Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: the Therapeutic Relationship
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Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy The unique relationship between patient and therapist is the main healing factor in psychotherapy. Following C.G.Jung’s pioneering views on the complexity of conscious and unconscious interactions in the therapy process, this book explains the Jungian approach to the therapeutic relationship and the treatment process. Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship shows how taking a Jungian perspective can help deal with the complicated paradoxes of psychotherapy. David Sedgwick outlines a modern Jungian approach to psychotherapy, always with reference to the patient-therapist relationship itself. He considers and criticises key aspects of Jungian and other theoretical perspectives, synthesizing approaches and ideas from across the therapeutic spectrum. This meditation on Jungian therapy will be invaluable to both Jungian and non-Jungian students and practitioners. David Sedgwick is a Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of The Wounded Healer: Countertransference from a Jungian Perspective (1994) and Jung and Searles: A Comparative Study (1993), and numerous articles and book reviews. Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship David Sedgwick First published 2001 by Brunner-Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Brunner-Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2001 David Sedgwick All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sedgwick, David, 1951– An introduction to Jungian psychotherapy: the therapeutic relationship/David Sedgwick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-18339-1—ISBN 0-415-18340-5 (pbk.) 1. Psychotherapy. 2. Jungian psychology. 3. Psychotherapist and patient. I. Title. RC480.5 .S39 2001 616.89' 14–dc21 2001037371 ISBN 0-203-36070-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37746-X (OEB Format) ISBN 0-415-18339-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-18340-5 (pbk) To my mother, Ann Williams Chapman And to the memory of my father, William Parker Sedgwick III Contents Preface viii Acknowledgments xii 1 Introduction 1 2 The Jungian approach: selected theoretical principles 13 3 The therapeutic relationship I: basics and overview 40 4 The therapeutic relationship II: processes and issues 68 References 127 Index 132 Preface This book is about the therapeutic relationship in Jungian psychotherapy. To non-Jungian clinicians, Jungian work is usually known, if known at all, for being about dreams, but Jung also had far-reaching conceptions about the patient and therapist together in the treatment situation. He felt that their personal influence on each other, conscious and unconscious, was the central dynamism in psychotherapy; Jung was the first psychotherapist to emphasize this mutuality. This book’s overall purpose is to describe and explore this central dimension, showing some key Jungian principles specifically in connection with the therapeutic relationship. There are several other reasons for this book. While there are many books on Jungian analysis, there are few on Jungian psychotherapy. Even those books or articles that touch on the Jungian perspective on therapy often wind up being about Jungian analysis. My chief goal is to define a Jungian style of psychotherapy in terms of the therapeutic relationship itself—to suggest also that this is the main thing Jung brought to future therapists—and to do so in a language that is reasonably free of jargon, Jungian or otherwise. Psychotherapists’ terms and what they are talking about should have clear referents. Relevant to this and to the reader of this book is Jung’s wonderful comment “I can only hope and trust that no one becomes ‘Jungian’” (1973a, p. 405). This book does not use much Jungian language, but when it does, it seeks to explain it. Jung invented some terms and attitudes that were unique to analytical psychology (for example, anima and animus), some that are relatively well known (complexes), and some that are understood differently by other schools of psychotherapy (self, individuation).1 However, many, if not all, roads lead to Rome, and different languages may point to the same or even deeper aspects of a subject, and enhance understanding. So while one of this book’s nominal aims is to reflect on the nature of the affective connection in the therapeutic relationship, another objective zvix is to ponder psychotherapy in general, in ways that build on but are not completely bound by Jung’s ideas. This means recognizing the work of generations of Jungian analysts and the work of others, not necessarily Jungian trained, who have things to say that jibe with or extend Jung’s original thinking. The book’s larger hope is to refine or in some ways redefine Jungian thinking on psychotherapy so that Jungian work is not seen by others as a quasi-religious or symbolic matter, inapplicable to most patients in psychotherapy. Religion and “the symbolic life” are invaluable things, but Jungian therapy has application across the board, and Jungian work should be recognized as making its rightful contributions to the therapeutic community. The Jungian approach deserves a wider audience, and frankly, much of Jung’s work is pointless for the average clinician, even sometimes for the Jungian analyst. For the purposes of this book, Jung’s investigations into religion, alchemy, and mythology will be viewed as a kind of private research, an exploration of symbolism and psychological depths that was personally meaningful but of less critical importance to psychotherapy. These researches provide a crucial backdrop to Jung’s developing thought, but are not necessary to an understanding of the therapeutic relationship in Jungian psychotherapy. The imaginary reader of this book (actually there are multiple readers in my mind, including me) is a non-Jungian professional counselor, therapist, or future therapist who wants to know something about Jungian therapy but does not seek a full Jungian immersion program. That is the book I contracted to write. At the same time, this book tries to speak in depth about subtleties in the treatment and relationship that either have not been talked about or are difficult to articulate, so it is not a simple introduction to Jungian therapy at all. Inadvertently there may be something here both for the ostensible beginner and for the more experienced therapist (even for the already practicing Jungian therapist, analyst-in-training, or analyst). The process of trying to take Jungian thought and bring it down home to the non-Jungian clinician or student has turned out to be also a process of bringing it down home to me. I find that the more I try to explain Jungian thought in simple terms—as if to someone with little previous knowledge of it—the more I understand and feel about it. Writing a book is an exercise in processing one’s ideas, at times an intense learning process, and I would say that many of the things I have chosen to write about are things I have wanted to think about for myself. My ideas are continually in flux, and this book is in large measure a sorting as I go. Jack Nicklaus wrote a book called Golƒ, My Way, which I have never read but the title struck me. While I do not have the level of mastery of someone who is “the best” in his profession, I will say that this book is zvx something like “Jungian psychotherapy, my way.” Jung insisted that psychological writing was innately confessional—it certainly was for him—and this book is my personal version of one-to-one Jungian psycho- therapy, at least as I currently see it. Since it is Jungian therapy filtered through me, a word on my background is relevant. My involvement in psychology began with Jungian psychology, at a relatively young age, and my theoretical anchor has always been there. However, while I work as a Jungian analyst and find Jung’s and his successors’ work indispensable, I have also been drawn to other perspectives. During my graduate training in psychology and counseling, and even somewhat later during my seven-year postgraduate analytic training, I found much that resonated with me in client-centered therapy, psychoanalysis, self psychology, and certain humanistic therapies. In particular, much of the work of Harold Searles, Donald Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, George Atwood and Robert Stolorow, Carl Rogers, Eugene Gendlin, and R.D. Laing makes especially good sense to me, or has at one time, and readily complements a Jungian point of view. Many other psychological writers also have affected me along the way. Quite simply, there is a lot worth reading out there, as well as a lot in Jungian psychology (especially recently). I have found little in most other approaches to psychotherapy that is necessarily ruled out by having a Jungian background and orientation. Most of what I have found elsewhere, if it mattered to me, fitted underneath a Jungian umbrella without much strain. While that may be an obvious or circular statement, it suggests either the breadth of Jungian thought or the way I tend to work with it. This eclecticism, and perhaps my experience in non-Jungian settings as a counselor and psychologist, are evident in this book. I also think there is wisdom in Whitehead’s statement “A science that hesitates to forget its founders is doomed.”2 Forgetting the founding fathers can be a necessary deidealization stage, something like leaving home.