Carl Jung on the Transcendent Function

Jung's concept of the transcendent function, originally developed in 1916, is at the center of his system of Analytical Psychology. There are striking parallels between Jung's notion of the transcendent function and the concept of alpha function proposed at a later time by Wilfrend Bion (1962, Learning from Experience):

"The tendencies of the conscious and the unconscious are the two factors that together make up the transcendent function. It is called 'transcendent' because it makes the transition from one attitude to another organically possible." [The Transcendent Function, CW 8, par. 145.]

"Once the unconscious content has been given form and the meaning of the formulation is understood, the question arises as to how the ego will relate to this position, and how the ego and the unconscious are to come to terms. This is the second and more important stage of the procedure, the bringing together of opposites for the production of a third: the transcendent function. At this stage it is no longer the unconscious that takes the lead, but the ego." [The Transcendent Function, CW 8, par. 181.]

"From the activity of the unconscious there now emerges a new content, constellated by thesis and antithesis in equal measure and standing in a compensatory relation to both. It thus forms the middle ground on which the opposites can be united. If, for instance, we conceive the opposition to be sensuality versus spirituality, then the mediatory content born out of the unconscious provides a welcome means of expression for the spiritual thesis, because of its rich spiritual associations, and also for the sensual antithesis, because of its sensuous imagery. The ego, however, torn between thesis and antithesis, finds in the middle ground its own counterpart, its sole and unique means of expression, and it eagerly seizes on this in order to be delivered from its division." [Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 825.]

"If the mediatory product remains intact, it forms the raw material for a process not of dissolution but of construction, in which thesis and antithesis both play their part. In this way it becomes a new content that governs the whole attitude, putting an end to the division and forcing the energy of the opposites into a common channel. The standstill is overcome and life can flow on with renewed power towards new goals." [Psychological Types, CW6, par. 827.]"

C.G. Jung (1916/1958) The Transcendent Function, Collected Works Vol. 8, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

C.G. Jung (1921) Psychological Types, Collected Works Vol. 6, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Leuzinger-Bohleber and Pfeifer - Memory as Embodied Process

Abstract: "Memory has always been a central issue in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Recent developments in the cognitive and neural sciences suggest that traditional notions of memory based on stored structures which are also often underlying psychoanalytic thinking cannot account for a number of fundamental phenomena and thus need to be revised. We suggest that memory be conceived as a) a theoretical construct explaining current behaviour by reference to events that have happened in the past. b) Memory is not to be conceived as stored structures but as a function of the whole organism, as a complex, dynamic, recategorising and interactive process, which is always ‘embodied’. c) Memory always has a subjective and an objective side. The subjective side is given by the individual's history, the objective side by the neural patterns generated by the sensory motor interactions with the environment. This implies that both ‘narrative’ (subjective) and ‘historical’ (objective) truth have to be taken into account achieving stable psychic change..." (p. 3)

Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber and Rolf Pfeifer (2002). Remembering a Depressive Primary Object. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 83:3-33

Murray Jackson - Considerations in Symbolic Process with Schizoid Patients

"In recent years there has been an increasing interest among psychopathologists in the study and treatment of schizoid disorders, which are now known to be more accessible to analytical psychotherapy than was formerly realized. Clinical and theoretical studies, mostly made by psycho-analysts, have revealed types of mental mechanism specific to the schizoid level of mental organization, and thrown light on the process of the formation of symbols and their precursors. In the course of analysis of schizoid patients the process of symbol formation may sometimes be seen developing. At primitive levels symbolism is archaic and prelogical, the symbol having the same emotional value as the thing symbolized, and this stage has been called the symbolic equation. With further development this changes to symbolic representation, where the symbol represents rather than presents the thing symbolized, is a picture rather than a replica. When this change occurs in the treatment of schizoid patients, it is associated with a lessening of persecutory anxiety and an increased capacity for depression and for healthier object relations.

In the transference with such patients primitive contents are projected into the analyst and may confer a delusional quality on the process. Examples are given from clinical practice of the appearance of symbolic equations in such cases, and of their change to representations as treatment progresses.

In the context of clinical observations a condensed account of psycho-analytic theories of symbol formation is presented, and the relevance of all this to Jung's concept of the symbol is considered.

The main contention of this paper is that Jung's use of the term "symbol" corresponds to the experience of symbolic equations by a relatively mature ego, an ego with a specific attitude of receptiveness, the "symbolic attitude", towards such experience. With the immature ego at the schizoid level of mental organization, it is most unlikely that symbols can be appreciated in this way, and attempts to use symbolic experience in a conventional therapeutic way are likely to lead to defensive splitting in the ego.

The best safeguard against this happening is for the therapist to give the bodily aspects of mental life the importance they deserve, and to be aware of the need for genetically earlier levels of experience to be properly integrated before there can be much hope of potentially creative experience having a truly creative, rather than a defensive, outcome.

These ideas contain little that is new, and accord with Jung's views about the need, in certain cases, for regression to the archaic object relationship, which is represented by the biologically based symbol and which has the potential of resolving the state of splitting into opposites. However, the linking of current psycho-analytic concepts with these established ideas of analytical psychology seems, to the author, to be quite essential if progress is to be made in the treatment of, and discussion of, schizoid patients." (pp. 156-157)

　
　

Murray Jackson (1963). Symbol Formation and the Delusional Transference. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 8, pp. 145-159

Brief Overview of the Work of Hyman Spotnitz and the School of Modern Psychoanalysis

"The term modern psychoanalysis is used to describe a body of new developments in psychoanalytic theory and technique that emphasizes the role of emotional communication in the analytic situation, especially in the analyst's interventions. Clinically, the methods and techniques of modern psychoanalysis enable psychoanalysts to treat a much wider range of disturbances than was believed possible using classical methods. In fact experience has shown that modern psychoanalysis can be an effective treatment for all the psychodynamically reversible illnesses, including psychosomatic disorders, organic disorders with a psychological component, psychoses, neuroses, and character disorders.

Scientifically, the findings of modern psychoanalysis have contributed new insights into both the dynamics of emotional illnesses (especially the more severe disturbances such as schizophrenia) and our understanding of the mechanisms through which the analytic process cures these conditions. As in classical analysis, the modern analyst's strategy is to create a transference situation by having the patient communicate verbally from the couch. Cure is then effected through analysis and resolution of the transference resistances.

Historically, modern analysis dates from the work of Spotnitz, who during the 1940s used psychoanalysis to treat severely regressed, hospitalized patients. Spotnitz, and other modern analysts since then, have found that for psychoanalysis to be effective with such disturbances, it is necessary to establish a narcissistic transference with the patient. This condition differs from object transference because it involves a re-creation of the relationship that existed with the mothering figure before the ego boundaries became defined.

Classical analysis, beginning with Freud, have held that the narcissistic disorders do not respond to psychoanalytic treatment. However, modern analysts have found that the development of a narcissistic transference makes possible the treatment of such patients.

Early work by modern analysts disclosed that the narcissistic patient's major resistances involved defenses against powerful aggressive feelings. This finding suggests another important difference between modern analysis and classical analysis: the primary focus of classical analysts is the resolution of transference resistance to the expression of libidinal feelings; modern analysts, when working with the narcissistic disorders, focus first on the aggressive drive in order to liberate the libidinal drive.

Theoretically, it is fruitful to view the symptoms of narcissistic disorders (depression, withdrawal, ego fragmentation, psychosomatic complaints, and so on) as primitive defenses against acting out murderous impulses toward an object. To prevent action the impulses are turned inward against the patient's own ego or soma." (pp. 3-4)
　

Editorial Board (1976). The Origins of Modern Psychoanalysis. Modern Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1, pp. 3-16

Hester Solomon - Dialectical Process and the Creation of the Individual

"Throughout our lives, there is a constant dialectical process that enables our essential personal coniunctio-our internal and external families-to elaborate and grow. This paper has tried to achieve a particular synthesis between apparently opposing theoretical elements, illustrating with clinical material how this explanatory model may be of use in the elaboration of the intricate and subtle build up of the personality over time in its relation to important others.

The infant's personality is built up through a constant, dynamic three-way interaction between:

(1) the unique real individual baby (primal self);

(2) the common innate predisposition to perceive the world through certain fixed categories, i.e., through the archetypal patterns, or the images of the instincts, with which each of us is invested by virtue of being human;

(3) the real parents, both as individuals and as a couple and how their care for the baby with its variations and vicissitudes moderates the experience of I-ness of the infant and the shape of the archetypal structures.

This third category, the quality of the parental environment as it is transmitted in subtle ways to the infant, is itself a result of an interaction between (1) and (2) and (3) in the previous generation, the real mother, the real father, and the other carers, themselves carrying an ongoing dynamic process between the elements (1), (2), and (3) from their own history.

The infant responds to this complex mixture, and the real parents respond in turn to the developing infant, through a constant to-andfro communication. How all this happens, back and forth, over time, building up a complex feedback set of stimulus and response patterns that become the foundation of each individual's personality - all this is the stuff of our analytic work. This represents a vision of the history of the mental functioning over the life of an individual which is common to both archetypal analytical psychology and to object relations theory.

So image creates image, and in the work of analytic reconstruction, a history of the internal image building is recreated. This may be similar to, different from, or overlap with the real or objective history. It has fundamental implications for concerns about epistemology in analytic theory building-how do we know what we know and what is it exactly that we do know.

This article proposes a way of understanding the intricate and subtle processes of change and development that are described in the traditions of both analytical psychology and object relations theory through the mediation of the dialectical model. In order to accomplish this, theories concerning deep structures are invoked, of which the dialectical model is one." (pp. 327-328)

　

Hester Solomon (1991). Archetypal Psychology and Object Relations Theory. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 36, pp. 307-329