ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the limits of analysis and explores from a different angle the problems with which Carl Jung was confronted when he thought that education and transformation could be more important than analysis. It considers the analysis of repressed unconscious processes; what can be done when the emergence, through regression, of infantile impulses makes analysis seem largely irrelevant, in other words where impulses and preverbal communications become more important than insights or fantasies. Analysis applies to the elucidation of defences and particularly repression. In analysis memories of childhood may feature prominently. Reconstructions of the personal past from data provided by the patient aim to fill in memory gaps or extend the range of experience to parts of infancy where behaviour and physical acts have been more relevant than organized mental functioning. The regression need not be psychotic but it may become so and this risk may need to be taken when continuing analysis in some kinds of regression.
