Correspondence

May I Comment on the discussion of Redfearn's paper, ‘Ego and self: terminology’ which appeared in this journal (Vol. 28, 2)?

If Schwartz-Salant wants to assert that there is a spirit of Jung that Redfearn violates we can consider whether that is true and whether the violation is worthwhile or not. First of all, Jung claimed that analytical psychology is a science and Redfearn's procedure could not be called unscientific. Also, to separate ego from self is to follow Jung, who did just that when he wrote a separate definition of the self for the Collected Works, while earlier editions of Psychological Types did not contain one.

Jacoby's contribution is of a different and more reflective kind. I think that he is right to find that ‘one can not see Kohut's self as simply analogous with the Jungian concept of the ego’. That was my impression when I took part in a symposium on the self in San Francisco when a Kohutian psychoanalyst was also speaking.

The importance of Schwartz-Salant's contribution is that he uses symbolic forms which express the self, whereas Redfearn seeks to define the self clearly. To do so he uses a comparative method which one could call horizontal. I cannot find that he is muddled.

I am struck by the neglect, in the discussion, of Jung's distinction between directed and undirected thinking (primary and secondary process or diacritic and metaphorical-symbolic thinking in psychoanalysis). Definition belongs to the former and does not seek to express the self, but by setting boundaries to the meaning of words is essentially excluding. It contrasts with symbolic expressions which draw together disparate elements i.e., which are synthetic. Each ‘system’ has its best expression in society: one in science and logical thinking, the other in art and religion; each has its psychopathology in the obsessional disorders on the one hand and in the psychoses on the other. It is from the interaction of these two systems that quandaries can arise.

For my part I am quit