ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses two of the most pressing questions in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and analysis today. The first question concerns the nature of the self, its structure and functioning. The second concerns the nature of internal objects. Melanie Klein's concept of unconscious phantasy can be thought of in many respects as the psychoanalytic equivalent of Jung's explorations of the archetypal layer of the psyche, in that the configurations within unconscious phantasy imbue early object relations with their experiential quality. The life-and-death situation that pertained when Mrs A accepted an identification with a "pubic baby" that led to a series of warring opposites reflected an experience of cumulative trauma, the sources of which were both internal and external. Complexes are autonomous groups of associations having tendency to move by themselves, to live their own life apart from our intentions. Jung referred to the complexes in terms similar to the present discussion concerning the coniunctio as an autonomous creation with bipolar attributes.
