You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The proceedings of the third International Congress for Analytical Psychology, held in 1965, make interesting reading today. The papers, revised and where necessary translated into English, come together in an impressive and finely-produced book.
The overall theme of the Congress was, ‘The reality of the psyche’, with the sub-themes, ‘The individuation process’, ‘The symbol’ and ‘Analytical psychotherapy’.
Dr Wheelwright, the editor, emphasizes the development displayed in the papers on from the work of Jung who, he reminds us, ‘always inveighed against the dangers of over-organization and over-identification with an orthodoxy’.
This seems a just statement as the volume contains refinements of Jung's concept of individuation as well as recognition of Freudian, Kleinian and existentialist contributions in papers by Hillman, Fordham, Abenheimer and Rhally.
The opening paper was an eloquent one by Harding on ‘The reality of the psyche’—an exposition of what may be called the classical Jungian position. For her the psyche is experienced only after the individual has de-identified with his ego-consciousness and assimilated those contents of his personal unconscious and the shadow that had hitherto been experienced only ‘in projections onto persons and objects and circumstances in the external world’ (p. ). Although feeling that most people find their limits here, she maintains that it is only after this stage that the deeper realization of the psyche can take place, and this means for Harding the ‘assimilation of those archetypes that have always been projected into the metaphysical world of divine beings and miraculous happenings’ (p. ).
It should be noted that Harding does not state that the individuation process necessarily belongs to the second half of life (i.e. the pure classical position). Nevertheless, she gives the impression that her main interest in analytical psychology is centred round the relationship between the self and god, the extent of our real experience o