by Phil Goss
Four stages of analysis: The four stages, according to Jung, which all analyses go through: confession, elucidation, education and transformation.
Transference–countertransference: The unconscious relationship that builds up between the analyst and the analysand. In the transference, the analysand unconsciously transfers feelings, thoughts and impulses belonging in key early relationships (to mother or father, for example) on to the therapist. The analyst can use their countertransference – feelings, sensations and thoughts within them but that seem to come from the analysand – to better notice and understand what might be happening within the unconscious process between them.
Dig deeper
Astor, J., Michael Fordham: Innovations in Analytical Psychology (London: Routledge, 1995)
Covington, C. and Wharton, B., Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis (London: Brunner-Routledge, 2006)
Jacobs, M., Psychodynamic Counselling in Action (London: Sage, 2010)
Jenkins, P., Counselling, Psychotherapy and the Law (London: Sage, 2007)
Jung, C. G., ‘The Aims of Psychotherapy’ in The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW16 (London: Routledge, 1966a)
Jung, C. G., ‘Problems of Modern Psychotherapy’ in The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW16 (London: Routledge, 1966b)
Kirsch, T., ‘The Role of Personal Therapy in the Formation of a Jungian Analyst’ in Oberst, U. E. and Stewart, A. E. (eds.), Adlerian Psychotherapy: An Advanced Approach to Individual Psychology (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003)
Oberst, U. E. and Stewart, A. E., Adlerian Psychotherapy: An Advanced Approach to Individual Psychology (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003)
Palmer-Barnes, F. and Murdin, L., Values and Ethics in the Practice of Psychotherapy and Counselling (Open University Press, 2001)
Sedgwick, D., Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2001)
Fact-check (answers at the back)
1 What is a key principle of Jungian analysis?
a It involves identifying every problem in the analysand and identifying a tool to fix each
b It does not address personality issues
c It takes a prescriptive approach and applies it to all analysands
d It treats each analysis as unique and promotes experimentation
2 Why should the analyst be ‘in the work’ as much as the analysand?
a They have to work together repeatedly in the analysis
b The analyst has to work hard to interpret what is happening for the analysand
c The unconscious needs to be engaged with by both to enable meaningful change
d They both have to share the same room when they work together
3 Jung was strongly influenced by Freud in adopting which analytic elements?
a The analytic hour, the transference, use of the chair, free association
b Free association, use of the couch, the transference, the analytic hour
c The analytic hour, very regular analysis, work with shadow, dream analysis
d Free association, use of the couch, the transference, active imagination
4 What are three crucial principles for ethical depth psychological practice?
a Self-reflection, interaction without enactment and attendance to boundaries
b Enactment of what matters to the therapist, strong boundaries and confidentiality
c Being flexible with boundaries, self-reflection and interaction without enactment
d Self-reflection, interaction with enactment and attendance to boundaries
5 Why did Jung advocate use of a chair as well as a couch for the analysand?
a It was more comfortable than a couch and so helped to relax the analysand
b It enabled the analyst and analysand to engage more fully where needed
c It meant the analyst could remain more focused on the analysand as face to face
d Some of Jung’s analysands fell asleep on the couch so he thought a chair would help
6 What did Jung mean by confession?
a Something needed before the analyst would agree to work with the analysand
b What the analyst needed to do so the analysand knew what to expect
c Something which represented the important first cathartic stage of analysis
d What the analyst needed to do with their supervisor after a mistake
7 In the elucidation stage, what is often the key factor that supports this?
a The working alliance and transference between the analyst and the analysand
b How fully the analysand has ‘confessed’
c How well the analyst can apply theory to practice
d How intelligent the analysand is
8 Why did Jung call the third stage of analysis education?
a Because therapy automatically leads to learning
b Because sometimes he recommended his analysands go back to college
c Because the analysand needed to apply what they had learned to real life
d Because sometimes an analysand would go on to train as an analyst
9 Why does transformation involve the analyst closely?
a If the analyst does not adopt the same approach, then the analysand will be held back
b If the analysand transforms in a misguided way, the analyst has to make them stop
c If the analyst has a misguided attitude, the analysand will leave the analysis
d If the analysand believes in religious transformation, the analysis will need to go back to the confession stage
10 Why does the four-stage model have limitations?
a It does not take into account the possibility of a ‘fifth stage’
b It was established before important therapeutic theory emerged, and is a little rigid
c It does not take into account the possibility of a pre-analysis reflection stage
d It was established without taking Freud properly into account and is too rigid
11
Working with dreams
Jung was initially unimpressed by what would become one of Freud’s seminal works, The Interpretation of Dreams, when it was first published in 1900. He would, however, come to greatly appreciate the ideas Freud put forward, and dream work became of central significance to the Jungian approach.
This chapter begins with a brief explanation of distinctions between Jung’s approach to the nature and significance of dreams compared to Freud. We will consider the compensatory and synthetic nature of dreams, supported by brief examples. The use of amplification, particularly where archetypal themes arise, will also be highlighted.
Royal road to what?
The notion that dreams were an unrivalled route, a ‘royal road’, into discovering what strong unconscious influences may be at work in the human mind, was a powerful one. Jung adopted Freud’s approach for a period, although eventually this became another area of psychoanalytic theory and practice where their views diverged. Why was this?
For Freud, the dream is essentially a wish fulfilment: dreams enable repressed sexual drives and impulses to be discharged while the conscious mind rests (Rycroft, 1995). He saw this as a manifestation of an evolutionary imperative for humans to repress sexualized impulses (including those expressed aggressively), in order to prevent their uncontained and potentially destructive expression towards other people, or themselves. He also saw the dream as a guardian of sleep, because the sublimation of strong desires, via apparently meaningless dream images, meant the dreamer would not be woken up by them. The dream provided a mechanism for this potentially overwhelming libido to find an outlet, safely.
Spotlight: Freud, Jung and dreams
Freud analysed Jung but, according to Jung, Freud would not countenance such an arrangement in reverse. This included dreams, and one of Jung’s most famous dreams about the house with many floors (see Chapter 4), and their conflicting interpretations of it, helped to illuminate a fundamental area of difference between them. For Ju
ng, the layers of the house represented different historical collective ‘layers’ (the collective unconscious), whereas for Freud, the skulls in the underground cave represented Jung’s unconscious wish to ‘kill the Father’ (the Oedipus complex).
Freud’s exclusive emphasis on the psychosexual significance of dreaming became too narrow for Jung, who came to see dreams as pointing to a kind of intelligence in the way the unconscious works. He proposed that our dreams tell us something about ourselves to keep us on track in the individuation process. Jung also extended his conviction, about the presence in psyche of archetypal influences and the collective unconscious, to dreams, in a further distinction between him and Freud.
Jung’s perspective on dreaming
‘The dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal in symbolic form of the actual situation in the unconscious… The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness…’
Jung, 2011, p. 263)
For Jung, dreams convey the intimate relationship between the personal present and the vast collective dimensions of psyche that stretch back to before human consciousness developed awareness of self, others and the natural environment. They also give an insight into what is going on within us at any given time, and serve a function on behalf of our development and individuation. It is clear, then, that dreams for Jung are certainly more than a collection of random images.
Spotlight: What might Jung think of a neurobiological perspective on dreams?
A purely neurobiological explanation argues that the brain processes the images concerned during the night, in order to clear out the system from all it has been bombarded with the day before. Although Jung would accept neurobiological ways of looking at what dreams ‘do’ for the psychosomatic health of a person (Rosen, 2005), he believed that, if one spends time pondering a dream, however random the imagery and structure of it, then something valuable will come out of this (however limited).
Key idea: Symbol formation
This was another area of difference between Jung and Freud. Jung came to the view that, when Freud used the term ‘symbol’, say the ‘snake for a penis’ (phallic) example mentioned above, he was not using the term in its full sense but rather as a ‘sign’ of the latent psychosexual meaning beneath the surface. Instead, Jung saw symbols as intuitive representations of what has not yet been consciously recognized by the dreamer.
For Jung, symbols do not primarily portray what drives and impulses currently influence us, though this will be ‘in the mix’ of a dream. Rather, they represent what has not come fully into our conscious awareness yet; symbols can be said to describe what is waiting under the surface to show itself to us for the purpose of strengthening our self-knowledge and alerting us to what we may need, in a compensatory way, to address in our conscious attitude. They are charged with archetypal energy but are formed in the personal unconscious. See below for an example of how a current personal theme the dreamer may be overlooking here (the likely ending of a relationship or phase of life) is charged by an archetypal essence (of ‘endings’/‘death’) to create a compensatory dream symbol (a fallen tree), to alert the dreamer.
How archetypal and personal influences create a symbol to alert the dreamer
Dream symbol Fallen tree – personal unconscious
Archetype Endings/death – collective unconscious
Meaning The end of a phase or relationship in life – conscious mind
Our task is to notice what symbols may mean, and this involves work: a symbol will often not make it clear at first glance what it is trying to convey, as it needs us to reach out with a conscious, if lightly held, attitude of inquiry to make sense of it, drawing on our felt, sensed, intuited and thought responses to the dream images. This way we can work with the synthesis of archetypal, unconscious personal and conscious symbolism present in a dream to notice and apply the apparent message we are receiving.
From a Jungian perspective, dreams have the following four main functions:
• Dreams as a snapshot
The way a dream provides a picture of what is happening within us at the time we are having it via our imago (or ‘dream ego’, which awakens at night while our daytime ego slumbers), means our task is to see this as a kind of ‘gift’. If we can allow it time and space, this gift can help us see the significance of this ‘picture’.
• Dreams as synthetic
A Jungian reading of a dream will consider its capacity for synthesis, whereby elements of conscious memory, either from the day just finished, or older influences, get blended with unconscious personal and archetypal elements. This synthetic approach is forward-looking and recognizes that a dream, like a complex, has a number of key elements in it. This contrasts with a reductive approach as found in Freud’s tracking of causation in the psyche. In order to understand the synthetic approach better, we need to look at the process of symbol formation which, in Jungian thinking, is a crucial element enabling us to become aware of unconscious influences through dreams.
• Dreams as compensatory
‘… we must remember the working hypothesis we have used for the interpretation of dreams: the images in dreams and spontaneous fantasies are symbols, that is, the best possible formulation for still unknown or unconscious facts, which generally compensate the content of consciousness or the conscious attitude’.
Jung, 1970, para. 772
We have already touched on Jung’s principle of compensation: the idea the unconscious compensates for our conscious attitude, all in the service of maintaining balance, or homeostasis, in the psyche. Where our ego gets carried away with its own self-importance, for example, then the aspects of self which are buried in the unconscious will find a way of letting us know this needs to be addressed or we will be in trouble, as the first case study below illustrates. Or, where our typological make-up leads us, say, into over-relying on objective facts to support our extraverted thinking, then our introverted thinking will trip us up by leading us into over-emotional reactions to criticisms of our approach to hopefully alert us to the problem.
The man who forgot who he was
Jung reported an analysis with a middle-aged man who had risen to a position of power and influence in the world from humble and impoverished beginnings. He reported suffering from anxiety and dizziness, and brought a couple of dreams which seemed to highlight what lay behind this.
As well as noting the parallel between mountain sickness (provoking a kind of vertigo and nausea to do with being ‘too high’) and the man’s reported symptoms, Jung observes how the first dream reinforces a sense of the man forgetting from how far ‘down’ he had come. In the dream he is back in the village of his birth and there are lads there commenting on how rarely he comes back to visit.
In the second dream, there is a more dramatic narrative in which the dreamer is running to the station to catch a train; but he realizes he has forgotten his briefcase and so dashes back home to get it. As he races back to the station, the train is already pulling out. Worse still, he sees that the track has sharp bends in it and the train will surely come off the rails if it goes too fast. Sure enough, the driver picks up speed and the man watches in terror as the train comes off the track and crashes. As Jung puts it: ‘since the engine-driver in front steams relentlessly ahead, the neurosis happens at the back… his ambition drives him on and on, and up and up into an atmosphere which is too thin for him…Therefore his neurosis comes upon him as a warning’ (Jung, 1966, paras. 300–1).
Jung reports that this analysand appeared to struggle to accept this reading of the situation and went on to suffer serious health problems. This example in some ways is more clear-cut than many presentations will be in analysis. However, it provides a good example of where dreams offer a compensatory message – in this case about the need to ‘slow down’ and to get back to one’s roots, which the dreamer is then at liberty to choose to hear, an
d adjust their conscious attitude in response – or not…
• Dreams as archetypal; and amplification
‘… amplification is a way of connecting the content from a dream or fantasy with universal imagery by way of using mythical, historical and cultural analogies.’
Casement, 2001, p. 80
As will be clear from the discussion in this chapter, archetypal imagery can present in dreams. Sometimes it seems to break through into otherwise more mundane dreams, such as when a familiar scene from a person’s life is suddenly populated by famous religious or historical figures, or perhaps ‘invaded’ by aliens.
In analysis, Jung referred to working with this aspect of dream work as ‘amplification’. The role of the analyst is to facilitate the analysand as they come up with associations, but in this case the analyst might offer some links to archetypal themes that, in turn, could help the analysand play with connections to her or his own experience and understanding. For example, someone dreams of two planets apparently on a collision course – Earth and Mars – so the ‘home’ or ‘mother’ planet on the one hand and the ‘red/fiery’ and ‘warlike’ one (Mars as the Roman god of war) on the other. Then Pluto is spotted in the corner of the night sky, and the two planets slow down, though they are still close to collision. Pluto, in Greek mythology in particular, is ruler of the underworld, and links to the border territory between the above and below, life and death, conscious and unconscious.
Much would depend on the personal associations of the dreamer, but this dream seems to suggest an impending collision or conflict, possibly one that involves people, or inner influences; and where a serious clash of values is implied (Earth vs Mars, passive vs aggressive, feminine vs masculine?).