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The Rugby conference came into existence in 1982 as a forum where psychotherapy organisations could meet and try to get to grips with their differing conventions of thought and language. Its further purpose is to achieve a loosely unified profession in which the different organisations can work together without losing their distinct philosophies and ways of working. Eventually this should lead to an agreed registry of psychotherapists eligible to practise in Britain and in other EEC countries after 1992. The number of organisations taking part now stands at sixty-five.
Bosanquet has been a member of the Conference since its inception, and her article gives a realistic account of the difficulties so far encountered through the ‘confusion of tongues’. Each group, she notes, has moulded its language into a particular usage which then tends to become static, thereby making for ‘a very effective intellectual tranquilliser’ (Lancelot Whyte, 1978). She also observes that, in the course of the history of the discipline, conflicting theories have proved to be complementary so that a successful doctrine may later find itself going back to its defeated rivals to learn from them.
Although the language of the Society of Analytical Psychology has in some ways altered during the course of time, most noticeably through the influences of Winnicott and Klein, some words like ‘archetype’ are treated as if they constituted Jungian ‘identity badges’. They have a mystique and meaning incomprehensible to those outside. Yet, she points out, there is now a wide understanding of the role of unconscious organisation and potential, whether it is called archetypal patterning, or