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The unique character of the London school of Jungian analysis is imprinted on this collection of papers, which comprise the second volume in The Library of Analytical Psychology. The results of some twenty years of clinical work on the crucial themes of technique, transference and counter-transference are brought together in a way that traces the development of the School and of some of its member-analysts.
L. Zinkin provides a rationale for the project by noting in the initial article, ‘… the analyst lives in a state of perpetual conflict between his wish to react spontaneously “as a person” to the patient and the need to put his special analytical skills at the patient's service.’ Recognizing the power of the unconscious to overwhelm, Zinkin stresses that the analyst's ego must remain in control. The ways in which some resolution of this conflict is being achieved are elucidated throughout the book, and they appear to this writer often to be in marked contrast to the way in which this same conflict is approached by members of the Zürich school and their students. Jung's emphasis on the equal status of analyst and analysand seems to have been further differentiated by the London analysts into the patient who provides the raw data and the analyst who organizes it. It is admittedly an asymmetrical and non-reciprocal relationship at first, that tends to become symmetrical and reciprocal as the analysis progresses.
Impressions gleaned from my Zürich training suggested that the analyst, especially in the early stages of the analysis, is not to be quick to organize and to interpret, but rather to contain his hypotheses and allow the analysand to present not only his unconscious material but also his reactions to it and his reflections on it. The Zürich-trained analyst's interpretations seem to be more tentative, awaiting the response of the analysand whose emotional connection with his own material provides a valid criterion for determining whether the analyst is correctly