Analytical Psychology in England

To understand the development of analytical psychology in Great Britain it is necessary to look at its background and to glance briefly at Jung's attitude towards forming a school of his own to promulgate his ideas and practices.

After he departed from psychoanalysis in 1914, there was a long period in which Jung absorbed himself in his own form of ‘analysis’. At this time his literary productivity was low, for although he had published the Psychology of the unconscious in 1912 (JUNG 3), only a short essay, ‘The structure of the unconscious’ (JUNG 5) indicated the direction his researches were taking until Psychological types was published in 1921 (JUNG 7). During this fallow period a small group of analysts interested in his work collected together, but it had little formal structure, and there was no means other than personal contact with Jung whereby another person could be trained in the methods which he was developing.

As his investigations began to mature, however, and as patients accumulated, the Psychological Club was formed at the instigation of Antonia Wolff. It was made up of persons who had undergone sufficient development in their analyses for them to benefit from meeting regularly to discuss matters of common interest. The Club made it very clear that it was to have no professional status, and membership was not a qualification to practice psychotherapy.

In 1925 Jung started to give seminars in Zürich, at first to a rather closed circle, but subsequently to an expanding audience which included people from a wide variety of disciplines. Because he had stimulated particular interest in the English-speaking countries, Great Britain and the United States, he gave three lengthy seminars in English: on ‘Dream analysis’, which lasted for two years, between 1928 and 1930; on the ‘Interpretation of visions’, also of two years’ duration; and on ‘Psychological aspects of Nietzsche's “Zarathustra”’, given between 1933 and 1939. There was thus a considerab