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A recently published volume of the Collected Works on The Practice of Psychotherapy shows the development of Jung's ideas about the nature of the analytic relationship. These ideas form a contribution to analytical theory of a highly individual kind, but are worked out with specific reference to the analysis of persons in the second half of life and to the individuation process. This short article has been prompted by the question: What relevance and value have these ideas in regard to the analysis of children?
If we first turn briefly to Jung we find that, while accepting the inevitable occurrence and necessary function of transference as described originally by Freud, he has broadened enormously the conception of the analytic relationship. He defines his conclusion in general but concise terms by saying (Jung, 1935, Coll. Wks., p. 3) “A person is a psychic system which, when it affects another person, enters into a reciprocal action with another psychic system. This, perhaps the most modern, formulation of the psychotherapeutic relation between physician and patient, is very clearly far removed from the original view….” This implies that, when two persons are in a therapeutic relation, an effect takes place which is inevitably reciprocal. Jung further develops this theme in speaking of the analyst who, he says (ibid. p. 72), is “equally part of the psychic process of treatment and therefore equally exposed to its transforming influences. Indeed, to the extent that the doctor shows himself impervious to this he forfeits influence over the patient; and, if he is only influenced unconsciously, there is a gap in his field of consciousness which makes it impossible for him to see the patient in true perspective. In either case the result of the treatment is compromised.” He defines psychic influence as “the reciprocal reaction between two psychic systems”. Jung thus envisages this relationship between analyst and patient as developing into “a kind of dialectical process