What Do I Mean By Identity?

Are we analysts to be judged by tests of cost efficiency, by statistical comparisons between different methods of psychotherapy, the criteria being medical and social? Or, alternatively, are we going to maintain that ours is a method which has no aim other than to embark on a long journey designed primarily to link the past with the present, in order to assist the unfolding and realization of the individual's psychic potential? It is a journey moreover that involves frustrations and will be costly. However, the question whether, or to what extent, the journey with its hardships also relieves suffering, particularly the suffering that led the patient to come to analysis, remains unanswered.

These are considerations and dilemmas which become urgent in conditions of financial astringency and I shall not go further into the situation than to point out that the question of our identity as analysts living in the post-Jungian era is not being raised in a social and political vacuum or as a theoretical subject of no great consequence to the art and craft of private analytical practice. It should be said that I am viewing the situation from Berlin where I have been practising for the last eight years, after having practised in London for thirty-five. In a previous paper I compared the conditions of practice and training. There I was able to show that in the two countries the administrative and socio-cultural frame exert a marked influence. Recently the British Confederation of Psychotherapists has drawn up a Register which includes ‘Analysts (Jungian)’ and ‘Child Analysts (Jungian)’. This should be reassuring to the public and practitioners alike, and leaves analysts free to get on with the essential task of defining their Post-Jungian identity. A big job, to which this paper is meant as a small contribution.

Before setting out we note that Jung's definition of identity was preceded by adjectives such as ‘original’ or ‘unconscious’ and meant virtually the same as participation