the open-system period when projective and introjective processes are active, that frustration for the analyst may take place.