Seduction, deception and technology

This paper proposes that exploring the use of internet pornography creates a potentially beneficial, albeit defensive liminal space that can be used therapeutically. The content of compelling sexual scenes can be viewed as the psyche's way of mastering internal trauma and masking an inner emptiness. However, from a Jungian perspective, the use of internet pornography can also be seen as a patient's distorted way of trying to make dissociated affects more bearable by triumphing over them. The sexual use of technology can express intrapsychic conflict encapsulated in what Stoller called 'microdots'. Stoller's microdots are unique scripts - a kind of emotional code that gives clinicians an opportunity to reveal unconscious processes and transcend them through meaning making. Wood's work at the Portman Clinic on the chosen 'compelling scenarios' of pornography-addicted patients is also examined with this Jungian lens. Jung's idea of the transcendent function is used to show the value of holding the tension of fantasy and frustration provoked by intimacy. The paper illustrates how they come together within the therapeutic relationship to stimulate something new.

Creating our own Black Books: keeping a journal as a loom of life

Jung's The Black Books are annotations of his inner world after his process of self-experimentation, which he called his 'confrontation with the unconscious'. They preceded The Red Book in which, as a scribe, he reworked his initial notes and drawings. This was the raw material for the work that Jung developed over the rest of his life. From his experimentation, he formulated the method of active imagination and the concept of the transcendent function, a psychological function that creates symbols and integrates the unconscious contents in consciousness. Jung invites us, with his experience, to write and paint our own Black Books and to explore our inner images. With this proposal to keep a journal as a loom of life, we welcome his invitation, which allows us to weave and integrate the visible and invisible substances of our lives. Our intention for the journalling is to provide a space for the unfolding of the individuation process. In Jung's invitation we see that a life that does not confront itself cannot be realized as such.

Experiencing whole type: living into the archetypal Self

Expanding on Jung's use of the role of the superior and inferior functions, Angelo Spoto advances a new typological model based on 'whole type' that utilizes a typological perspective on the archetypal Self. In this new model four cognitive modes taking superior positions are developed in the first half of life and four cognitive modes taking inferior positions are encountered in the second half of life. This model indicates that type development and type dynamics take place through the holding of the tension of opposites between superior and inferior functions, helped by the transcendent function operating differently in the first and second halves of life. Specifically, in the first half of life, the transcendent function produces a tertium that moves typological development along to consolidate an ego-pattern. In the second half of life, the transcendent function takes the individual into encounters having to do with an appreciation of sacrifice, transformation, and symbol-making, as the personality advances towards a greater awareness of wholeness, by way of the inferiors.

Coronavirus: does its activation of archetypes of evil cause added psychological suffering?

Fear and grief caused by the pandemic have produced a powerful unconscious narrative in the collective psyche that the coronavirus is driven by an innately evil, and possibly divine, force. The resulting archetypal dimension of fear causes an extra layer of psychological suffering in individuals. This paper discusses how and why this narrative was created and why it is so compelling by looking at 1) the myth‐making nature of the human psyche, 2) the psychodynamics of fear that drive the narrative, 3) the properties of the coronavirus and the pandemic that activate negative poles of some archetypes, in particular, archetypes of evil, and 4) asking how analytical psychology can help ease psychological suffering caused by these negative narratives, where one possibility is to invoke the transcendent function. The author’s personal experiences as both biochemist and analytical psychologist elucidate how the transcendent function can promote healing.

A preliminary sketch of a Jungian socioanalysis - an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories1

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of what we have termed a Jungian socioanalysis - an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories. Our assumption is that Jungian theory and practice need to attend to and focus more on social contexts, sociality and the influence of societal developments. But also, on the other hand, that analytical psychology, primarily Jung's theory of individuation and the transcendent function as well as the broad complexity perspective of his theory of psyche, can be extended to a 'socio' and not just a 'psycho' perspective. The paper presents five foundational assumptions for a Jungian socioanalysis, with the following headings: 1) A Jungian socioanalysis calls for a complex psychology; 2) (Un)consciousness is social and sociality has a dimension of (un)consciousness; 3) A Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields 'from within' by smaller groups; 4) A Jungian socioanalysis enables and is enabled by emerging metaphors and affect-imagery; 5) Socio-cultural fields have an impulse toward individuation. This is the first of two papers in the present edition of the journal - the second paper gives socio-clinical illustrations of our thesis in this paper.

The day the clock stopped. Primitive states of unintegration, multidimensional working through and the birth of the analytical subject

This paper is based on one idea and built around one clinical experience that helped me to broaden my comprehension of it. The idea, underlying the work of several authors, is that when the analytic field is saturated with primitive and unintegrated mental contents, the analyst's somatic countertransference is a precious indicator of a deep, dissociated form of communication. The clinical experience concerns the difficult elaboration of a complex, multifaceted countertransference that took place during the early stages of the analysis of a sensitive patient who used to communicate in a very dissociated way and that I found hard to contain. This experience, closely described in the article, led me to formulate the clinical idea that the transference field may be made of distinct layers (psychoid, affective, verbal), and that each one of them may potentially convey dissociated, even contrasting bits of information. The corollary of this is that the analyst should be ready to accept contrasting sensations, feelings and thoughts at the same time, as they might be the basic ingredients of a complex reverie. The analyst could find himself/herself in front of his/her own internal unelaborated multiplicity before a symbolic image may emerge to link the scattered pieces of the experience. Nevertheless, the heart of this paper is not about suggesting an idea, but in the sharing of a complex working through, which fostered the birth of a new, more human relational perspective: the capacity of being together in time, in a transitional space where there is neither total separation nor fusion.

Noah's Ark: technical and theoretical implications concerning the use of metaphor in the treatment of trauma1

In this paper, using my clinical work with a 3-year-old boy who lost his hearing when he was between 9 and 12 months old, and whose disability was only discovered when he was 22 months old, I will explore two issues of paramount technical importance when working with trauma. Firstly, it is crucial to create a boundary around the traumatic event, so that life before, during and after the trauma can be circumscribed and the traumatic event explored and hopefully understood and integrated. Secondly, it is of paramount importance to establish the level of developmental organization at the time of the trauma, especially in relation to the capacity to integrate bodily affects into mind. I will show how trauma and its vicissitudes are directly dependent on the person's capacity to resolve the splitting that trauma creates in the mind, and also the key role played by the use of metaphors in the process whereby trauma becomes thinkable and can therefore be integrated into the self.

The symbol in the body: the un-doing of a dissociation through Embodied Active Imagination in Jungian analysis

Jung understood dissociation as a natural state of the psyche, capable of turning defensive through development. Based on this premise, and its conception on the equivalence between psyche and matter, the present work describes the un-doing of a dissociation expressed through a chronic enterocolitis disorder. When the symbol remains closer to the body and its most instinctive manifestations, we need to descend to that level in order to let the vertical axis connection be gradually restored through the therapeutic relationship - the horizontal axis. In other words, this un-doing requires that patient and analyst follow the unconscious path proposed by symbolic expressions that gradually emerge through the patient's body and active imagination. Movement is our most primitive and fundamental experience. Many authors (Stern, Panksepp, Gallese) have agreed that, in addition to being first in terms of development, movement continues to have primacy over any other experience throughout life. This means that emotions, bodily concepts and, later, speech, evolve from a somatic basis. In the light of such neuroscientific findings, Jung's vision of the correspondence of psyche and matter will be revisited in order to portray how the analytic bond provides a context for the re-establishment of the linking/creative function of the archetype, and allows the restoring of the ego-Self axis connection by including non-verbal approaches, such as body-based active imagination, also known as Authentic Movement. Authentic Movement is an amplification of Jung's active imagination method that enables a dialogue between the ego and the diverse configurations of the unconscious. When such dialogue is grounded in the body, there is an easier access to the affective dimension stored in implicit memory. That which was relived through the body can gradually be remembered, and affects hitherto rejected, find other symbolic ways of being expressed and contained in the analytic vas.

The five functions of psychological type

From the mid-1930s to the end of his life, Jung complained that most readers misunderstood the main point of his book Psychological Types. He viewed being a type as one-sided and problematic for a variety of reasons. His symbol-based solution to the 'type problem' involved developing a transcendent function to become the new dominant function of consciousness. However, this function has not featured in the popular use of his typology and Isabel Briggs Myers believed that the one-sidedness of Jung's eight types could be balanced by the auxiliary function. This has led to the transcendent function being widely ignored, and to a developmental philosophy that encourages a degree of one-sidedness. This divergence of popular type theory and analytical psychology is the result of various factors, such as Jung describing typology as containing four functions, and a letter in 1950 where Jung apparently supported Myers' version of type theory. This hinders the application of analytical psychology to normal psychology, and particularly individual and cultural development. If we refer to Jung's typology as containing five functions not four, this more accurately represents both the content of the book Psychological Types and the primary value Jung saw in typology.