by Phil Goss
In relation to personality disorders, the work of Nathan Shwartz-Salant is a good example of this. With respect to borderline personality disorder, and its hallmark of unpredictable and difficult ways of relating to others, Shwartz-Salant (in Samuels, 1989), starts from the premise that:
‘Often, psychotherapy reveals bewildering and bizarre introjects stemming from the patient’s early childhood experiences… (for which)… An imaginal focus is required if one is to engage the borderline person effectively.’
Shwartz-Salant in Samuels, 1989, p. 159
He advocates a willingness on the part of the analyst to ‘go mad’ with their analysand. This does not mean that the analyst abdicates responsibility for the containment and professional boundaries of the work – rather, they hold to Jung’s principle that the analyst must be in the archetypal transference with the analysand, and allow the alchemical process of change to happen. This experience of psychological connection, held by the analyst within the maintenance of professional boundaries, then provides the basis for greater personality stability, and capacity for relationship.
In relation to narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, while other Jungian writers like Jacoby (1991) stress the convergence with ideas from psychoanalysis and object relations, Shwartz-Salant (1982) again deploys an archetypal approach. The need for deep mirroring by the analyst for the analysand, who, like Narcissus, has previously only known themselves as the mirror, is a key feature of his approach. The incorporation of feminine and masculine archetypal influences to facilitate a new awareness of the presence and needs of the ‘other’ is another.
Spotlight: Typology and narcissism
Aron (2004) suggests that the concept of ‘narcissism’ would be better understood by exploring deep typological influences from a Jungian perspective, such as levels of sensitivity in introverted personalities.
The approaches described in this chapter demonstrate how a Jungian approach to significant mental health difficulties can provide fresh and profound insights into the ways in which psychic disturbance, and the human suffering associated with it, arise, and how they can be ameliorated.
Key terms
Borderline personality disorder: A presentation of personality that is often characterized by unstable, sometimes hostile, relations with other people and dramatic switches in mood. It is sometimes portrayed as sitting in the ‘border territory’ between neurosis and psychosis.
Narcissistic personality disorder: A presentation of personality that is hallmarked by a dominant focus on self and a severe difficulty in making and sustaining reciprocal relationships.
Psychopathology: This term refers to the study of the origins of mental health in the individual – psychological, biological, genetic and social. It is also used in a generalized way in psychiatry and psychotherapy, for example in case discussions, to direct attention to these origins.
Dig deeper
Adams, N. and Greider, D., Treatment Planning for Person-Centred Care: The Road to Mental Health and Addiction Recovery (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005)
Aron, E., ‘Revisiting Jung’s concept of innate sensitiveness’, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 49, 337–67 (2004)
Beck, A. T. and Alford, B. A., Depression: Causes and Treatment, 2nd ed. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
Costello, M., Imagination, Illness And Injury: Jungian Psychology and the Somatic Dimensions of Perception (London: Taylor & Francis, 2006)
Jacoby, M., Individuation and Narcissism: The Psychology of Self in Jung and Kohut (Hove: Routledge, 1991)
Jung, C. G., Letter to Bill Wilson regarding alcoholism, 30.1.1961. Copy at http://www.silkworth.net/aahistory/carljung_billw013061.html
Jung, C. G., Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1966a)
Jung, C. G., The Practice of Psychotherapy, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1966b)
Jung, C. G., Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW11, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1969)
Kalsched, T., The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
Kalsched, D., Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption (London and New York: Routledge, 2013)
Rosen, D., Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul Through Creativity (Newburyport, MA: Hays (Nicolas), 2002)
Samuels, A., Psychopathology: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives (London: Karnac, 1989)
Schoen, D., War of the Gods in Addiction (New Orleans, LA: Spring Books, 2009)
Sheff, D., Clean: Overcoming Addiction (Lyndhurst, NJ: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)
Shwartz-Salant, N., Narcissism and Character Transformation: The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorder (Toronto: Inner-City Books, 1982)
Wilkinson, M., ‘Undoing trauma: contemporary neuroscience. A Jungian clinical perspective’, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 48(2), 235–53 (April 2003)
Zoja, L., Drugs, Addiction, and Initiation: The Modern Search for Ritual, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln, CH: Daimon, 2000)
Fact-check (answers at the back)
1 Why did Jung prefer the term ‘healing’ to ‘cure’?
a Unconscious processes could not cure, as Freud argued
b This made therapeutic language easier to understand
c Unconscious processes, which facilitate well-being, are more holistic than Freud argued
d Jung saw his work as ‘spiritual healing’
2 Why is work with shadow important in tackling depression, according to Jung?
a Because it enables the trapped energy creating the depression to be released
b Because it helps to see why the person might choose to be depressed
c Because it meant the analysand would stop projecting their low mood on to the analyst
d Because it allows the trapped energy in the shadow to relax the body
3 What is meant by a ‘synthetic’ approach to working with the unconscious?
a The early stages of analysis where the work is rather synthetic rather than real
b Conscious and unconscious influences are worked with together to facilitate healing
c The way in which an analyst positions themselves in relation to the analysand
d Conscious and unconscious influences are analysed separately, then together
4 How did Jung think religion or other meaningful influences helped alcoholics?
a By helping them forgive themselves for their addictive behaviours
b By taking them away from reality so they would not turn to drink
c By providing them with genuine ‘spirit’ to replace damaging alcoholic spirits
d By offering contact with ‘spirits’ of the dead rather than those of the bottle
5 Why does Zoja think addiction is related to a collective Western problem?
a Because it sometimes replaces religion, as Jung argued
b Because it is something people do to copy others and gain acceptance
c Because there are too many consumers with spare cash to buy drugs
d Because it reflects our consumerism, which stops proper initiation into adult society
6 What happens when psyche dissociates in response to trauma?
a It splits into separate parts and produces imagery which is hostile and frightening
b It refuses to associate with other people in case they criticize them when vulnerable
c It splits into mind and body and these are then in conflict with each other
d It refuses to engage with the analyst or the therapeutic process
7 Kalsched argued that trauma creates an archetypal pattern. How?
a By triggering a warped alchemical process in the unconscious
b By creating archetypal images which help the person forget the trauma
c By dropping the individual through their defences and into the unconscious
d By creating defences against psychic collapse which generate violent imag
ery
8 What part do the monstrous figures in dreams and fantasies play?
a They draw the analysand towards the healing process in therapy
b They symbolize the split in psyche and keep the person away from healing the trauma
c They guide the analyst towards their own splits and so stall the process
d They provide images from childhood which help the analysand remember the trauma
9 What are the expectations of analysts regarding work with mental health needs?
a They are expected to take a classical Jungian position with all needs presented
b They can always choose what sorts of mental health needs they want to work with
c They are expected to work with a wide range and keep their knowledge up to date
d They must work with psychiatric inpatients only
10 What does Shwartz-Salant’s approach to borderline personality disorder involve?
a The analyst imagining they are the analysand, to promote unconscious union
b The analysand imagining they are their parents, to promote unconscious union
c The analyst imagining they are mad, to promote unconscious union
d The analyst allowing their own ‘mad’ images to arise, to promote unconscious union
Section 4
Jung’s legacy: culture, spirituality and therapy
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Jung’s legacy in the arts and sciences
Jungian thinking has influenced a number of areas within our culture, including academic, clinical and spiritual ones. This chapter begins with Jung’s approach to science, his valuing of scientific empiricism and his parallel critique of scientific orthodoxy – via, particularly, the concept of synchronicity. We will consider why the Jungian viewpoint has not found it easy to gain acceptance in the scientific world. Then we will explore how Jung’s valuing of creativity as an important contributor to the individuation process has helped spread the influence of his ideas to writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians.
Jung’s grand project
‘… Jung’s conceptions of the archetypes, libido and the collective unconscious represented a confluence and synthesis of a number of philosophical, physiological, biological and psychological conceptions at the end of the nineteenth century. Since then the increasing autonomy and fragmentation of psychology, together with the diversification and specialization of sciences of the body, has unravelled even the possibility of such a synthesis.’
Shamdasani, 2003, p. 271
Jung, as we have seen, saw the ‘big picture’. As he built on his initial ideas about the human psyche and developed effective treatments and therapeutic interventions for a wide range of presenting mental health conditions, a larger canvas came into view. However, his ambitious framework for influencing scientific thinking has not penetrated academia in the same way as his ideas have generally infiltrated Western culture. As we explore one or two key concepts relevant to Jung’s approach, it is important to hold in mind how the position he took left him at times on the perimeters of mainstream empirical scientific study.
By ‘thinking outside the box’, Jung found himself out on the fringes of mainstream acceptability in the wider psychological and scientific fields. Although there was interest in Jung’s ideas, such as by the zoologists Friedrich Alverdes and Konrad Lorenz (more details in Shamdasani, 2003), these tended to be short-lived.
Spotlight: Archetypes and animal behaviour
Konrad Lorenz was a Nobel Prize winning ethologist (i.e. he studied animal behaviour) who, in the mid-twentieth century, noticed Jung’s ideas on archetypes and linked these to his understanding of instinctual processes in animals, such as innate release mechanisms (Lorenz, 1970). He demonstrated how such processes are imprinted on animals (e.g. when a baby goose responded to him as ‘mother’, after encountering him first after hatching from the egg).
Though he argued that Jung may have over-generalized, he also acknowledged the value of his (and Freud’s) thinking for developing an approach that tried to explain deep-seated instinctual behaviours. More widely, further specific investigation of such areas drew science towards detailed investigatory research, and away from Jung’s tendency to try to synthesize ideas.
Jung was concerned about what he saw as a deep split in Western culture, one that others were highlighting. A contemporary of Jung’s, the scientist and fiction writer C. P. Snow, delivered a lecture in 1959 in which he identified the ‘two cultures’ (Snow, 2001, p. 3) of the sciences and the humanities, and a deep rift between them within intellectual life across all Western societies. Jung saw this split as indicative of how Western culture had got out of touch with its own soul, a perception which led him to entitle, in 1933, one of his more deliberately populist books Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Jung, 2001). He argued that Western culture had fallen into thrall with the principles of scientific empiricism and a positivistic fixation on provable, measurable, facts. This had driven citizens of these societies away from the search for deeper meaning in life, and hence created a malaise that was individual but also collective.
Humanity was divided against itself, as Jung saw it, because of a split between two fundamental sides of human nature – the rational and the irrational. By sweeping away centuries of religious and other traditions outside the realm of orthodox science, especially those which maintained an investment of meaning in humanity’s relationship with the natural world, Jung saw a dangerous one-sidedness emerging in Western culture. He saw the rise of fascism and communism and the growing despoiling of the natural environment in this light. People, and governments, had become over-confident in their own ability to generate wealth and develop the knowledge base of civilization. With the spectre of nuclear destruction of this very ‘civilization’ looming over the post-war world, Jung warned of the dangers of this exponential growth in the ability to both create and destroy (Freeman, 1959).
Jung thought he had found what he was looking for in order to bridge the divide between religion (and the arts) on the one side, and science on the other, when he began to explore the phenomenon of synchronicity. We shall explore this sometimes misunderstood, and even maligned, principle below, as a basis for understanding more fully how Jung saw the creative possibilities for individuation via engagement with both arts/humanities (and religion) and science.
For him, the holistic nature of the individuation process demanded a willingness on our part to embrace and engage with both sides of this ‘coin’. When we made one-sided choices to focus on one side at the expense of the other, we were promoting the collective one-sidedness that was tilting us towards danger. Jung embodied this principle in how he sustained a keen interest in scientific matters, developed his own artistic sensibility in his painting (and ‘imaginative play’ with the stones on the shores of Lake Zurich), and made the psychological and experiential exploration of religious experience fundamental to his framework.
Synchronicity as connecting principle
‘Both views, the materialistic as well as the spiritualistic, are metaphysical prejudices. It accords better with experience to suppose that living matter has a psychic aspect, and the psyche a physical aspect… The “acausal” correspondences between mutually independent psychic and physical events, i.e. synchronistic phenomena, and in particular psychokinesis, would then become more understandable, for every physical event would involve a psychic one and vice versa.’
Jung, 1970a, para. 780
Jung did not properly articulate his ideas about synchronicity until 1952, after he had been working with the eminent physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900–58) and further refined his thinking about the possibility of a close, and mutually influential, psychic relationship between nature and psyche.
Jung’s idea was based on observations of what he came to see as meaningful coincidences. He thought these might not be explicable in rational terms, but that they pointed towards something at work under the fabric of familiar consciousness which seems to generate such phenome
na. This hypothesis certainly fell into the kind of territory where he could lay himself open to criticism for being ‘unscientific’ or even ‘mystical’ – not epithets he and analytical psychology needed, as it tried to establish its credibility.
However, having taken the (brave?) step of putting these ideas in writing, Jung was able to offer modernity a potential tool for acknowledging the appearance of the mysterious in ordinary life. His acausal connecting principle (Jung, 1970b, p. 8) was one Jung thought people could relate to, even if his embellishments about the significance of this might not be of interest. This principle proposed that where something which happens in outer reality resonates in some unexpected way with a thought or intuition within, synchronicity is at work (e.g. we are thinking about a person we know, and the phone rings, and it is them).
More generally, the ways in which synchronicity can occur can be described as falling within one of three main categories:
1 Events or factors which coincide in time and space and seem to have some meaningful link but are not connected in a causal way (such as the ‘phone call’ example just given)
2 Events or factors that do not coincide in time and space but for which there seems to be some kind of meaningful link (e.g. we discover that the person who owned a car before we bought it had previously sold a car to another member of our family some time ago, in another part of the country)
3 Events or factors which link the outer, physical world with the inner, psychic one; Jung’s example of the ‘scarab beetle’ described below, fits into this category
All these phenomena, according to Jung, suggest that the fabric of reality is not as easily defined as some scientists would want to make out. The ‘ruptures of time’ which synchronicity represents can not only provide insights which support the therapeutic process on occasion, but as Main asserts (2004, p. 142):