Ann Ulanov on the Self as Analytic Fourth

In this paper Ulanov articulates the role of the Self in the analyst's countertransference.  She describes the presence of the Self, which from Jung's perspective is both a personal and transpersonal experience, as an analytic fourth - i.e. patient, analyst, co-created/co-emergent dyadic material of the analytic third, and the Self, as the analytic fourth, providing influence/perspective which extends beyond the personalistic:

"The fourth, the Self, must enter into the analytical encounter if it is to work...If I am correct in believing that the Self functions like a bridge to reality that transcends the psyche as well as dwells in it, then consciousness of consent summons a religious dimension, what Jung called that 'decisive question' we must answer: Are we related to the infinite or not?" (pp. 22-23)

Ann Ulanov (1999). Countertransference and the Self.  Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, Vol 1, pp. 5 -26.

Patrick Casement on Theories and Not-Knowing

     "Analytic theories are built up to define more clearly the framework in which analysts and therapists work. These are necessary, if analytic interpretation is not to become a matter of inspired guesswork. Theory also helps to moderate the helplessness of not-knowing. But it remains important that this should be servant to the work of therapy and not its master.
     It is all too easy to equate not-knowing with ignorance. This can lead therapists to seek refuge in an illusion that they understand. But if they can bear the strain of not-knowing, they can learn that their competence as therapists includes a capacity to tolerate feeling ignorant or incompetent, and a willingness to wait (and to carry on waiting) until something genuinely relevant and meaningful begins to emerge. Only in this way is it possible to avoid the risk of imposing upon the patient the self-deception of premature understanding, which acheives nothing except to defend the therapist from discomfort of knowing that he does not know.
     By listening too readily to accepted theories, and to what they lead the practitioner to expect, it is easy to become deaf to the unexpected. When a therapist thinks that he can see signs of what is familiar to him, he can become blind to what is different and strange." (p. 9)

Patrick Casement (1985), Learning from the Patient, New York: Guilford.

Edward Edinger on the centrality of analogy to the analytic process

"Analogy is a process of relationship, a making of connections by"as if." [The alchemical] texts tell us that analogy corporifies or coagulates the spirit. This is what makes alchemy so valuable for depth psychology. It is a treasury of analogies that corporify or embody the objective psyche and the processes it undergoes in development. The same applies for religion or mythology. The importance of analogy for realization of the psyche can hardly be overestimated. It gives form and visibility to that which was previously invisible, intangible, not yet coagulated. Concepts and abstractions don't coagulate....The images of dreams and active imagination do coagulate. They connect the outer world with the inner world by means of proportional or analogous images and thus coagulate soul-stuff." (p. 100)

Edward Edinger (1985). Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, La Salle, IL: Open Court Press.

Danielle Quinidoz on the Patient of the Third Millennium

Below is the abstract of the article which provides a compelling summary of Quinidoz's main points:

"What sort of patients do we have in psychoanalysis now, at the beginning of the third millennium, and what sort will we have in the future? In the author's clinical experience, the patients who are currently seeking help from the psychoanalyst use primitive defence mechanisms alongside neurotic ones. Most of them do not explicitly request psychoanalytic treatment, but this does not mean that they would not want it if they knew what it was. She argues that is the psychoanalyst's task to identify the latent request behind the ‘non-request’. To conduct a psychoanalysis with such patients, the psychoanalyst has to identify and interpret both primitive and neurotic psychic mechanisms; moreover, he has to use not only language that speaks to patients but also language that ‘touches’ them, because these patients are difficult to reach through verbal symbolism. This implies that the pscyhoanalyst must be attentive to the bodily manifestations and bodily phantasies accompanying his countertransference feelings. The author shows through clinical examples what she means by ‘language that can touch patients’. The psychoanalyst gradually builds up this language while, at the same time, daring to discover in himself his own mad aspects and giving himself enough psychical freedom to accept them."

Danielle Quinodoz (2001). "The Psychoanalyst of the Future: Wise Enough to Dare to be Mad at Times," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 82, pp. 235-248

Hans Dieckmann on Interpretation

"A complete interpretation...never takes place in a single analytic hour but may often extend over long periods of time.  I would understand this sort of complete and successful interpretation as a conscious, emotionally laden verbal act on the part of the analyst which leads to bringing to consciousness a previously unconscious complex as well as the resistence and the systems of defense that have held this complex fast in the unconscious.  A complete and successful interpretation should embrace the three tenses - past, present, and future - and should describe both the contents and the emotional cathexes.  Likewise, it should give information about the personal contents and the archetypal core of the complex.  In this context, 'past' signifies the genetic component of the complex, that is, answers the questions of when and under what conditions did the complex develop and and why was it absolutely necessary in the development of this particular patient to suppress and repress the contents, feelings, and affects of precisely this complex.  To the present belongs first and foremost the interpretation of the effects that these complex contents evoke within the transference and counter-transference situation between analyst and patient, and beyond that, of course, also those distorted situations that arise through projection of the unconscious complex contents in the current life situation of the patient as well as in interpersonal relationships in general.  'Future' refers to the 'final' element contained in every unconscious complex that presses into consciousness....The final component - i.e. the tendency toward meaning and purpose that arises when drive and image are linked and in which the possibilities of resolution and development are contained - must be brought to consciousness or made conscious, and consciousness must judge it, that is accept it or reject it."

Hans Dieckmann (1991), Methods in Analytical Psychology, Wilmette, IL: Chiron,  p. 166.

Jerome Oremland on Interpretation

"It is important, however, to recognize that interpretation is interactive and that all aspects of psychotherapeutic interaction are just that, various kinds of interactions. Yet, interpretation as an intervention is qualitatively different from other interactions in that its aim is solely to add explicit knowledge, whereas interactive interventions remain largely experiential. Most important, when transferential, interpretation makes the interaction itself the object of analysis." p. 10

Jerome Oremland, "Interpretation and Interaction: Psychoanalysis or Psychotherapy?" Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1991.

Aldo Carotenuto on Suffering

"Psychotherapy is not the construction of models according to which human suffering is channeled and labeled; it is the examination of suffering, the discovery of the dense fabric of correspondence between external and interior events which constitutes every life.  And at the moment the analyst discloses that alarming visage, on which the traces of old pain and never-healed wounds have been impressed, that suffering becomes the 'treatment' for the other." p. vii

Aldo Carotenuto, The Difficult Art: A Critical Discourse on Psychotherapy, Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1992

Freud on Resistance

"Informing the patient of what he does not know because he has repressed it is only one of the necessary preliminaries to the treatment. If knowledge about the unconscious were as important for the patient as people inexperienced in psychoanalysis imagine, listening to lectures or reading books would be enough to cure him. Such measures, however, have as much influence on the symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger."

Freud, Sigmund (1910). ‘Wild’ Psycho-Analysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XI, p. 225.

Edward Edinger on Consciousness

Jungian Analyst Edward Edinger speaks below about his understanding of C.G. Jung's notion of consciousness:

"These are the chief statements Jung has made concerning the emerging new myth....The essential new idea is that the purpose of human life is the creation of consciousness.  The key word is 'consciousness.'  Unfortunately, the experiential meaning of this term is almost impossible to convey abstractly.  As with all fundamental aspects of the psyche it transcends the grasp of the intellect....the experience of consciousness is made up of two factors, 'knowing' and 'withness,' i.e., knowing in the presence of an 'other,' in a setting of twoness.  Symbolically the number two refers to the opposites.  We thus reach the conclusion that consciousness is somehow born out of the experience of opposites." p. 17

The Creation of Consciousness: Jung's Myth for Modern Man, Toronto: Inner-City Books, 1984.