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 publication of this excellent paper in a psychoanalytic journal will especially warm the hearts of those analytical psychologists in London who, for more than twenty years, have been meeting with their psychoanalytic colleagues in an attempt to exchange experiences and debate ideas.
The first part of the paper contains a beautifully lucid exposition of Jung's theory of the archetypes. After outlining the philosophical backcloth to the notion of the archetypes, Samuels traces its development in Jung's thinking, beginning with the discovery of primordial images and guiding the reader through to the archetype-as-such. The next sections examine in some detail the relationship, first between form and image, then between archetype and ideas such as inherited disposition, instinct and homeostasis. The author describes how the archetypal image signifies and evokes the instinct, how it contains the goal of the instinct, and, by extension, its meaning. Throughout, he emphasises the ego's position in relation to archetypal activity and its potential enrichment when the imagery is integrated, or when the environment mediates in such a way that the ego moves towards the depressive position instead of being glued to the positive or negative ends of the spectrum of archetypal possibilities.
Samuels then discusses some critiques of Jung's theories, amplifying those of analytical psychologists and wrestling with the misunderstandings of psychoanalysts, particularly those of Glover which centre on the insistence that archetypal material is a left-over of primary process activity. The author moves on to post-Jungians, whose work seems to have developed in a complementary or compensatory way, with Hillman approaching the personal through the archetypal, and Mary Williams bridging the gap with psychoanalysis by formulating a personal-collective model of the unconscious. Intriguing parallels with ethology, biology, neurology and structuralism, all of which in some ways tie in with his