Discussion Training and Psychopathology

It is evident that the symposium on training highlights different trends within analytical psychology and this is surely to the good. However, when trying to elucidate our differences, a fruitful purpose can no more be served by taking the novelty of any idea as proof of its value than by arguments which rely on analogy. With his rhetorical question: whether I suppose analysis will reveal a textbook of psychopathology, Hillman demonstrates how easy it is to fall into the latter trap. According to experience based on analyses which make use of unconscious behaviour as well as “material”, the differences revealed between extreme conditions of psychopathology and those more usually encountered in analysands are differences of degree rather than of kind.

The case of homosexuality will serve as an example. An analysand may be very far from practising homosexuality and yet his analysis will reveal just how close he comes in his psychology to the manifest condition. Without that discovery the analyst would never be able to abandon that entrenched position held by some alienists of the past who were able to look upon patients as if they were beings of a different species. Rigorous analysis of psychopathology on the other hand does permit us to look upon the vast majority of our patients with a feeling of “There, but for the grace of God, go I”! I submit that this cannot be achieved by lectures or reading of textbooks. Unsupported by personal analysis such studies would lead us straight back to the alienist's attitude. In fact, without a personal analysis which touches upon every conceivable psychopathology, Hillman's point about its being the central part of the work makes no sense to me. What is more, if psychopathology and its relation to personal suffering are not central the analysis is no longer a Kernstück, although as a pièce de résistance (Hillman, 1962, p. 8) it could still serve quite well.