Introduction

Freud’s theoretical model has proved much more dynamic and flexible than Jung’s and has led to far greater theoretical diversity and development. Yet there is a sense that most psychoanalysts rarely stray far from home when they attempt to address the larger questions posed by the psychoanalytic theory of the mind but tend to draw everything else into the psychoanalytic net. Crucially, the way that constitutive symbols work also offers a means of underpinning the reality of psyche without needing to posit an “objective psyche,” thus breaking through the subjective-objective barrier, rooting psyche in the social and material world, and allowing for different perspectives on the world which may be equally real.