Symposium Concepts of the Self: The Self or The Self?

In The Subject as given in the title, there are implicit ideas which it is hoped to make explicit. There are emotions and thoughts, as it were heat and light; they are not mutually exclusive. For example, an open fire gives both; we can sit by the fire and talk. This symposium has been designed as a contribution from a particular angle to the major and dual theme: the nature of the self and concepts of it exercise analytical psychologists of all kinds and an increasing number of psychoanalysts. The flow of papers in al] the relevant professional journals and the many books on the overall subject of the self testify to how much attention analysts of all persuasions and in every Society or institute are giving to it. I expect most of us find ourselves needing to reflect about the nature as well as the dynamics of what goes on, recorded or unrecorded, in our consulting rooms, and to find out which concepts about it suit us best when what is happening is anything to do with the self. We do not, most of us, try our hand at publishing our reflections, tending to wait cautiously in the wings while others take the centre of the stage. So this symposium brings together some observations from analysts who have written widely, deeply, and over the years, with others who are as yet less well known in the international field. They agreed to write to the title they were offered, with sub-titles if they wished, and to restrict the length of their contributions.

The question of whether or not a journal capitalises the first letter of the word ‘self’ has up to now been tackled differently in the various publications. The Cahiers de Psychologic Jungienne in its issue devoted to the subject (No. 39, 1983) did not capitalise and did not consult its contributors. Spring, in the same year, used the capital‘S’, also without consultation. Chiron, of which the first number appeared in 1984, when the controversy had got going—in the pages of this Journal—enunciated its policy as b