The Plural Psyche

Dear Sirs,

I am grateful to Drs Stolorow and Atwood for their thorough review of my book The Plural Psyche and for their generous remarks. The review has to be located within the context of their on-going critical engagement with Jung and with analytical psychology (Stolorow & Atwood, 1977), (1979). For my part, I have attempted to respond to the many interesting and often valid points they have raised (Samuels, 1985).

Many of the criticisms of The Plural Psyche in the review are couched in terms of my 'Jungian background', my 'Jungian framework', or the similarities of my work with the work of other Jungian thinkers, including Jung. I don't suppose I can do much about this level of criticism but I do feel that Drs Stolorow and Atwood are unnecessarily reluctant to accept that analytical psychology, like psychoanalysis, is an evolving field.

For example, it is not correct to say that I conflate contents of experience with the unconscious principles that organize such contents. The reviewers have also made this criticism of Jung's theory of archetypes in spite of the fact that Jung's major statements on the topic refer to the fundamental difference between the archetype an sich and the archetypal content or product. What I was doing was to see what happens if we reverse the usual hierarchy in which principles are privileged over contents. This suggestion, regarded as 'revolutionary' by a leading Jungian reviewer, may be evaluated as nonsensical by Drs Stolorow and Atwood. But the whole tone would be different, devoid of the implication that I have somehow committed a 'howler'. That is to say, we could truly have an argument about it in a way that is closed off in this review.

There is one further point I'd like to make concerning the reviewers' remark that my ideas on the countertransference are potentially harmful clinically. This is found in a section of the review that alleges my uncritical importation of non-Jungian ideas, specifically projective identifica