We are delighted to announce the 2019 Zurich Lecture Series for this coming October. ISAPZurich in collaboration with Chiron Publications will co-host the event. Please see ISAP Zurich’s page for updated details at: www.isapzurich.com/en/current-program/zurich-lectures/
ISAPZURICH and CHIRON PUBLICATIONS present
Mark Saban, MA
“Two Souls Alas…” Jung’s two personalities and the creation of analytical psychology
Oct 4 & Oct 5, 2019 | Zurich, Switzerland
Friday, October 4, 5:30pm – 9:00pm: Reception, Lecture & Dinner, Zunfthaus zur Schmiden, Marktgasse 20, Zurich
Saturday, October 5, 10:00am – 3:30pm: Lectures & Discussion, Zentrum Karl der Grosse, Kirchgasse 14, 8001 Zurich
Jung’s difficulties with what he describes as his ‘two personalities’
dominate the first few chapters of MDR. As a child, Jung tried to
alleviate his feeling of inner division by repressing one or other of
his two personalities, but he eventually realised that in order to live a
full and fulfilled life he had to, first, maintain contact with bothpersonalities
(even though they conflicted), and, second, find ways to enable each
personality to engage dialectically with the other.
This experience constellated an important insight: that psychological
transformation – and therefore the process of individuation – depends
upon a dynamic engagement with the opposites and the tension between
them. Only in this way can a continuous process of psychic balancing be
enabled, and one-sidedness avoided.
This idea runs like a red thread through every period and every
aspect of Jung’s psychology. We see it in his early work on the
complexes, and we see it played out in that dialogical meeting between
personality 1 and personality 2 which Jung describes in MDR as his
‘confrontation with the unconscious’. Central to individuation, it runs
through Jung’s ideas on the ‘transcendent function’ and on typology and
achieves fruition in Jung’s magnum opus, Mysterium Coniunctionis..
Because the logic of the two personalities is fundamental to
analytical psychology it has the capacity to provide a unique critical
tool when turned back toward Jung’s psychology itself. Applied in this
way, the reflexive critique immediately shows up an endemic
one-sidedness in Jung’s psychology whereby the themes, motifs and ideas
associated with personality no 2 dominate, while the themes motifs and
ideas that come with personality no 1 are persistently ignored or
rejected.
For example, when we focus on the particular opposites, inner vs
outer, and look at the ways in which Jung dealt with them in his life
and in his work, what becomes apparent is a striking failure to maintain
the logic of the creative and transformative dynamic he had developed.
Instead, Jung one-sidedly identifies the inner realm with psychology
itself, and thereby eliminates the outer as proper object for
psychological attention.
This has meant that, despite Jung’s own pioneering work with
transference and counter-transference (work that depends upon a
relational – inner/outer – dynamic), analytical psychology has, on the
whole, been marred by a persistent and problematic reluctance to engage
with the outer other. This has led, among other things, to a
long-lasting difficulty in dealing with, or even properly acknowledging,
the psychosocial dimension.
This problem has become increasingly apparent as the relational,
social and political realm becomes recognised more and more as active
within, and critical to, depth psychology. By properly highlighting the
logic of the two personalities we can begin to redress this imbalance
with an acknowledgment that the collective unconscious may be
encountered not only through intrapsychic relations with inner others,
but also through extra-psychic engagement with the outer collective and
outer others.
Mark Saban is a senior analyst with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists and a lecturer at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He co-edited Analysis and Activism – Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology with Emilija Kiehl and Andrew Samuels (Routledge 2016) (Finalist American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize, Nominated Gradiva Award for Best Edited Book).
Recent articles include, ‘Secrete e Bugie. Un’area cieca nella
psicologia junghiana’, Rivista di psicologia analitica, 2017, n. 43
Volume 95. and ‘Outside-In: Jung’s myth of interiority ambiguated Or –
Knowing me, Knowing Jung – ahah!’, Journal of Analytical Psychology,
2018, 63, 3
About the Zurich Lecture Series
The Zurich Lecture Series in Analytical Psychology was established in
2009 by the International School of Analytical Psychology Zurich
(ISAPZURICH) and Spring Journal Books to present annually new work by a
distinguished scholar who has previously offered innovative
contributions to the field of Analytical Psychology by either:
bringing analytical psychology into meaningful dialogue with other scientific, artistic, and academic disciplines;
showing how analytical psychology can lead to a better understanding
of contemporary global concerns relating to the environment, politics,
religion; or
expanding the concepts of analytical psychology as they are applied clinically
Each year, the selected lecturer delivers lectures over a 2-day
period in Zurich based on a previously unpublished book-length work.
Chiron Publications publishes this work as a new volume in the Zurich
Lecture Series, of which Murray Stein and Steve Buser are co-editors.
In the winter of 1944 Jung lost his footing when out walking, fell, and broke his foot. Perhaps the symbolic significance of losing his footing contributed to his suffering a heart attack shortly thereafter. For several weeks he hovered in a liminal state, on the threshold of death, often with the feeling of being way above the Earth in an altered state entirely. He was certainly in a mystical condition, in an out of body near-death situation. The down-to-earth reality of the daily hospital routines irritated him intensely and about the only time he experienced a complete relief from the vagaries of his illness was late at night when the night nurse brought him some soup. Perhaps she brought him chicken soup, a symbolic cure-all that Jewish mothers will tell us cannot hurt, and it might even do some good. Jung even fancied that the nurse was an old Jewish mother figure, preparing ritual kosher dishes for him. And only then was Jung able to eat, and with appetite, as he describes it in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections.