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This is a volume incorporating papers written by practising analysts and academics from the disciplines of human development, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, theology, political sciences, history of religions, women's studies, poetry and literature. The editors, both well known in the realm of Jungian analytic literature, set as their impossibly global aim, ‘to alleviate the problem of the definition of the self and ‘to create the possibility of fruitful discourse among persons of different beliefs about self. At the end of the book their final chapter offers a model which attempts to encompass and distinguish these different concepts of self.
My overall response to this book is one of bewilderment, with some of the papers almost incomprehensible because of the complex and abstruse language or presentation of ideas. Among the exceptions to this criticism are the papers from the two English contributors, Joseph Redfearn and Michael Fordham, the strength and vitality of whose work stem from its basis in clinical practice.
Redfeam's paper is a slightly modified version of the first chapter from his book My Self, My Many Selves (reviewed in this Journal, January 1987); it is concerned with terminology and with presenting a clear, comparative understanding of the essence of the various definitions of self. His description of the self as an T, which can be taken over by sub-personalities, is referred to by the editors as a self which assumes a temporary organisation of subjective unity. This is contrasted with theories based on the notion of a core self, which gives rise to a continuous sense of individuality or certainty of experience. Incidentally, William Caspary, in his paper on the core self, provides a useful nautical analogy for this construct by referring to the interrelation of helmsman, ship and sea.
Fordham's original integrated self is the prime example of this core self concept, which also pertains to the idea of the self as a central organiser, operating ou