BLOMEYER, R. (Berlin). ‘Psychische Krankheit—Sinn und Analyse’. (Psychological illness—significance and analysis.)  Analytische Psychologic,  16, 1985.

Sinn is one of those almost untranslatable words: ‘meaning, import, purpose, significance’ approach the meaning. Using nine quotations from the Collected Works and one from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, spanning the years 1912 to 1962, Blomeyer illustrates his thesis that Jung's attitude to the meaning of sickness (of the psyche) changed significantly during his long life. These quotations show a clear shift of emphasis from a clinical viewpoint: ‘We do not cure it [neurosis]—it cures us.’ (Coll. Wks, 10, par. 361) to, in old age, a metaphysical viewpoint: ‘Life is—or has—meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.’ ( Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963, p.  330.)

Blomeyer attacks Jung's view that illness is a means to an end, that is, not misfortune but good fortune, as essentially masochistic, attributing it to Jung's internalised pastor father for whom all things worked for good. Blomeyer's own attitude is clear: illness cannot be denied but is also an expression of some prior condition such as a developmental error. It is a language which should be studied. He is not on the side of those, including Jung, who see it as purposeful, divine intervention, of transcendental significance and a test of faith (cf. Job)—suffering in the service of growth. Therapeutic mediation of meaning may well get in the way of analytic procedure which, when indicated, furthers the deintegrative/integrative processes and hence the individuation process.