You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Over the last ten years Margarent Arden has written papers which have enlarged the conceptual framework in which psychoanalysts of the Independent cast of mind may choose to place their thinking about the work they do and the theories that inform it. Her thought and work has been courageous and liberating and, unlike many who might seek to break the paradigm of past thinkers by repudiating previous models, she has in my view always sought to bring about a greater and more apposite model in which integration is the key aim. Her current paper, ‘Freud and Jung’, continues this process. Her earlier papers had looked at the contributions of Gregory Bateson and Matte-Blanco to psychoanalytic theory building; then at the usefulness of David Bohm's theory of implicate order. Her third paper constituted a fresh look at Sylvia Payne's 1935 paper on femininity and the idea of feminine thinking as integrative. While these ideas have been present in the Independent way of thinking since Payne's 1935 paper, Margaret Arden made a further link with Jung's understanding of femininity and its presence in the psychic development of both men and women.
This marks the starting point for the present paper. In this paper, if I understand her rightly, she is looking at the essential duality of mind and critically evaluates theories that have been advanced to describe it, first of all recognizing Freud's insistence on a scientific energic model in contrast to Jung's essentially holistic one. While noting that we can understand why Freud historically built his theory this way, she regrets that this polarity in itself brought about the divided development that might have been avoided had there not been the split between Freud and Jung. However its inevitability then need not pervade our thinking currently. As Margaret Arden says, ‘I wouldn't want Jung without Freud, but I think many of his ideas are valuable, and complementary to Freud's'.
Following from this Margaret Arden explores the notion