Analysis: A Space for Separation

This Paper has arisen out of some reflections on my analytic work with a little boy I will call Robert. At the time of writing, he had been coming for the last two-and-a-half years. When he was referred he was afflicted by a crippling inability to separate from his parents, his mother in particular. In the course of the analysis Robert's ego has grown stronger, and this has enabled him to let go of his controlling adhesion to his mother and his entangling confusion with both parents; and thus, after separation, his own individuation is beginning to take place.

In his paper, ‘Conscious, unconscious, and individuation’, Jung uses the term ‘individuation’ to ‘denote a process by which a person becomes a psychological individual, that is a separate indivisible unit or a whole’ (JUNG 9). Elsewhere Jung defines individuation as the process of forming a specialised individual nature, and also as ‘the development of consciousness out of the original state of identity’ (JUNG 7, p. 449). In Jung's view, however, while an adaptive process and ego growth takes place in childhood, individuation proper usually starts only in the second half of life.

At the time of his association with Freud and his interest in psychoanalysis Jung wrote several papers on childhood which can be found in volumes 4 and 17 of the Collected Works. These reflect Jung's interest in, and observations of, real children. At one point Jung underlines the contrast between real children and ‘adultomorphic speculations on the child's mind’.

In a paper on ‘The Oedipal complex’, for instance, he goes as far as mentioning infants and their relation to the breast. He points out the origin of the term ‘mama’ for mother as deriving from the Latin word for ‘breast’ (JUNG 5). The observations on little Anna are collected in ‘Psychic conflicts in a child’ (JUNG 6). This paper is evidence of Jung's ability to observe and to relate to Anna's inner world, perceiving its magical and poetical aspects as we