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In order to be more widely applicable, Jung's theory needs bolstering round issues of basic ego growth. Jungian clinical theory has been in sore need of elucidation. Searles provides this in a fashion most congruent with fundamental tenets of Jungian thought. (p. 156)
That is the central theme of Sedgwick's book. He also considers that psychoanalysis could benefit from Jungian theory and method.
That basic recognition has been a central theme of the London school of analytical psychology, though we have drawn on other psychoanalysts, mainly Klein, Bion and Winnicott. Searles's influence has only been marginal. I can well remember, however, the transitory excitement that his papers produced, partly since he was treating psychotic patients and partly because of his frankness in describing the countertransference and the importance that he gave to it. Indeed he seemed to think that dealing with that could be the most important part of treating a psychotic person at least in some stages of treatment. That was in line with Jung's observation that a therapist could display a psychotic picture to the benefit of his patient, in contrast to Rosen and Sechehaye, who were claiming successes using interpretative methods in that field of operation.
In London analysts have incorporated some of the researches of innovative psychoanalysts and have thereby risked altering their meaning because the incorporations were placed in a different tradition of theoretical background. That does not apply to Sedgwick's work. He exhaustively and carefully compares the two writers' ‘theories’ in chapters on ‘Theoretical Considerations’. ‘Psychopathology’, ‘The Process of Psychotherapy’, ‘The Therapist’. I have put ‘theories’ in quotation marks because the nature of theory in our work is questionable and also because of Jung's claim that he was not interested in theory but in ‘facts’, though what he meant by that can be questioned. None the less an example may be given: when considering Jung's views