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Künkel was a German physician who, following his experiences in World War I,
including the loss of a hand, took to psychoanalysis. He became part of Adler's circle, but later became independent. He corresponded with Jung, in whose Collected Works there are three passing references to him. Sanford was his patient for three years before Künkel died in 1956. Künkel has been out of print, at least in the English language, for some years and the impetus for producing this selection was to disseminate his ideas more widely.
Sanford's claim is that, apart from offering an attractive and colourful terminology, Künkel offers a corrective to Jung's psychology which he claims ‘allows the ego to cheat’ and indeed makes it into a better cheat in that it allows the patient to retain his ‘egocentricity’ while sporting the lineaments of individuation. Sanford also feels that a growing interest in religion at least in the United States suggests a readiness in the public for the sort of religious dimension that Künkel offers.
Sanford has edited and collated two of Künkel's books (How Character Develops and In Search of Maturity , cutting out material that would date his writings. There are also a general introduction (including a section that relates Künkel to Jung), linking passages to the main sections of the book and a final section of essays by Sanford entitled ‘Künkel's work and contemporary issues in psychology and religion’. Künkel's writing seems to be pitched at a lay audience that is being invited to think about itself and its crises more adventurously and creatively. Sanford's final section obviously has in mind an audience that is thoroughly familiar with Jung's works.
Künkel presents the now familiar notion of a life lived from an impoverished ‘egocentric’ standpoint rather than one lived from that of the ‘real self’. He sees ‘egocentricity’ as deriving from a failure of the environment to meet the developing infant appropriately, so that, instead of a ‘we-experience’ de