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This is a book of dialogue — dialogue between and amongst Jung, post-Jungians, psychoanalysts and others. Samuels brings this dialogue to life in a comparative study, comprehensively surveying the developments that have taken place since Jung's death in 1961.
Each chapter is organised around an important theme in Jung's work. There are chapters on the schools of analytical psychology; the archetype and complex; the ego; the self and individuation; analytical process; gender, sex and marriage; dreams; and archetypal psychology. In order to illustrate some of these theoretical concepts, another chapter presents clinical material from the author's work with a patient.
In the first chapter, Samuels sets the scene and introduces the schools of analytical psychology, briefly describing the three existing clarifications of post-Jungian schools — Adler, Fordham and Goldenberg, and then outlines his own classification into three main schools — Classical, Developmental and Archetypal. He elaborates this classification into six headings — three theoretical areas (the definition of the archetypal, the concept of the self and the development of personality) and three clinical aspects (the analysis of transference — counter-transference, emphasis upon symbolic experience of the self and examination of highly differentiated imagery).
Each school emphasises different aspects of these six headings and orders them in a different priority; however, taken altogether, Samuels sees these as the common core, or the “Post-Jungian vertex”, with which all analytical psychologists are concerned. This classification, together with the accompanying list of writers of theoretical similarity, is useful for orientating the reader throughout the book.
The content of the remaining chapters is far too complex to outline here, but I want to make a general comment on the masterful way in which the author weaves together various theoretical threads, from a critical presentation of Jung's major indeas, to