“The psychological process of transference is a specific form of the more general process of projection. It is important to bring these two concepts together and to realize that transference is a special case of projection… Projection is a general psychological mechanism that carries over subjective contents of any kind into the object.”
Jung (1935)[1]
“Transference, strictly, as I have already said, is a projection which happens between two individuals and which, as a rule, is of an emotional and compulsory nature. ”
Jung (1935)[2]
“Strictly speaking, transference is the projection of unconscious contents upon the person analyzing the unconscious. The term “transference,” however, is used in a much wider sense and embraces all the exceedingly complex processes which bind the patient to the analyst.”
Jung (1925)[3]
“The projection of unconscious material by the patient on to the analyst is called transference, while the reverse process, where the analyst has unconscious expectations or distorted impressions of the patient, is called countertransference. Since both processes inevitably occur to some degree in any analytic situation, it is convenient to refer to them together with the abbreviation T/CT, standing for “transference and countertransference.” They constitute much of the transformative field of the analysis within which many changes may take place in the analysand, and often also in the analyst.”
Hall (1986)[4]
“The transference phenomenon is without doubt one of the most important syndromes in the process of individuation; its wealth of meanings goes far beyond mere personal likes and dislikes. By virtue of its collective contents and symbols it transcends the individual personality and extends into the social sphere, reminding us of those higher human relationships which are so painfully absent in our present social order, or rather disorder.”
Jung (1946)[5]
“When, therefore, the demand for individuation appears in analysis under the guise of an exceptionally strong transference, it means farewell to personal conformity with the collective, and stepping over into solitude, into the cloister of the inner self. Only the shadow of the personality remains in the outer world. Hence the contempt and hate that come from society. But inner adaptation leads to the conquest of inner realities, from which values are won for the reparation of the collective.”
Jung (1916)[6]
This essay examines what Freud and Jung both felt was the “alpha and omega of the analytical method,”[7] although in this, as in many other realms, they had their differences.[8] In this examination of transference/countertransference, I will first define terms, note features of analysis and transference, provide some illustrations of how transference/countertransference may show up during an analysis (with some examples drawn from both Jung’s and Jungian analysts’ accounts), and conclude with why the phenomenon of transference is valuable.
Definitions of Terms
As the quotes opening this essay indicate, transference is a psychological process whereby a patient (aka “analysand,” lit. “the person to be analyzed”) transfers unconsciously his/her childhood experiences on to the analyst, who then must carry the host of emotions, woundings, and attitudes that accrued over years or decades from interactions with parent(s) or significant other figures. None of this is consciously done; rather, it is a component of “the self-regulation of the psyche by means of the natural drive towards individuation.”[9]
Freud named this process “transference, because the patient transferred to the analyst the fantasies that were formerly attached to the memory-images of the parents.”[10] Jung knew that this phenomenon was not a head-trip involving “the purely intellectual sphere,” but included the libido, i.e. psychic energy. So the fantasies of the analysand came with thoughts and feelings that got attached to the analyst.[11]
Being unconscious, the process–Jung noted ruefully– comes with lots of intense feelings, compulsions, and “contagious” emotions:
“The emotions of patients are always slightly contagious, and they are very contagious when the contents of which the patient projects into the analyst are identical with the analyst’s own unconscious contents. Then they both fall into the same dark hole of unconsciousness, and get into the condition of participation. This is the phenomenon which Freud has described as counter-transference. It consists of mutual projecting into each other and being fastened together by mutual unconsciousness.”[12]
Such situations can produce confusion, disorientation and even disaster, if the analyst is unable to maintain the professional frame. This is a major reason why both Jung and Freud required analysts to undergo their own analysis, so they would have worked through many of their own neuroses, and would be more likely to be able to take an objective stance amid the illusions, confusions and emotional intensities of the analysis.
Jung knew that “In the beginning of an analysis, transference projections are inevitable repetitions of former personal experiences of the patient’s.”[13] He was not thrilled with this aspect of his profession, and for nearly twenty years, he expressed conflicting opinions about transference. In his discussion of the phenomenon (a diversion from his planned lecture) at the Tavistock Clinic in 1935, he noted that “transference is always a hindrance; it is never an advantage.”[14] Over the next ten years Jung went back and forth in his opinion of the usefulness of transference. It was only in 1946, in his last article on the subject, that Jung finally stated his belief in its value.[15]
Jung recognized the difference between a transference relationship and “a personal human reaction.” The latter, Jung felt, was possible only when a transference had ended, when the contact was no longer “vitiated by unrecognized impersonal values,” i.e. archetypal images. As long the analysand was projecting archetypes like “father” and/or “mother” on to the analyst, the contact would not be free of “a tremendous fascination,” making personal interaction impossible,[16] and resulting in a “severe trial of patience.”[17]
Because Jung knew that “it is imperative that the doctor should get into the closest possible touch with the patient’s line of psychological development,”[18] he endured this “trial,” knowing that “the transference phenomenon… is an inevitable feature of every thorough analysis.”[19] He urged newly-minted analysts not to regard the transference as “an entirely abnormal phenomenon that has to be ‘fought against’,” but rather to recognize it as one aspect of the “social bond which holds human society together and which also produces close ties between people of like mind.”[20] In this context, Jung felt, transference could be regarded as “a process of empathy and adaptation.”[21]
Jungian analysts also offer us definitions of “transference” and “countertransference.” In one of the most in-depth treatments of the subject, Mario Jacoby defines transference as “a technical term for the projections occurring in the patient-analyst relationship.”[22] while “projection” is a more generic term used to refer to “subjective, intra-psychic experiences” with people in the outer world.[23]
Analysts speak of “mirror transference,” “idealizing transference” and “archetypal transference”–all “terms designating the unconscious expectations a patient is having of his analyst.”[24] In the mirror form, the analysand may experience “every word and tone of voice, every minute gesture [of the analyst]… as indicating acceptance or rejection, as if it were a verdict of the mirror.”[25]
Idealizing transference is the term given to the situation where the patient projects “an archetypal content upon the analyst.”[26] That is, the patient sees the analyst as
“all-powerful, benevolent and wise, with no qualities that detract from this perfection–no ‘darkness’ such as the all-too-human qualities of anger, hate, deceit, shallowness, power drives, manipulations, evny, etc.”[27]
–a situation which can lead to all sorts of distortions, the patient even coming to think of the analyst as divine.
The “archetypal transference” was Jung’s term[28] for the unusual situation in which, after the analyst had cleared up or “reduced” the projections going back in the past (thus freeing up libido), the result did not “lead to new external adaptations” (the patient made no positive adjustment in outer life), but instead, the freed-up energy flowed into the collective unconscious, where it then activated archetypes which were then projected in the transference.
Recognition of archetypes and the collective unconscious were two ways Jung differed from Freud. Another was Freud’s focus on reductive treatment of the transference, focused on why–the causes for the transference–and seeking to reduce or eliminate the causes. Freud’s causalist theory seemed, to Jung, to be too narrow and one-sided.[29] Jung “developed a method of interpretation which he called the synthetic or constructive method,”[30] in which he distinguished two types of “cause,” the causa efficiens and the causa finalis.[31] The former asks (as Freud did) why the transference happened, what causes way back in the patient’s life had brought him/her to this point, while the causa finalis poses a different question: “To what purpose did it happen?”[32] With this additional question, Jung recognized that illness can be a “necessary part of a developmental process,”[33] and the psyche can have aims and intentions which the reductive approach fails to recognize.
Jung and his followers know that transference can be positive (the patient projecting positive, even erotic, feelings on to the analyst) or negative (the analyst receiving arguments, hostility, even hatred from the analysand). While certainly unpleasant for the analyst, the negative transference could be, Jung felt, “a powerful urge to develop one’s own personality,” a task which Jung regarded as “an imperative duty.”[34] The positive form of transference fosters integration, and the “erotic aspect of the transference-countertransference relationship is … a symbol for the coniunctio and leads to wholeness.”[35]
In the “transference phenomenon” the analyst and analysand are “caught in the… dynamics of past relationships imported into the present. The child’s fear of losing the parent’s favor is recirculated in adult relationships. The mythologem of the abandoned child–‘I cannot live without the other being there for me’–is transferred to the contemporary scene.”[36] In such situations, if the transference is positive, “reparenting” becomes possible: the analyst provides “the affirmation, the modeling, the encouragement and challenge” the father archetype contains, which “may help compensate for what was missing in the actual biography of the patient.”[37] In this way, a positive transference can offer the patient “second-best to the real thing, but it is no small gift and represents a liberation from the wounding of history.”[38]
Components of Analysis and Transference
Our discussion of definitions above referred to many of the components of analysis and the transference/countertransference that are part of it, e.g. fantasies, projections, unconsciousness, woundings, compulsions, contagions, illusions, confusions, distortions, dark holes–all of which suggest the complexity and challenges inherent in Jungian analytical work. In this section, we aim to describe the analytical and transferential process in more detail, beginning with some general comments and then considering seven components commonly found when Jung and his fellow analysts worked with patients.
General comments. First, we must admit that we are bringing order in this essay to what Jung sadly recognized was not orderly. This was in part because every person is unique, so each case has to be oriented to the individual: this is not a “one size fits all” endeavor. Jung lamented the “bewildering number of variations” and noted that
“It is enough to drive one to despair that in practical psychology there are no universally valid recipes and rules. There are only individual cases with the most heterogeneous needs and demands – so heterogeneous that we can virtually never know in advance what course a given case will take, for which reason it is better for the doctor to abandon all preconceived opinions. This does not mean that he should throw them overboard, but that in any given case he should use them merely as hypotheses for a possible explanation.”[39]
Mindful at the start of the “heterogeneous” nature of our subject, we can still speak of some common themes or experiences.
So, for example, Jung and other analysts remind us that analysis a “long, difficult and painful process,”[40] “directed by the influence of the Self,”[41] and changing in its nature over time;[42] that models for the analytic process are necessary,[43] but are useless within the process;[44] and that the analytic experience cannot be contained in a rational vocabulary, since its essence is emotional and existential.[45]
Depth psychological work is often called a form of “talking cure,” but at times situations arise between analyst and analysand in which verbalization could thwart essential emotional reactions. Frequently, these reactions are spontaneous,[46] full of irrational elements,[47] and sometimes reflecting despair, in analysand, analyst or both parties.[48] The work includes the positive transference (feelings of affection and respect), along with negatives (e.g. hostility and resistance),[49] and it “must accommodate itself to mystery and the shadow.”[50] Some analysts speak of encounters with the “dark side of the Self,”[51] while others discuss the unio mystica (the alchemical coniunctio) “which cannot be understood, as it is a mystery, a mystical experience,”[52] and a paramount “experience leading a person to the experience of the Self.”[53]
Dreams. Central to any Jungian activity are dreams, and in the context of analysis, dreams are a key resource helping to elucidate what is going on in the client’s life and in the relationship with the analyst. Jung regarded dreams in the transference-countertransference context as sources of many insights, e.g. about neuroses,[54] incest-fantasies,[55] projections of archaic elements,[56] painful shadow elements,[57] and sexual feelings.[58]
The patient’s sexual dreams of the analyst could be interpreted as an attempt to bridge the emotional gap between them,[59] or such dreams could be a possible sign that a transformative process is beginning in the unconscious of the patient or the analyst, or of both.[60] Jungians find that the unconscious often makes use of sexual imagery to symbolize non-physical processes of union and transformation, much as the medieval alchemists observed in their dreams and meditations.[61]
Over the course of the analysis, every dream is saying something[62]–sexual or otherwise–about the process of the work and/or the analyst/analysand relationship. In addition to shedding light on the patient/doctor relationship, the patient’s neuroses, or the pace of the transformation, dreams can also monitor the energy level of the work. When interest or attention wanes–either in the analyst or the analysand–the psyche may send up synchronistic dreams as a possible sign that more energy needs to be invested to support the process of analysis.[63]
In so many ways, dreams are a core component of Jungian analysis, and so,
when a person begins analysis, s/he is told to keep a journal, record and give serious attention to the dreams that come, and then reflect on the emotional reactions the dreams may provoke.[64] While interpretation and understanding are valued, more importance is put on experiencing the dream and the fantasies it contains.[65]
Stages of the transference. While the logical, rational orientation of the Western mind would like the developmental sequence of an analysis to be neatly laid out, Jung lamented the “greatest arbitrariness in the sequence of states.”[66] He observed this same jumbled quality in the writings of the alchemists (the medieval precursors of analysts), no two of whom ever had the exact same order of discussion of the phases or operations in their alchemical endeavors.[67]
But over a dozen Jungian analysts speak of “initial stages”[68] and “phases”[69] which have general similarity, and accord with the alchemists’ phases of the nigredo (the first stage of the work of transformation, characterized by unconsciousness, darkness, confusion, despair and painful wrestling with shadow elements.[70] This is the stage when the analysand is likely to discover complexes in his/her unconscious, and the task then is to come to some understanding of what is going on with these nodes of energy. This, the hardest stage, sees the analysand’s unconscious produce mirroring and/or idealizing transferences on to the analyst, whose every word, gesture or tone of voice is examined, and whose utterances might be venerated as god-like.[71] Faced with such projections of the Self,[72] there’s nothing for the analyst to do but hold the client’s unconscious fantasies.
After this first stage of elucidation comes the albedo phase, easier to handle for both analyst and analysand.[73] This is the stage of education, self-education for the analysand wrestling to learn how to mine his/her dreams,[74] and full of insights for the analyst who may observe the emergence of the Self.
Neither of these stages is linear: they operate in a spiral-like manner,[75] so the work requires the circumambulatio–a “walking around” and around and around, seeing the inner productions of the psyche from all angles. This can get annoying after a while, as I vividly recall when I, so often, would complain to my analysts “But haven’t I finished with this already?” Apparently not, and then I would be reminded that repetition is how we learn. Sigh.
Freud stopped at the stage of elucidation, in his “reductive method”[76] of analysis. This would reduce the dream contents back to early childhood, in the quest to determine the cause(s) of the client’s neurosis. Jung found this too narrow and lacking in a key additional consideration, which opened the possibility for change and growth. In the stage of education (lit. a “drawing out of” the analysand), Jung would pose the question of the purpose–to what end was the psyche offering up this dream or fantasy?[77]
Over time (and lots more dreams, projections, taking back of projections, wrestling with transferences (by the analysand) and countertransferences (by the analyst), encounters with the Self (disturbing for the ego, gratifying for the psyche) and years of diligent labor, the process comes to a final stage: “the resolution of the transference,”[78] when the scrim of all the projections on to the analyst have been seen for what they were, and the analysand is able to relate to the person of the analyst as a human being. These–the analysand and the analyst–are the “heroes” of our essay, the “stars” of the transference/countertransference drama. Since the process begins when the analysand appears, I will discuss the analysand/patient/client first.
The analysand’s psychological state. As the unconscious instigator of the “chemical” action that sets off the transference process, the analysand is the focus of the analytic endeavor. Just how arduous the process will be depends on the initial condition of the analysand. Few people enter analysis for the fun of it. Jung was explicit that only those in psychological distress, who have no other recourse, are likely to undertake the hard job of wrestling with the “exceedingly complex processes” in analysis.[79] So most people show up at the analyst’s door with seemingly intractable problems: neurotic blocks, dammed up libido, compulsive behaviors, “unbridled negative energies,”[80] somatic issues, chronic insomnia, paralyzing phobias, severe anxiety, internal conflicts causing diminished capacities, etc.–all inducements to potential change. “Potential” because there is a resistance to change that must be overcome.[81]
Over time, if the two–analysand and analyst–develop rapport, the analysand’s resistance lessens. Trust slowly builds as the analyst becomes the object of the patient’s transference.[82] With the analyst carefully maintaining the analytical frame,[83] the analysand’s anxiety diminishes,[84] and many of presenting problems are addressed. In my experience, these positive changes occur in a time frame that is far too slow: I kept asking when I would feel better, when things would improve, and my analyst would suggest I consider our shared work as a natural unfoldment. She would use the analogy to watching grass grow: would it grow faster if I kept focusing on it? It will take as long as it takes. Better to engage in creative and other enjoyable activities while the psyche did the healing. Sigh.
The analysand’s attitudes. Resistance is one attitude commonly brought into the process at the start. Much as one wants to feel better, one resists the process of self-development.[85] Impatient, unrealistic and defensive attitudes are also common,[86] e.g. expecting the healing process to go faster, as if one’s wishes could alter the pace of a natural process.
Most patients enter analysis with a “deep longing to be understood and empathized with,”[87] even as they often anticipate a host of negatives from the analyst, e.g. that they will be judged, criticized, victimized, rejected[88]–most of these assumptions deriving from their experiences in early childhood. In a desperate need to be held and contained, the analysand often is ready to project his/her power (to heal, cure, make the problems go away) on to the analyst,[89] who is regarded as an authority figure.[90] Not surprisingly, this results in the analyst getting overvalued, sometimes to the point where the patient sees the analyst as god-like.[91] At the same time, the patient becomes dependent on the analyst, while often resenting this dependence.[92] As the core of the transference, projections like these can produce a variety of actions.
The analysand’s actions. The patient begins to assimilate the analyst to the imago of his/her inner father (or mother or other person significant in the patient’s history) as the transference deepens.[93] This means that the analysand transfers his/her experience of the problematic parent or person on to the analyst, and then acts emotionally as if the analyst were that parent (or other significant person). This can result in all sorts of strange actions.
The patient may get possessive of the analyst,[94] resenting the fact that s/he has other patients. Mistrust, or fear of losing the analyst can lead to the patient trying to steal more of the analyst’s time beyond the analytic hour.[95] If the transference is negative (i.e. the patient had a poor relationship with the significant person) the analysand may demean the analyst with contemptuous remarks,[96] or try to wear him/her down with animus-driven wordiness.[97] The patient may ask the analyst for suggestions and then reject them.[98] Sometimes patients unconsciously attach their projections to similar vulnerabilities they sense in the analyst.[99] While they cling to the security of the analytic container, they may unconsciously undermine the process by withholding information or being evasive.[100]
The patient can also break the rule of containment.[101] The analysand is usually informed in the beginning of the analysis about the “container” within which the process will operate: the temenos is “sealed:” nothing said or done within the analytic hour is to be talked about or shared with others. Often, however, the analysand proves unable to keep this container closed. Not understanding that the process is similar to the action of a pressure-cooker (in which food cooks faster due to the contained nature of the process), the analysand will release the energy in the work by seeking opinions from others, or sharing experiences with family or friends.
The analysand’s tasks. Maintaining the sealed container is one task expected of the analysand. Another is the same task the analyst has: keep a journal, give serious attention to the dreams, and pay attention to any emotional reactions and other noteworthy events that occur outside the analytic hour.[102] The analyst will expect the patient to share the week’s news, to witness his/her inner reactions to these events, and to endure the waiting, watching, and intervals of what seem like regressions, without losing hope.[103]
As the months and years pass, the tasks evolve: the patient incorporates the insights and discoveries that show up in the analysis, and becomes more adept at understanding the important images that arise on the subjective level–a task that helps to constellate his/her own inner analyst.[104] The patient develops a new set of assumptions about life,[105] as s/he comes to realize that problems once seen as “out there” actually arise within him/herself.
With the growth of insight, and the strengthening of his/her conscious mind, the analysand gradually takes back the personal infantile projections that had been projected on to the analyst, now recognizing them as his/her own.[106] Having endured multiple experiences of the “dark side of the Self,”[107] the analysand develops a trust in his/her inner wisdom, as a new Self image arises: the beneficient, accepting Self, which can be trusted to respond with relatedness.[108] At this point the dreams may be full of coniunctio images,[109] reflecting how the patient is getting his/her act together and moving more deeply into his/her individuated reality. The analyst has observed these changes and signs of growth, as the transference gets “resolved.”[110] To the analyst’s roles, tasks and challenges we now turn.
The analyst’s personal qualities. Jung made quite clear that the job of the Jungian analyst was no mere “job,” but rather a vocation[111]–a calling akin to that of monk, priest or minister–the undertaking of which served to fulfill the individual’s destiny. An unusual personality was required for this work: along with great tact and foresight,[112] a sense of humor (the ability to laugh at oneself) was essential.[113]
So was humility, since there would be repeated situations reminding analysts of the limitations of their knowledge[114]–times when an ability to relate to and be “directed by the influence of the Self” would be required.[115] In the face of the patient’s projections of the wise man or priest on to the analyst, only humility could spare the analyst from ego inflation and remind him/her that the role of analyst was to be an instrument in the service of the Self.[116]
In addition to these qualities, the analyst had to have a deep sense of empathy, so he/she could allow him/herself to be carried to where the patient needed him/her.[117] Trust in both the process (honed in his/her own analysis) and in the Self were mandatory, so the analyst could withstand attacks from both the analysand and the Devil (i.e. that inner divisive force living in the shadow of patient and doctor).[118]
The analyst’s roles. The job requires wearing multiple hats: counselor, teacher,[119] dream interpreter,[120] voice of reality,[121] authority figure,[122] holder of projections (e.g. of the father-lover or the positive mother),[123] creator of the analytic frame (time, place, space, routines),[124] and coach (e.g. training the analysand in necessary skills like talking on the telephone).[125] Depending on the phase of the process and the dreams of the moment, the analyst might have to perform as “Hecate,” working out of his/her Dionysian animus in those times when the “Furies” make an appearance,[126] or as “Apollo,” when the situation calls for more analytical, symbolic, rational feedback with clarity and objectivity.[127] The real challenge in this line of work is that many of these hats must be worn at the same time. This was not, however, the only challenge.
Challenges for the analyst. The first challenge for a would-be analyst is getting through the training. Jung required every person interested in this profession to have a personal analysis, partly to understand what the patient would experience, but, more importantly, to wise up to one’s own complexes, inner demons, weaknesses and wounds.[128] Without such deep work prior to working with others, the analyst would easily confuse his/her “stuff” with that of the patient and make more havoc than healing.
The next challenge is the “training analysis,” in which the prospective analyst works with a patient under the supervision of an experienced analyst. Here the analyst-in-training learns how and when to use the reductive versus the synthetic method,[129] how to recognize projections from the patient,[130] how to provide indispensable inner balance in the patient-analyst interaction,[131] and how to allow a transference to grow.[132] The trainee is taught how to assess objectively his relationship to the patient,[133] and how to note his/her own countertransference distortions which might impede the therapeutic process.[134] The need for the analyst to pay scrupulous attention to what goes on in and outside the analytic hour is another skill to be mastered,[135] along with learning the technique of “holding” the patient properly–not too much, nor too little.[136]
From the training analysis, the analyst-in-training may face challenges involved in handling and valuing anger[137]–his/her own and that of the patient; what it feels like when the patient is determined to wear him/her down;[138] how to show the patient that the dark side of life has value;[139] and how to “take over” the sufferings of the patient with empathy.[140] The charged issue of sexuality is also fodder for the analyst’s training, as sexual feelings are natural in any relationship with emotional depth.[141] Over the decades ethical standards have evolved;[142] analysts are now taught that erotic feelings are used by the psyche in multiple ways, e.g. as an alert to the analyst that his interest in the client’s progress is waning,[143] or as a sign of possible unsatisfactory rapport between analyst and patient.[144] The patient’s sexual dreams of the analyst may be an attempt to bridge the emotional gap between them,[145] and sexual dreams can also be interpreted as a possible sign that a transformative process is beginning in the unconscious of patient, analyst or both of them.[146] The unconscious often makes use of sexual imagery to symbolize non-physical processes of union and transformation.[147]
From his experience of having been a patient, the analyst knows how vital empathy is.[148] It helps the analyst to look at the world from the standpoint of a child (which is the level on which many clients got wounded).[149] Empathy and imagination allow the analyst to experience and represent the projected unconscious of the patient, and empathy fosters the analyst’s providing embodied mirroring to the patient.[150] With empathic understanding, the analyst is able to help the patient deal with despair, not by eliminating it (as it shows up for some purpose) but by sharing the burden of it with the patient.[151]
The analyst is tasked with providing understanding, sympathy, encouragement, good advice, and suggestions when the patient asks for them, in a process that cannot be entirely conscious.[152] While the analysand might be clueless, the analyst must remember that the unconscious relationship between them is as important to the healing process as what is consciously communicated.[153]
The most significant challenges for the analyst are the dangers, like the danger of falling victim to the shadow,[154] or the dangers that can accrue in a descent into the emotional depths.[155] Much as the analyst might be annoyed or angry, s/he must never argue with the patient. Jung warned against the situation in which “the unacknowledged infantile demands of the analyst get identified with the parallel demands of the patient”[156]–a “critical juncture” that could lead “straight to suicide” if the analyst makes some technical blunder.[157] Because both analyst and patient occupy the “therapeutic vessel”[158] together, in a highly emotional context, and because emotions are very contagious, it is possible that the analyst could pick up an illness from the patient, as happened to Jane Prétat: she caught bronchitis from a patient.[159]
The analyst’s need for self care. Given all the tasks, challenges and dangers, it is essential that the analyst give time, thought and attention to his own physical and psychic problems. Jung was clear that “the analyst must discharge his duties to life in the proper way,”[160] and this would include his/her being in touch with his/her wound,[161] keeping a close connection to the Self,[162] monitoring body responses before, during and after each session with an analysand,[163] maintaining an ongoing relationship with the unconscious,[164] and staying healthy, so as to provide a contrasting model for the patient who feels weak, sick and wounded.[165] Most of all, the analyst must continue to live his/her life in such a way that the basic human needs for connection, meaning, purpose and transcendence are fulfilled.[166]
Illustrations of Transference/Countertransference in the Analytic Setting
Discussions of definitions and components of something as rarefied as transference may not provide clear pictures of how the experience plays out in the lives of patients and analysts. We are fortunate that both Jung and multiple Jungian analysts have written personal accounts of transference situations which illustrate how it works.
In 1939, Jung gave a seminar at the Guild of Pastoral Psychology in London during which he explained how, recognizing and using the energy of the transference, he cured a woman of a neurosis:
I remember a very simple case. There was a student of philosophy, a very intelligent woman…. It was not a very important case of neurosis, and I was absolutely certain that it could be cured; but the case had not been cured. That girl had developed a terrific father-transference to me–projected the image of the father on me….[Jung and the girl discuss the situation but Jung came to realize that “no depreciatory explanation would help.”]… She was in the grip of an unconscious image. Then I had an idea: “Now, if anybody knows anything about it, it must be the unconscious, that has produced such an awkward situation.” So I began to watch the dreams seriously, not just in order to catch certain fantasies, but because I really wanted to understand how her psychic system reacted to such an abnormal situation – or to such a very normal situation, if you like to say so, because that situation is usual. She produced dreams in which I appeared as the father. That we dealt with. Then I appeared as the lover, and I appeared as the husband – that was all in the same vein. Then I began to change my size: I was much bigger than an ordinary human being; sometimes I even had divine attributes. I thought “Oh, well, that is the old savior idea.” And then I took on the most amazing forms. I appeared, for instance, the size of a god, standing in the fields and holding her in my arms as if she were a baby, and the wind was blowing over the corn and the fields were waving like waves of water, and in the same way I rocked her in my arms. And then, when I saw that picture, I thought, “Now I see what the unconscious really is after: the unconscious wants to make a god of me: that girl needs a god – at least, her unconscious needs a god. Her unconscious wants to find a god, and because it cannot find a god, it says ’Doctor Jung is a god’.” And so I said to her what I thought: “I surely am not a god, but your unconscious needs a god. That is a serious and a genuine need. No time before us has fulfilled that need; you are just an intellectual fool, just as much as I am, but we don’t know it.” That changed the situation completely; it made all the difference in the world. I cured that case, because I fulfilled the need of the unconscious.[167]
Note how the patient developed a transference to Jung–something he did not appreciate, as he preferred to work simply with dreams–and no amount of rational communication between them would get the idealization to stop. So, as he did in so many situations, Jung turned to the unconscious and watched for insights offered up by her dreams. Over time the patient’s dreams gave Jung clues as to the cause of her neurosis: she needed a conscious connection to the transcendent (something which the pastors, priests and vicars seated in the audience would have appreciated). Jung claimed he “cured that case” but the woman’s unconscious provided the answer; Jung had the fluency in the language of the unconscious to spot it.
Mario Jacoby, a Jungian analyst trained at the Zurich Institute, provides numerous examples of transference/countertransference in his book The Analytic Encounter. In this excerpt, he illustrates the subtle communication in a situation of “mirror transference.”
“… there are patients who need constant ’empathetic resonance’ to the slightest of utterances for long phases of their analysis. Yet I myself have made it more or less a rule in my therapeutic work not to venture an interpretation or a response before experiencing in myself a ‘gut reaction’ to what the patient has said. Otherwise there is the danger of making empty, routine interventions. But this can sometimes cause difficulties in cases of mirror transference.
“I remember for instance a patient who was talking about a rather delicate subject and I simply could not find at once a response or interpretation which seemed genuinely adequate to my feelings. So I sat there silently, letting what he had said sink into me and awaiting what would come up, yet at the same time troubled by my growing awareness that some kind of response from me was needed then and there. If he dared to approach such a delicate subject I couldn’t just let him be without ’empathic resonance,’ or else his feelings of shame would make him withdraw into his shell again. Yet nothing came up in me. It helped the situation that we had by that time fairly adequately worked through his fears of provoking my rejection whenever he made critical remarks. He was therefore now able to remark shyly that he suddenly felt as if he were talking against a wall. To this I could reply that his feeling matched my own discomfort at not having an adequate response in hand in spite of being aware that it was urgently needed. I told him that I had to let what he said sink in before being able to give a genuine response. At this, he felt once again understood and taken seriously. At the same time he also had to acknowledge a bit of my personal autonomy, which is an important step in the gradual transformation of mirror transference.”[168]
In referring to the “transformation of mirror transference,” Jacoby is noting how repeated instances in which the analyst’s needs and experiences are mentioned can help the analysand to begin to make a conscious distinction between the image he/she has of the analyst (i.e. the “mirror”) and the real flesh-and-blood human being who, in this case, needed time to process what the analysand had been telling him.
Laura Layton Schapira, a psychiatric nurse and Jungian analyst, describes her work with “Cassandra” women–highly intuitive, even psychic in their prophetic abilities–in her book The Cassandra Complex: Living with Disbelief. In this example, she recounts her first session working with Sarah, a powerful woman who, like the mythic Greek woman thousands of years before, suffered betrayal at the hands of the patriarchy.
“I remember a moment in Sarah’s very first session when her normally blue eyes took on a distinctly greenish glow. I thought, “This woman is a witch!” The phenomenon did not occur again until years later, during the Hecate phase. And it was important to the process that I could witness her envy and rage, her capacity for evil and destructiveness, her lust for power and desire to be queen. My seeing her in this way had several consequences: her dark side was mirrored, thus helping her to claim her power; I became a role model for her believing what she sees; and I was able to protect myself from her as yet unbridled negative energies.”[169]
From her work with numerous women gifted with psychic abilities, Schapira came to identify two phases in the transference process: the Hecate phase, when the analysand taps into intense rage, fury, excess and irrationality, and, later in the analysis, the Apollo phase, when the analysand is able to balance the internal Furies with cool rationality and objectivity. Women working through the “Cassandra complex” often enter analysis full of frustration from years of being demeaned by our societal misogyny. In this example, Sarah’s unconscious presented Schapira with an unforgettable image of Sarah’s emotional state, capacities and desires on their very first meeting, thus establishing at the get-go the agenda of their analytic work.
The New York Jungian analyst Warren Steinberg provides an illustration of how the analyst’s persona can present problems during the analysis:
One analyst, a former minister, had particular difficulty dealing with negative transferences from his patients. He would respond with defensive declarations that attempted to show he was not as they imagined…. I suggested that his inability to tolerate the patient’s negative fantasies and use them as the basis for exploring the patient shadow indicated some difficulty in accepting his own shadow…. His dream helped him begin to come to terms with the idea that both good and evil existed in the universe and that evil was another manifestation of God. Only after this process had begun could he tolerate his patient’s projection of evil on to him.[170]
Given the former minister’s theological training and the dogma it entailed, it was hard for him to recognize “God” as a polarity, since (to Jung’s unending frustration) Christians are steeped in the concept of privatio boni, in which evil is seen simply as a deprivation of good, rather than as part of God.[171] That Steinberg was involved in this suggests that the analyst reached out, or was in analysis himself with Steinberg. Steinberg’s advice points out how a patient’s comments can refer to the patient, the analyst or both of them. In any case, the comments could provide useful information that could be useful in the analysis.
Jane Prétat trained at the Boston Institute and wrote of her work with older people in her book, Coming to Age: The Croning Years and Late-Life Transformation. In this passage she recounts her work with Claire, a retiree whose life changed dramatically after she stopped working: life-threatening illness, death of her mother, a spouse in crisis also. Jane found herself overwhelmed in each session with Claire, struggling to stay awake, “drawn down by an overpowering pull into the unconscious”–until one day Jane noticed the position of her body: it had spontaneously assumed a posture of cuddling and rocking a baby. Jane then held this image in her imagination in the sessions she had with Claire while, at the same time, Jane noticed a shift in her feelings about the analysis: she began to look forward to their sessions, and Claire’s dreams began to get richer.
“This development of a positive mother-child relationship showed in my feeling and acting the part of the good mother (countertransference) in response to Claire perceiving me and treating me as if I were (transference). Slowly I began to realize that we were now working at very early childhood developmental levels in which I had become the container for her reworking of herself and her life, starting in the preverbal years. At first it was difficult to accept that Claire could walk into my office as a 60-year-old woman, one who had overcome many obstacles to create a career and a home and a fairly stable ego, who at the same time was experiencing herself as an infant who needed to be imaginally held and mirrored. Why was such a regression necessary at age 60, and what did it have to do with late-life development? What did it mean that I began to relate to this woman as if she were a baby? To try to make some sense of this, I reread Jung’s work on the child.”[172]
Dipping into Jung, Prétat came to understand how a new “child” can come into being in our “fruitful old age,” often with the need to tend to the woundings our early-life child experienced. This sparked Prétat is ask “Who is the child of our future development who we somehow lost, abandoned or never knew in earlier life?”–a question all readers of this blog might well ponder. Jung would remind us that, as an archetype, our inner child never dies and so always has a claim on our attention.
The widely-known Canadian analyst Marion Woodman also discusses the needs of the inner child and the role of the analyst in caring for it:
“In the transference the analyst then carries the projection of the loving mother the woman never had. Together they nurture and discipline the abandoned child, giving it a safe place to play and cherishing it into maturity. It is that child who has suffered outside the limits of society, yet is still holding to its own innate wisdom, refusing to die. Its vulnerability and strength, born of its own aloneness, give it the detachment necessary to the artist and the clown. In my experience, that detachment, simultaneously personal and transpersonal, is the only energy strong enough to depotentiate the trickster.”[173]
The naïve child, innocent of the scams and deceits of the world, could easily fall prey to the wiles of the trickster, so, led by the guidance in dreams, often this vulnerable side of us must become aware of the inner trickster living within who can protect us.
This passage sparked vivid memories of my early months in analysis, when my analyst began to sense, from my dreams, that the trickster was coming up into consciousness. As we had not worked together for long, this was a tentative suggestion. But just then, as if on cue, a fox emerged from the woods around my analyst’s house and sauntered right across our view from the big picture window, as if called by a higher power to show up and provide us with confirmation that the trickster was indeed becoming more conscious in me. This memorable example of synchronicity demonstrated for me not only the value of dreams, but also the reality of sympatheia–that all beings exist in a profound psychic connection, which can be constellated when circumstances require it.
The Value of Transference
Jung’s works are replete with passages stating the value of transference and countertransference in analysis. As noted in the beginning of this essay, Jung initially was of one mind with Freud about transference, assuring Freud that he found it essential in their 1907 meeting:
“After a conversation lasting many hours there came a pause. Suddenly he asked me out of the blue, “And what do you think about the transference?’ I replied with the deepest conviction that it was the alpha and omega of the analytical method, whereupon he said, “Then you have grasped the main thing’.”[174]
but later he spoke disparagingly about it in his lectures to British doctors in 1935:
“A transference is always a hindrance; it is never an advantage. You cure in spite of the transference, not because of it.”[175]
The context of his remarks could have influenced his statement here. Jung had not wanted to bring the subject up, and he wanted to distinguish his brand of psychology from Freud’s. Everyone in the Tavistock Lecture audience (mostly physicians) knew Freud had coined the term and identified the phenomenon of transference, so Jung was irritated that it had been raised as a question from the audience.[176]
Jung waffled about his view of transference for another decade before finally declaring the utility and value of transference in his last article on it in 1946. These are his references to transference in his Collected Works, quoted in chronological order:
“Typical of neurotics is their disturbed relationship to reality – that is to say, their reduced adaptation. The transference to the analyst builds a bridge across which the patient can get away from his family into reality. He can now emerge from his infantile milieu into the world of adults, since the analyst represents for him a part of the world outside the family.”[177] (1912)
Jung recognized that the natural process of growth would take the individual into a wider circle than the family, and he regarded this as an essential part of growing past one’s “infantile milieu.”
“Besides that, however, it has other consequences: through the transference of his secret and all the unconscious fantasies underlying it, a moral bond is formed between the patient and his father confessor. We call this a ‘transference relationship.’ Anyone with psychoanalytic experience knows how much the personal significance of the analyst is enhanced when the patient is able to confess his secrets to him. The change this induces in the patient’s behavior is often amazing.”[178] (1912)
Jung felt that the holding of secrets had an isolating effect on the person with the secret, and that confession–the sharing of the secret with a trusted confidant (not necessarily a priest) was a good thing to do. In this quote, the “father confessor” is the analyst.
“At the same time, the patient satisfies another need, that is, he achieves a relationship outside the family and thus fulfills a biological demand. Hence the patient obtains a double advantage from the transference relationship: a personality on the one hand is expected to bestow on him a loving attention in all his concerns, and to that extent is equated with father and mother, but who, on the other hand, is outside the family and this helps him to fulfill a vitally important and difficult duty without the least danger to himself.”[179] (1914)
In this passage the “personality” is the analyst, who usually got to carry the projection of the parent that posed a problem to the analysand.
“In the transference all kinds of infantile fantasies are projected. They must be cauterized, i.e., resolved by reductive analysis, and this is generally known as ‘resolving the transference’.”[180] (1917)
The term “resolving the transference” was Freud’s, as was the “reductive” method of analysis. Jung used this method, which seeks to determine the causes for the problematic early childhood circumstances, but he recognized its limitations, and developed the “synthetic” method, which seeks the purpose–why the problem? What growth potential lay in the patient’s situation?
“The transference is the patient’s attempt to get into psychological rapport with the doctor. He needs this relationship if he is to overcome the dissociation. The feebler the rapport, i.e., the less the doctor and patient understand one another, the more intensely will the transference be fostered and the more sexual will be its form.”[181] (1928)
In the context of Jung’s brand of therapy, many of life’s realities (like sexuality) can be viewed symbolically, and, as one of the basic instincts, erotica in transference can be a clue offering many meanings to the analyst, rarely the physical meaning our eroticized culture would apply.
“To attain the goal of adaptation is of such vital importance to the patient that sexuality intervenes as a function of compensation. Its aim is to consolidate a relationship that cannot ordinarily be achieved through mutual understanding. More than anything else neurotic patients need that psychological rapport; in their dissociated state it helps them to adjust themselves to the doctor’s psyche.”[182] (1928)
In Jung’s system, something that functions as compensation is reminding the analyst (and the analysand (if he or she is familiar with Jung’s psychology) that “this also is true.” In this quote, Jung is noting how the transference is fostering the rapport between the patient and the doctor.
“The problem of the transference occupies a central position in the dialectical process of analytical psychology and therefore merits quite special interest. It makes the highest demands not only on the doctor’s knowledge and skill but also on his moral responsibility.”[183] (1941)
Knowledge, skill and moral responsibility? Why such a broad range of demands? Because Jung here was drawing on his years immersed in alchemical wisdom. The old alchemists knew the truth–ars totum requirit hominem–the “art” of psychology requires the whole of a person, not just one’s intellect or know-how, but one’s entire being.[184]
“This bond is often of such intensity that we could almost speak of a “combination.” When two chemical substances combined, both are altered. This is precisely what happens in the transference. Freud rightly recognized that this bond is of the greatest therapeutic importance in that it gives rise to a mixtum compositum of the doctor’s own mental health and the patient’s maladjustment.”[185] (1946)
The “composite mixture” Jung notes here is synergic, i.e. the “combination” offers more energy for healing than if the doctor works without the transference, just as, in a synergy one plus one equals three.
“Medical treatment of the transference gives the patient a priceless opportunity to withdraw his projections, to make good his losses, and to integrate his personality….But, without a fundamental discussion of the situation, it is often simply impossible to break these infantile projections. As this is the legitimate aim and real meaning of the transference, it inevitably leads, whatever method of rapprochement to be used, to discussion and understanding and hence to a heightened consciousness, which is a measure of the personality’s integration. During this discussion the conventional disguises are dropped and the true man comes to light. He is in very truth reborn from this psychological relationship, and his field of consciousness is rounded into a circle.”[186] (1946)
In this paragraph Jung was explaining why it is not enough just to work on the facts around the transference (how the analyst and analysand get on) but attention must be given to the nature and elements of the transference itself. This point is made more explicit in the next quote.
“Analysis of the transference is therefore an absolute necessity, because the projected contents must be reintegrated if the patient is to gain the broader view he needs for free decision.”[187] (1946)
The analysis of the transference offers the patient more information–just what was s/he projecting?–so s/he can recognize and assimilate these contents. In doing so, the patient can make freer decisions about how to live and, in this way, deepen his/her individuation.
“Looked at in this light, the bond established by transference – however hard to bear and however incomprehensible it may seem – is vitally important not only for the individual but also for society, and indeed for the moral and spiritual progress of mankind. So, when the psychotherapist has to struggle with difficult transference problems, he can at least take comfort in these reflections. He is not just working for this particular patient, who may be quite insignificant, but for himself as well and his own soul, and in doing so he is perhaps laying an infinitesimal grain in the scales of humanity’s soul. Small and invisible as this contribution may be, it is yet an opus magnum, for it is accomplished in a sphere but lately visited by the numen, where the whole weight of mankind’s problems has settled. The ultimate questions of psychotherapy are not a private matter – they represent a supreme responsibility.”[188] (1946)
Jung had no doubt that our work as individuals to create more consciousness has profound consequences that extend beyond a person’s life. It is a “great work” (opus magnum) and we perform it with the support of the divine (numen).[189]
“The transference phenomenon is without doubt one of the most important syndromes in the process of individuation; its wealth of meanings goes far beyond mere personal likes and dislikes. By virtue of its collective contents and symbols it transcends the individual personality and extends into the social sphere, reminding us of those higher human relationships which are so painfully absent in our present social order, or rather disorder.”[190] (1946)
The “disorder” Jung saw in our world in 1946 could have referred to the millions of war refugees and displaced persons living in temporary quarters, the increasing tensions between the West and the Soviet Union (soon to turn into the “Cold War”), and the severe dislocation of values and morals that World War II had caused. Amid all this, Jung saw the pressing need for individuals to recognize their obligation to grow up, fulfill their potential, and take up “those higher human relationships” (e.g. working for global peace and unity, rather than for materialistic goals like greed and status).
Jung was not alone in his valuation of transference. Many of his fellow analysts also speak of how it affords benefits, e.g.
Mario Jacoby: “Yet analysts now realize that countertransference can as well be used for the benefit of the analysis, since it is also an interaction with the transference of the patient.”[191] and “In my experience, if patients can see their transference-love as a painful but potentially creative suffering – the fire which transforms the prima materia in the alchemical vessel – the process can take a deeply worthwhile course. It constellates the dove in the analytic marriage, and the encounter can be astonishingly creative.”[192]
Warren Steinberg: “Jung recognized that it is a characteristic of the neurotic to find it difficult to establish healthy human relationships. One purposive aspect of the transference is the patient’s unconscious attempt to do this.”[193] and “In his later writings, Jung presented additional material to substantiate the idea that the individuation process underlies the transference…. The idea of the transference as a second birth is also dealt with in “The Psychology of the Transference,” where Jung emphasized its developmental purpose.”[194] and “In addition, my experience is that analysis of the transference is the therapeutic lever that makes meaningful change possible. In that sense, it is indispensable for individuation.”[195] and “Jung recognized the positive transference and countertransference as symbolic of the need for union between conscious and unconscious, with the analyst experiencing and representing the projected unconscious of the patient. It is only in the positive transference-countertransference that integration can occur. The erotic aspect of the transference-countertransference relationship is thus a symbol for the coniunctio and leads to wholeness.”[196]
James Hall: “At a certain indefinable range, the relationship between analyst and analysand is a truly transformative field for both participants.”[197]
James Hollis: “Reparenting means that the affirmation, the modeling, the encouragement and challenging we need from the father archetype may help compensate for what was missing in the actual biography of the patient. A positive transference is second-best to the real thing, but it is no small gift and represents a liberation from the wounding of history.”[198]
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Jacoby, Mario (1984), The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Jung, C.G. (1973), Experimental Researches. Collected Works, 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1961), Freud and Psychoanalysis. Collected Works, 4. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1956), Symbols of Transformation. Collected Works, 5. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1971), Psychological Types. Collected Works, 6. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1966), Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Collected Works, 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1960), The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Collected Works, 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Collected Works, 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), Aion. Collected Works, 9ii. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1970), Civilization in Transition. Collected Works, 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (19 69), Psychology and Religion, West and East. Collected Works, 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1953), Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, 12. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1963), Mysterium Coniunctionis. Collected Works, 14. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), The Practice of Psychotherapy. Collected Works, 16. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Woodman, Marion (1985), The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation. Toronto: Inner City Books.
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[1] Collected Works 18 ¶s 312-313. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[2] Ibid. ¶317.
[3] CW 17 ¶260.
[4] Hall (1986), 65-66.
[5] CW 16 ¶539.
[6] CW 18 ¶1097.
[7] CW 16 ¶358.
[8] For more on the differences between Jung and Freud, see the essay “Jung on Freud,” archived on this blog site.
[9] CW 18 ¶1162.
[10] CW 4 ¶427.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid. ¶322.
[13] Ibid. ¶359.
[14] Ibid. ¶349. The setting–a conference of psychiatrists–and the date–1935–might have led Jung to seek to differentiate his brand of psychotherapy from Freud’s. Freud considered transference as essential to the process, while Jung wanted to discuss the distinctive features of his brand of depth psychology.
[15] Steinberg (1990), 8; cf. CW 16 ¶357 and CW 18 ¶1132.
[16] CW 18 ¶373.
[17] CW 16 ¶218.
[18] Ibid. ¶283.
[19] Ibid..
[20] CW 4 ¶448.
[21] Ibid., ¶662.
[22] Jacoby (1984), 19.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., 58.
[25] Ibid., 48.
[26] Ibid., 51.
[27] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 43.
[28] Freud had rejected Jung’s ideas of archetypes and the collective unconscious.
[29] Jacoby (1984), 18.
[30] Steinberg (1990), 9.
[31] Ibid. 21.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid. 23.
[34] Ibid., 41.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Hollis (1995), 137.
[37] Hollis (2004), 46.
[38] Ibid.
[39] CW 16 ¶163.
[40] Jacoby (1984), 108.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Schapira (1988), 87.
[43] Cf. Jacoby (1984), 25, and O’Kane (1994), 53.
[44] O’Kane (1994), 53.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid., 129.
[47] Ibid., 15.
[48] Jacoby (1984), 30; cf. O’Kane (1994), 123.
[49] Steinberg (1990), 52.
[50] O’Kane (1994), 128.
[51] Steinberg (1990), 85.
[52] von Franz (1980), 69.
[53] Ibid., 201.
[54] Jacoby (1984), 16.
[55] CW 16 ¶140.
[56] Ibid. ¶420.
[57] Hall (1983), 64.
[58] Steinberg (1990), 46.
[59] Hall (1983), 57.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Carotenuto (1986), 112.
[63] Hall (1983), 93.
[64] Sharp (1989), 121-122.
[65] O’Kane (1994), 53.
[66] CW 16 ¶538.
[67] Ibid.
[68] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 25.
[69] Stein berg (1990), 23.
[70] Hall (1983), 64.
[71] Sharp (1989), 121-122.
[72] Jacoby (1984), 37-38.
[73] von Franz (1998), 223.
[74] Ibid., 67.
[75] Schapira (1988), 92.
[76] Steinberg (1990), 9.
[77] CW 8 ¶146.
[78] CW 16 ¶381, note 36.
[79] CW 17 ¶260.
[80] Schapira (1988), 108.
[81] CW 4 ¶640.
[82] CW 16 ¶357.
[83] Schapira (1988), 84.
[84] Jacoby (1984), 92.
[85] Ibid., 110.
[86] Steinberg (1990), 51.
[87] Jacoby (1984), 39.
[88] Perera (1986), 65.
[89] Schapira (1988), 84.
[90] Ibid.
[91] CW 7 ¶97.
[92] von Franz (1980), 128.
[93] CW 18 ¶367.
[94] Jacoby (1984), 49.
[95] Perera (1986), 71.
[96] Steinberg (1990), 86.
[97] Prétat (1994), 83.
[98] Perera (1986), 61.
[99] Steinberg (1990), 34.
[100] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 44.
[101] Schapira (1988), 84.
[102] Sharp (1989), 121-122.
[103] CW 16 ¶463.
[104] Sharp (1991), 138.
[105] Steinberg (1990), 146.
[106] Ibid., 23.
[107] Ibid., 85.
[108] Perera (1986), 81.
[109] Steinberg (1990), 40.
[110] CW 7 ¶96.
[111] CW 17 ¶304.
[112] CW 7 ¶255.
[113] Steinberg (1990), 44.
[114] CW 16 ¶463.
[115] Jacoby (1984), 110.
[116] Jacoby (1984), 108-109.
[117] Ibid., 39.
[118] O’Kane (1994), 128.
[119] Schapira (1988), 84.
[120] CW 16 ¶287.
[121] Perera (1986), 65.
[122] Schapira (1988), 84.
[123] CW 7¶206.
[124] Schapira (1988), 84.
[125] Perera (1986), 70.
[126] Schapira (1988), 84.
[127] Ibid., 137.
[128] Jacoby (1984), 42.
[129] Steinberg (1990), 21.
[130] Ibid., 44.
[131] Jacoby (1984), 48.
[132] Schapira (1988), 68.
[133] Hall (1983), 56.
[134] Jacoby (1984), 64.
[135] CW 16 ¶279.
[136] Steinberg (1990), 146.
[137] Ibid., 53.
[138] Prétat (1994), 83.
[139] O’Kane (1994), 123.
[140] CW 16 ¶358.
[141] Hall (1983), 57.
[142] Prétat (1994), 34.
[143] Steinberg (1990), 46.
[144] Ibid.
[145] Hall (1983), 57.
[146] Ibid.
[147] Ibid.
[148] Sharp (1991), 138.
[149] Steinberg (1990), 8.
[150] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 86.
[151] O’Kane (1994), 23-24.
[152] CW 16 ¶359.
[153] Sharp (1991), 150-151.
[154] CW 16 ¶420.
[155] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 93.
[156] CW 4 ¶449.
[157] CW 16 ¶279.
[158] Prétat (1994), 89.
[159] Ibid., 89.
[160] CW 4 ¶450.
[161] Jacoby (1984), 42.
[162] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 158.
[163] Prétat (1994), 83.
[164] Sharp (1991), 151.
[165] Edinger (1984), 164-165.
[166] Sharp (1989), 121-122.
[167] CW 18 ¶634.
[168] Jacoby (1984), 47-48.
[169] Schapira (1988), 108.
[170] Steinberg (1990), 42.
[171] For a thorough discussion of God as both good and evil, see Jung’s essay “Answer to Job,” CW 11¶553-758.
[172] Prétat (1994), 52.
[173] Woodman (1985), 46.
[174] CW 16 ¶358.
[175] CW 18 ¶349.
[176] Jacoby (1984), 9.
[177] CW 4 ¶428.
[178] Ibid., ¶433.
[179] Ibid. ¶439.
[180] CW 7 ¶96.
[181] CW 16 ¶276.
[182] Ibid. ¶279.
[183] CW 18 ¶1170.
[184] Ibid.
[185] CW 16 ¶358.
[186] Ibid. ¶420.
[187] Ibid., ¶446.
[188] Ibid. ¶449.
[189] For more on our task as humans being one of creating more consciousness, see Edinger ((1984).
[190] CW 16 ¶539.
[191] Jacoby (1984), 38.
[192] Ibid., 111.
[193] Steinberg (1990), 12.
[194] Ibid., 15.
[195] Ibid., 25-26.
[196] Ibid., 41.
[197] Hall (1986), 71.
[198] Hollis (2004), 46.
