Jung’s Psychology in Britain by G. Stewart Prince
It will be undisputed that H. G. Baynes, more than any other individual, established the roots of Analytical Psychology in Britain.
His pioneering work was shared by but a few colleagues.
One was Constance Long, who translated Jung’s Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology into English as early as 1916, and made her own contribution with Collected Papers on the Psychology of
Phantasy (1920).
There were Esther Harding, Eleanor Bertine, and Miss Beckingsale. Maurice Nicoll, who was a member of the original English group, later became an exponent of Ouspensky’ s thought, and James Young, who started as a Jungian, became a follower of Alfred Adler.
Culver Barker, the doyen of the present Society of Analytical Psychology, completed the group.
For a considerable period Baynes alone had the stature and the powers of exposition needed to express the Jungian point of view effectively in scientific groups (Glover, 1957), and his addresses to
the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, the Society for Psychical Research, the British Institute of Philosophical Studies, and the Folk-Lore Society make up the bulk of his collected papers published, seven years after his untimely death, as Analytical Psychology and the English Mind (1950).
His translations of Jung’s works, particularly Psychological Types, Contributions to Analytical Psychology, and (in collaboration with Cary Baynes) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, were for many years the main sources for the English reader.
His own considerable volume, Mythology of the Soul (1940), with its detailed description
of analytical material and demonstration of amplification, was the culmination of his work. Germany Possessed (1941), his personal reaction to the rise of the Nazis, introduced his name to a wide public.
Had Baynes been granted another twenty years of life, his doubts about the survival of analytical psychology in England, expressed in many ways in Analytical Psychology and the English Mind (1950), might have been allayed.
By then he would have had substantial evidence of the standing of Jung’s work in academic, scientific, and artistic circles, and of its penetration to the wider circle of educated Englishmen.
Thus, Jung’s eightieth birthday aroused considerable interest in this country.
A celebration held in London, under the chairmanship of Leopold Stein, was attended by a large number of distinguished representatives from the fields of art, philosophy, academic psychology, psychiatry, psycho-analysis, and literature.
C. A. Mace, representing academic psychology, paid tribute to the range of Jung’s impact in a telling sentence: ‘But I doubt if all the faculties of all the universities in the world are sufficient to comprehend
the total range of studies opened up or enlarged in the works of Jung’ (1956, p. 189).
Arnold Toynbee, representing history, gave it as his opinion that ‘Dr Jung’s work offers a magnificent education for us historians’ (1956, p. 194).
J.B. Priestley spoke for the arts; and Frances Wickes, Gerhard Adler, and Michael Fordham talked of the significance which Jung’s work continued to hold for them.
As an addendum to the proceedings, a friendly but spirited cricket match was played between members of the Society of Analytical Psychology and representatives of the British Psychoanalytical
Society, a pleasant event indicative of the increasing rapprochement and capacity for communication between the two groups.
Jung’s appearance in the BBC television series ‘Face to Face’ was the next major indicator of public interest.
The high quality of the film and the interviewing resulted in his personality making a powerful impact on viewers, and his exposition of his basic ideas and his views on the world situation impressed alike sophisticated listeners and those to whom his name had previously been unknown.
Jung’s death, in June 1961, brought further evidence of his place in the esteem of the British public.
The BBC broadcast a number of informed commentaries on the significance of the event, and detailed evaluations of his life work appeared in all the major newspapers and many serious periodicals.
The Society of Analytical Psychology received a letter of condolence from the President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and the chairman of the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, a distinguished psycho-analyst, suggested a memorial meeting of the Section.
This took place in November 1961, in the form of a symposium on Jung’s later work.
These facts suggest that analytical psychology has attained an established place in specialist psychological circles, and an effort will be made to trace this development in detail.
First, a general comment is required on the mode of spread of Jung’s work in this country.
Baynes and his co-workers must have established the root-growth soundly.
Subsequent development has depended on two main streams of influence;
(a) The effect of Jung’s thought on large numbers of individuals through personal analysis, and on much greater numbers through study of his published work (much facilitated in recent years by the
serial appearance of the Collected Works in R. F. C. Hull’s excellent translation) and that of his English followers.
The Guild of Pastoral Psychology, started by Kathleen Kitchen before the second world war, introduced Jungian speakers to wide audiences, and its series of published pamphlets made many important papers easily available.
Analytical psychology had considerable influence on the Oxford Psychology and Religion Society, on P.W. Martin’s work (1955), and, of course, on the Withymead Centre, where the pioneering efforts of the Champernownes brought it to many who might otherwise never have heard of Jung.
Michael Fordham’s The Life of Childhood (1944), Gerhard Adler’s Studies in Analytical Psychology (1948), and Frieda Fordham’s systematic exposition for the general reader (1953) reached a wide public, and by the time of their publication there were a number of analysts equipped to present the Jungian viewpoint to interested lay audiences, as well as to specialist societies. It may be maintained that the educated layman, meeting Jung’s thought from reading, or from hearing a lecture, is in danger of misunderstanding, and I would endorse Fordham’s view that Jung ‘cannot be read enough’ (1961a).
None the less, the wider dissemination of Jung’s concepts in this country, to which his own Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933) gave great impetus, helped to establish an intellectual climate favourable to the central growth of analytical psychology.
(b) The second stream stems from Jung’s visits to Britain, from the efforts of the early analysts in this country, from the impact of Jung’s work on British psychiatry and medical psychology, and from attempts to form centres devoted to continued study, research, teaching, and practice in analytical psychology.
JUNG ‘ S VISITS TO BRITAIN
It is a measure of the early recognition of Jung’s work that he was invited to address the Annual General Meeting of the British Medical Association held at Aberdeen in July 1914.
His subject was ‘On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology’, and the timing could hardly have been better.
He elaborated in particular upon the compensatory function of the unconscious.
At the end of the first world war he returned to England, and addressed the Section of Psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine (with William McDougall in the chair); his topic was ‘On Problems of Psychogenesis i.11. Disease’ (r9r9).
He delivered a paper to the same body twenty years later ‘On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia’ (1939).
The consistency of his central interests is well illustrated here, and was borne out by the paper he wrote for the
Second International Congress of Psychiatry in 1957 (Jung, 1958).
In contrast with these formal medical occasions were two seminars held by Jung at Polzeathin 1923 and at Swanage in 1925.
These were reported byW. B. Crow, and the records are in the Library of the Analytical Psychology Club.
The Polzeath seminar dealt with the relationship between primitive and modern mentality, transference, occult phenomena, the structure of the psyche, and ‘four forms of repression due to historical Christianity’.
At Swanage, Jung dealt with dream symbolism as ‘a central problem of analysis and life’, and the record gives a clear flavour of his vivid and erudite use of dream material.
In 1935 Jung returned to give five seminars at the Tavistock
Clinic in London.
His audience was a large and critical group of doctors, but Bennet (1961, p. 6) and Fordham (1961a) give us to understand that he held these spellbound, and that the highlight was his spontaneous discussion of transference.
His next visit was again formal, for he spoke to a meeting of the Abernethian Society at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, in October 1936; his title was ‘The Concept of the Collective Unconscious’.
In 1937 he returned to London to lecture on ‘Psychology and National Problems’; and in the following year went to Oxford as chairman of a conference of the International General Medical Society for
Psychotherapy, where he outlined fourteen points upon which there was agreement in all schools of psychological thought.
His second visit to the Royal Society of Medicine in London (supra) just preceded the second world war.
It was a high tribute to the esteem felt for his work in scientific circles that Jung was invited to speak of it at the Tercentenary Celebration of the Royal Society in London in 1960.
Unfortunately, illness forced him to decline.
JUNG AND BRITISH PSYCHIATRY
Jung’s standing in formal British psychiatry has been evaluated with authority by Aubrey Lewis (1957).
He makes it clear that it is the early Burgholzli work, covering the period 1902-1907, and largely available in Psychiatric Studies (Collected Works, Vols. 1 and 2), which holds the most significance, because of its direct application to pro bl ems of hysteria, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric syndromes.
This early work he considers ‘a powerful contribution to psychiatry’.
His view that what Jung produced in the ensuing half-century ‘needs to be considered in another framework and judged by other standards’ implies a splitting in the development of Jung’s thought, an implication that Fordham (1958) has refuted.
Henderson and Gillespie, in the textbook (1947) which remained standard for British psychiatry for over twenty years, devote a few lines to Jung’s view of the purposive nature of neurosis, and mention the Studies in Word Association.
The standard textbook which succeeded theirs (Mayer-Gross et al., 1954) dismisses Jung even more curtly.
Nicole (1946), in his general survey of schools of psychopathology, devotes a chapter to Jung’s concepts, although clearly finding them inimical.
Again for him, the early work, and in particular Psychological Types and Studies in Word Association, have the most meaning, and it is probably true that these two works have had the greatest impact in the fields of academic and clinical psychology in Britain, particularly by their influence on Rorschach (1942), Eysenck (1947), and Klopfer (1956).
More recently, clinical psychologists in this country have shown that in the test situation (Strauss, 1961) or research procedure (Tatlow, 1958) a deeper grasp of Jung’s views on the structure and dynamic function of the psyche is imperative.
The wider field of medical psychology has been most influenced by those analysts with the experience, and the facility of exposition, necessary to communicate meaningfully with psychotherapists
of other schools.
The Institute of Medical Psychology and seminars at the Tavistock Clinic provided opportunity for this; Kranefeldt of Berlin, whose book Secret Ways of the Mind was published in English in 1934, contributed seminars there in 1935, and English analytical psychologists followed suit.
Later, the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society in London became a major forum congenial to psychotherapists many shades of theoretical persuasion.
Its organ, the British Journal of Medical Psychology, gives a good indication of the range of topics and areas of conflict which prevailed from time to time, and bears witness to the fact that, following Baynes, other analytical psychologists began to make significant contributions.
These are too numerous to catalogue here, but mention may be made of symposia! meetings at which analytical psychologists shared the platform with psycho-analysts to discuss, in April and June 1948,
archetypes and internal objects (Fordham, Heimann, Adler, and Clifford Scott, 1949); and, later, counter-transference (Fordham, 1960a; Heimann, Winnicott, Strauss, and Little, 1960).
Another symposium in 1956 on Jung’s contribution to analytical thought and practice (Fordham, Moody, and Plaut, 1956) drew a large audience and excited much interest; and in 1959, 1960, and 1961
analytical psychologists addressed audiences drawn from all sections of the British Psychological Society at its annual general meetings.
Fordham (1960b) and Plaut (1960) contributed to the Jung’s Psychology in Britain volume of the British Journal of Medical Psychology which marked World Mental Health Year.
An indication of development is given also by the administrative history of the Section. E. A. Bennet was elected to the chair in 1938, at which time he advocated an ‘individualistic method’ in psychotherapy (Bennet, 1938).
Fordham held the chair in 1950, and Plaut and Jackson successively held the office in 1958 and 1959.
Over the past few years the committee of the Section has included a sizeable proportion of analytical psychologists.
Jung’s seventieth birthday was marked by special contributions (Adler, Fordham, 1945); and when he reached eighty the British Psychological Society celebrated the event, and made him an honorary fellow.
At a special meeting of the Section the symposium mentioned above was presented (Fordham, Moody, Plaut, 1956).
In this forum, communication with psychotherapists of other schools, and especially with psycho-analysts, has certainly been possible, and seems likely to continue.
As Jackson (1960a) has emphasized, psycho-analysts on the whole have felt less need than analytical psychologists to study the concepts of the ‘other school’ seriously, and attempt assimilation.
There are noteworthy exceptions.
Informed and appreciative references to Jung’s writings and those of his followers are beginning to appear in the bibliographies of psycho-analytic texts (e.g. Winnicott, 1958; Laing, 1960; Pincus, 1960).Winnicott’s view of the relationship between the concept of archetypes and modern psycho-analytic ideas on ‘the earliest theoretical primitive state’ is striking; even more so is his feeling that ‘we ought to modify our view to embrace both ideas’.
Of course psycho-analysts had, before this, read and written about Jung’s work.
Nevertheless, only the assumption that a strong emotional bias, stemming from the break between Freud and Jung, was still operative can account for som~ of their evaluations.
The statement of Rickman (in a debate with Baynes in 1927, at the British Institute of Philosophical Studies) describing ‘the Jungian method as depreciative not only of human personality in general, but of the particular personality under treatment’ is an example (Rickman, 1957).
Another is provided by Glover’s polemic (1950).
The Section of Psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine has shown its interest by its invitations to Jung, and the Society itself made him an Honorary Fellow.
In 1954 the Section heard a symposium on ‘Theory and Practice in Analytical Psychology’ (Bennet, Finigan, Storr, 1954).
This Section, however, has never been seriously concerned with the interchange of psychodynamic theory, although a number of analytical psychologists have in recent years been elected to its Council.
In the Royal Medico-Psychological Association the psychodynamic orientation has in the past not been strongly represented, but Jung was elected an honorary member in 1952.
In recent years analysts of various schools have played an increasingly prominent part in the Psychotherapy and Social Psychiatry Section, and Fordham spoke at its inaugural meeting.
A. Edwards was the £rst analytical psychologist to occupy the chair of that Section (in 1958), and Fordham was chairman for 1961-62. In 1959 Dennis Scott addressed the Section on ‘A Conceptual Model of a Hospital as an Aid to the Everyday Handling of Psychotic Patients’ (1962), and R. F. Hobson on ‘The Analytic Attitude in Psychiatry’ (unpublished).
In the same year Fordham (1959), together with a psycho-analyst, delivered a paper on ‘Dynamic Psychology and the Care of Patients’ and Jackson (I96ob) fol1owed this in November 1959 with a lecture on ‘Jung’s “Archetypes” and Psychiatry’.
These papers, with their emphasis on the analytic attitude towards the patient as a potential whole person, towards his symptoms as possibly synthetic forces, and towards the full implications of the doctor-patient relationship, are of clear importance for the young psychiatrist in training.
He is also likely to be influenced by those analytical psychologists who work in mental hospitals.
Thus the work of Scott, Edwards, and Gladstone at Napsbury Hospital, near London, has meant not only the application of analytical concepts to the diagnosis and treatment of patients ill enough to need admission to hospital, but also the provision of opportunity for the analytic evaluation of well established ‘physical methods’ of psychiatric treatment (Scott, D., 1950).
In this field the studies of Fordham (1945-6) and Plaut (1948) also merit mention.
‘ CENTRES ‘ OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
History suggests that efforts to form groups of those actively interested in analytical psychology in this country have always met with difficulties, and that this cannot be attributed solely to the edominance of the introverted attitude.
Following Jung’s seminars at the Tavistock Clinic in 1935, an abortive effort was made to start a medical group by Baynes, Bennet, and Kirsch.
About the same time a group, short-lived, was formed to study the use of the word association test.
However, the Analytical Psychology Club and the Society of Analytical Psychology alone have proved viable.
THE ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CLUB
As a relatively new member I would not presume to make a critical analysis of the origins and status of the Analytical Psychology Club.
As Fordham (1961a) has pointed out, the Club was the first coherent body to represent analytical psychology in this country, inspired by Baynes, and with Culver Barker as its first chairman, followed by Fordham himself Its growth, from about twenty members in the 1920s to today’s total of 162, is impressive.
Equally so is the standard of papers read to the Club; but even now the new analyst-member cannot fail to be aware of tensions within the group, and I for one am interested in Fordham’s (1961a) suggestion that these are, at least in part, owing to the failure of the pioneer Jungian analysts to pay sufficient attention to transference analysis.
Fordham’s paper contains convincing evidence that this was the case in the 1930s and, in spite of the generally good relationships that exist today between the Club and the Society of Analytical Psychology, traces of this problem remain.
For example, when a number of practising analysts were invited to take part in a weekend symposium in the autumn of 1959, a successful and enjoyable occasion, there was some
criticism that their contributions were ‘too clinical’.
By 1936 the analysts had separated from the Club and, reinforced in numbers by refugee analysts from Europe, formed the Medical Society of Analytical Psychology (Fordham, 1958).
These were the medical analysts then in London (Barker, Baynes, Fordham, Kirsch, de Laszlo, and Rosenbaum); Adler and Wheelwright (not then medically qualified) made up the group.
This society formulated standards of training for analysts, which received the approval of analysts in Zurich, and were publicly proclaimed in 1939 by Baynes at a meeting of the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society on the subject of lay analysis.
This group, of which Fordham was chairman, was succeeded in 1945 by the foundation of the Society of Analytical Psychology, the articles of which were signed in that year (by Barker, Moody, Adler, Fordham, Metman, Paulsen, and Mrs Fordham).
THE SOCIETY OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
This was so CO)?.Structed that medical analysts had the controlling hand.
Only a medical analyst can· hold the chair of the Council and the executive committee, a position held to date by Fordham, Moody, Stein, Hobson, and Prince.
Not more than half of its members can be lay analysts, and today it consists of sixty-four members, of whom thirty-four are medically qualified.
This construction had in mind the attraction of psychiatrically trained doctors, and has been successful.
The majority of the medical members have had extensive training in psychiatry, and many are of sufficient status in the medical world to hold senior appointments in teaching and other hospitals, clinics, child guidance centres, and university departments.
The success was not due alone to the structure of the Society.
The prestige of Jungian analysis was rising steadily, and the status of a number of individual analysts in the psychiatric world contributed.
Special mention may be made of E. A. Bennet.
His appointment in 1948 as consultant psychotherapist to the Maudsley Hospital, and lecturer to its Institute of Psychiatry, was a landmark.
In the hospital he was a member of a team including distinguished psychotherapists of the psycho-analytic and other schools.
In the lectures Jung’s principles were, for the first time, systematically expounded to postgraduate students not only from all over Britain, but from all over the world.
Oddly enough, in his capacity as lecturer to the School of Physic of Trinity College, Dublin, Bennet had been introducing medical undergraduates, and a number of Irish physicians, to Jung’s ideas over the preceding decade.
Robert Hobson succeeded to Bennet’s position at the Maudsley Hospital.
The resulting influx of psychiatrically trained candidates has had a double effect.
It produced changes within the Society, and led to a much wider dissemination of analytical psychology in a number of professional fields.
Thus, those psychiatrically trained individuals who came for training analysis reflected their views in their posts in hospitals and clinics, mainly around London, and some were able to establish psychotherapy clinics based on Jung’s principles.
Further, many were able to impart their views, not only informally to members of their psychiatric team, but in a more systematic way to caseworkers of many sorts, who during this epoch were
turning increasingly to psychiatric units for further training.
Jung’s basic concepts were included alongside other theories of personality development in at least one university course for postgraduate social workers (Prince, 1958).
Such dissemination led in turn to many professional social workers seeking personal analysis.
Within the Society the changes were complex.
The psychiatrically trained candidates brought with them in many cases in addition to biological background, medical experience, and their groundwork in clinical psychiatry-considerable knowledge
of psychopathology.
Moreover, many had been taught by, or had treated cases under supervision with, psycho-analysts of standing.
Although attracted by analytical psychology, few had failed to be convinced of the essential values of the psycho-analytic orientation and few had the inclination to abandon it in their thinking or
practice.
Some, misguidedly expecting a comprehensive psychopathological theory in Jung’s work, were disappointed, and some were critical of the lack of clinical psychiatric orientation in some of their teachers.
A further complication was introduced by the nature of the cases which the candidates were required to analyse under supervision as an essential part of their training.
These were drawn mainly from the Clinic (the C. G. Jung Clinic), an important extension of the Society.
Through its existence the Clinic makes analysis available to many patients who could never contemplate it under the conditions of private practice.
Under the direction of Fordham (succeeded in 1961 by Hobson) it has attracted patients showing a wide range of clinical problems, few corresponding to the group upon which Jung’s own experience was based, and seldom including the classical ‘individuation’ case.
Cases are referred to the C. G. Jung Clinic by hospitals, psychiatric clinics, general practitioners, psychotherapists, and members of the Society, and it represents a vital function of the Society in
providing a much-needed service to the community, but its clientele posed numerous problems for analytical technique.
The reaction of these factors upon candidates and teachers was productive.
Apart from supervision, formal training has been by two weekly seminars, one clinical, the other theoretical.
The candidates had much to learn, and learned gratefully, but they also demanded of the training analysts a clear formulation of concepts, and help in clarifying their ideas on the basic principles of
analytical practice.
This clarification is still under way, and may eventually compensate for Jung’s own reluctance to write on ‘analytical techniques’.
The seminar courses gradually became more organized and systematized, and sufficient experience of training and supervision has been accumulated to permit formulation of the problems involved, and the construction of theories in an attempt at their solution (Plaut, Newton, 1961; Fordham, r96rb).
There were changes, too, in the administrative structure of the Society.
Until the mid-195os the administration was in the hands of a small group of founder members, more or less corresponding to the recognized training analysts.
As the candidates became members in sufficient numbers, tension arose between them and the senior group.
Further, the senior group began to show evidence of splitting conflicts.
That transference and countertransference problems had a great deal to do with this seems probable.
Many conflictual issues arose over the topic of accepting or rejecting candidates for associate membership of the Society; lines of cleavage arose within the Society as a whole which suggested a ‘transference-distribution’ ; and it was not without significance that around this time a large number of members felt the need to form small, regular study groups for the study of transference problems in practice.
The outcome was a restructuring.
The executive and professional committees (the latter concerned with the selection, training, and approval of candidates, and matters of professional practice) were re-formed, and their members elected on a system giving proportional representation to the training analysts, the professional members, and the associate professional members.
Robert Hobson, a comparatively junior member, was elected chairman of the Council and executive committee, and, in spite of many stresses, emotional and practical (the latter including sudden loss of the Society’s premises, and its eventual rehousing in its present satisfactory quarters), steered it successfully through the next four years.
Internal conflicts have not been painless, but there is evidence that the viability of the Society has continued.
A great deal has been learnt and applied on effective methods of procedure.
There is a continuing effort to refine criteria for the acceptance of candidates for training and eventual membership, and questions of the ethics of practice have been studied.
The Journal of Analytical Psychology, now in its eighth year, has expanded in range and in circulation.
A survey of contributions from English analysts gives good indication of the way in which their interests over the past decade have turned increasingly to problems of transference and counter-transference, and of ego development, structure, and dynamics ( a development paralleled in the psycho-analytic literature), and the need to link Jung’s basic concepts to psychopathological theory.
A similar pattern shows in the contributions of the English group to the First International Congress in Zurich in 1958 (Adler, Ed., 1961a).
Fordham’s (1944) early interest in the development of the psyche in childhood led him to develop the analytical method in the analysis of children; from this original work emerged his contributions
to the theory of early ego development which appear among his collected papers (Fordham, 1957, 1958).
These bring the concepts of analytical psychology into close relationship with newer psycho-analytic theory, especially with the work of Melanie Klein, Winnicott, and Fairbairn.
A number of other members of the Society are interested in developmental psychology and the analysis of children and adolescents (Hawkey, 1945, 1947, 1951, 1955; Tate, 1958, 1961; Aldridge, 1959), and an active Children’s Section has evolved.
The discussion of child analysis has entailed, inevitably, efforts to relate infantile sexuality to the theory of archetypes.
Further productivity is evidenced by the appearance of books by members in the last few years (Adler, 1961 b; Bennet, 1961 ; Storr, 1960).
Numerically, the Society has increased in size from the original handful of founder members to a total membership of over sixty, of whom thirty-four are medically qualified.
The relationship between medical and lay analysts is good, and the Journal of Analytical Psychology will bear witness to the fact that much original work has been produced by non-medical members.
The cooperation between lay and medical analysts is exemplified by the roles of Robert Moody and Gerhard Adler in the organization of the International Association for Analytical Psychology:
Moody chaired the First International Congress with distinction, and held the post of president until forced to vacate it by ill health; Adler, vice-president of the Association, edited the Congress
papers (Adler, Ed., 1961a).
Although the Society is situated in London, and most of its members practise there, a few have established themselves in other parts of Britain.
Irene Champernowne’ s work in Devon has already been mentioned, and Layard worked in Oxford before recently transferring to Cornwall.
Amy Allenby works at Oxford as well as in London, and has had the interesting experience of attending a residential centre for neurotic patients connected with the Anglican Church (Allenby, 1961).
Cutner practises in Worcester, and till his death in 1961 Greenbaum practised in Manchester.
Leopold Stein distributes his time between London and Birmingham.
In Scotland, Abenheimer, although not a member of the Society, has represented the Jungian viewpoint for many years, and has clearly influenced some of the young, dynamically minded psychiatrists of the Glasgow school (Laing, 1960), while the staff of the Davidson Clinic in Edinburgh has always been interested in Jung’s approach.
Two of its members, Kraemer and von der Heydt, have in recent years come to London and become members of the Society.
OTHER REACTIONS TO JUNG’S WORK
Besides these two main streams of spread there are others, which cannot be adequately dealt with within the compass of this paper.
However, they need mention if a sense of balance is to be conveyed.
Jung’s significance for Toynbee (Toynbee, 1934, 1956, 1959) takes on a greater importance when we think of Jung as the historian of the psyche.
In England, as elsewhere, his original ideas made considerable impact on creative artists and critics of many kinds, some of whom have assimilated these ideas in a way which has shown effect in their own work. Herbert Read, J. B. Priestley, and Kathleen Raine are among the most widely known.
British theologians have reacted to Jung’s work in a variety of ways.
In the Oxford Psychology and Religion Society analytical psychology had an influence which has already been mentioned; and opportunity for discussion between analysts and theologians has been frequent at meetings of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, the Analytical Psychology Club, and elsewhere.
This interchange has not been without friction, and it is clear that conflict is caused not only by conceptual and linguistic differences ( although bedevilment with words is particularly obvious in this sphere).
In January 1960 a joint meeting of the Analytical Psychology Club and the Society of Analytical Psychology took place, on the theme of psychology and religion.
The major contributions (Fordham, 1960c; Lambert, 196o;White, 1960b) give good indication of how the issues stand today.
A survey of reviews of books by theologians is also helpful in this respect.
The English theologians who have attracted most attention are White (1952, 1960a), Philp (1958), and Cox (1959, 1961).
Informal meetings between theologians and analytical psychologists, often in the form of regular group discussions, are another indication of mutual interest.
British educationalists have, on the whole, taken less interest in the work of Jung than in that of Freud and Adler.
A notable exception is Henderson (1956), who has summarized for teachers Jung’s educational ideas (Collected Works, Vol. 17).
In addition, he offers some striking comments on the mental health of teachers, based on analytical psychology, and suggests an ingenious curriculum aimed at putting the child in contact with the archetypes appropriate to his stage of development.
This brief review suggests that Jung’s work has taken root in Britain, and that Freud’s description of it as an attempt against psycho-analysis that had ‘blown over without doing any harm’ (Freud, 1935) did justice neither to the value of Jung’s contribution nor to its relevance to his own.
Much husbandry, however, is needed, before the full growth of analytical psychology in Britain can be expected.
It is apparent that there are two branches.
One, represented by the Analytical Psychology Club, might be called the sociocultural, carrying the fruit of Jung’s influence on individuals and groups, and manifest in the spheres of art, history,
religion, and anthropology.
The other is the clinical-scientific, represented by the Society of Analytical Psychology.
That these are branches of the same trunk is shown by the fact that two-thirds of the analysts in the Society are members also of the Club, and frequently contribute to its work as lecturers or in discussion.
Fordham’s (1958) aspiration that ‘the Analytical Psychology Club and the group of analysts could together form an embracing unity’ has not been fulfilled, but they are twin centres in good communication with each other, and it seems likely that their collaboration will be fruitful.
The Club fulfils a function that the Society could not, at present, accommodate.
There the widest implications of analytical psychology can be discussed and debated, without stricture by collective obligations or circumscription by the demands of analytical practice.
Fordham’s fear that the Society might come to stand for analytical psychology reduced to a branch of medicine does not appear to have been well founded.
That the majority of practicing analysts belong to the Club, and have found libido to invest in it, while founding, organizing, and building up the Society, with its responsibility to patients and trainees alike, speaks eloquently for the need to relate to Jung’s work as much more than a psychopathological theory or a therapeutic technique.
In retrospect, it is difficult to see how a separation, at least temporary, between the Club and the analysts could have been avoided.
In 1944, when Fordham’s paper was written, the standing of analytical psychology in the English medical world was in the balance.
The National Health Service had not yet arrived, and attitudes, both popular and official, towards mental illness and its treatment were relatively primitive.
In spite of the far-ranging implications of Jung’s work in its later stages, it had to be faced that its origins were in psychiatry, and that it would be judged by its applicability to that field.
The practising analysts, and the Society which developed from them, needed a new temenos within which to work on this aspect of the development of analytical psychology.
Further, work had to be done on the transference, in both its personal and social aspects, and it is hard to see how this could have been accomplished within the Club.
The opus facing the Society is clear.
It is well established, materially and socially.
It is recognized by the British medical profession, and by the public, as a centre of significant and responsible research and therapeutic endeavour.
It has over sixty members, most of them well established in various professional fields, but all with libido to spare for the Society.
It offers, as does the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, the special service of analytical treatment for a small proportion of those who need it at nominal fees.
It does not seem inappropriate to suggest that it must continue to focus on the application of Jung’s thought to mental illness and its treatment, to closing the gaps in psychopathological theory, and to refining the precepts of analytical practice.
It represents analytical psychology to other schools of psychotherapeutic practice, and must prove worthy of this position.
In particular, the fact that psycho-analysts of advanced views find that they can talk meaningfully with some of its members should not be undervalued.
The split between Freud and Jung may have been a historical necessity; it has been productive of a great deal that is of value, and at the same time has tragically delayed many advances in human understanding.
It is possible that the rapprochement between the Jungians and Freudians of today may lead to a picking up of threads long dropped.
Study of the Journal of Analytical Psychology will make it clear that many of Jung’s concepts are under constant and constructive critical review.
Digestion of his thought is very necessary, and the Society must be the place in Britain where this has to be accomplished in the first instance.
It is also important that the Society contains the largest number of Jungians with a basic scientific and biological training.
Jung’s work needs to be related to other branches of science, and the efforts of Storr (1955) to link it up with cybernetics and of Fordham (1957) with contemporary biology must be expanded.
Possibly the biggest obstruction to the flow of Jung’s work is the persistent myth of ‘Jung the mystic’; as elsewhere, this exercises an influence in Britain today.
The other myth of ‘Jung the anti-semite’ recently raised its head in the New Statesman, a responsible periodical, where it was scotched by Gerhard Adler, Herbert Read, and others.
The answer would seem to be thorough study of his writings, and the submission of his concepts to the tests of contemporary science.
When it is realized that much of his later work, including that on synchronicity, is assayable by statistical and mathematical methods, it may be that academic psychologists will revive their interest in Jung, and find his concepts verifiable by such methods, as did Eysenck (1947) with Jung’s typology.
Thorough study of his work is possible only for those who respond to his vision with the heart as well as the head, but devotion to it seems his fitting memorial.
We need not weep for the man who could say ‘If the old were not ripe for death, nothing new would appear’. ~G. Stewart Prince, Jung’s Psychology in Britain, In Contact with Jung, Pages 41-58
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