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This study is one of a series of attempts to systematically explore the ways in which personality theories are stamped with the salient subjective concerns of personality theorists (Atwood & Tomkins, 1976) ; (Atwood & Stolorow, 1977) ; (Stolorow & Atwood, 1976). In this paper we shall be concerned with one particular facet of the subjectivity of personality theory; namely the relationship between the structure of a metapsychology and the nature of the representational world (Sandler & Rosenblatt, 1962) experienced by its creator.
With regard to classical psychoanalytic theory, Schafer (1972), (1975) and Kubie (1975) have offered cogent critiques in which they argue that various Freudian metapsychological constructs represent unlabelled spatial and quantitative metaphors, i.e. concretistic reifications of non-substantial subjective experiences (notably, vivid fantasy experiences). Both writers allude to the possible defensive function of attributing thing-like properties to immaterial subjective experiences, but they do not attempt to relate this defensive activity to the subjective concerns of the metapsychological theory-builders.
This paper is based on the proposition that metapsychological systems are in part reified expressions of their creator's most problematic subjective experiences. Indeed, the very nature of metapsychology, in being so abstract and speculative and thus remote from actual clinical observation, makes it ideally suited to serve as a projective vehicle for aspects of the theorists' own experiential worlds. We are further proposing that the reification involved in metapsychological theory-building serve specific defensive and/or reparative functions for the theorist in question.
In the material which follows, we attempt to illustrate our propositions through an analysis of the relationships between the metapsychological theory and the subjectively experienced representational world of C. G. Jung. Specifically, we attempt to demonstrate that Ju