Correspondence

From Ean Begg:

I much enjoyed and mostly agreed with Ann Casement's ‘A brief history of Jungian splits in the United Kingdom’, but I should like to make a few corrections based on my own experiences and recollections.

1. The great majority of the members of the Association of Jungian Analysts did not ‘split off from the Society of Analytical Psychology’ for the good reason that they had never been allowed to become members, the Diploma of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich being considered an inadequate qualification.

2. The description of ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ (p. 336) that led me to say (rather less dramatically than reported) ‘This will split A.J.A’ was not motivated by the possibility of my ‘being found equally unacceptable as a Training Analyst’ since I already was one. The split was caused neither by this event nor by ideological differences but by the political skulduggery for which A.J.A was suspended at the 1983 I.A.A.P. Congress in Jerusalem. I knew and know nothing of any attempted reconciliation ‘by offering the Chair to an analyst who would have been acceptable to both sides’. Had such a solution emerged, I am fairly sure that both Dr Duddington and I would have accepted it. I am happy to say that I.G.A.P. and myself now enjoy a harmonious relationship with A.J.A.

3. A few points about Zurich: there was certainly clinical supervision during my period there (1969-72) and plenty of talk about the transference in Case Colloquia, though no lectures on the subject. I was in analysis three times a week throughout my stay, though many of my analysands saw me less frequently.

From Ann Casement:

I thank Ean Begg for responding to my paper on ‘Jungian splits’.

His first point is well made about the wording in the abstract, although this is clarified in the body of the paper.

With reference to point 2, I do say in the paper that the analyst who ‘would have been acceptable to both sides’ himself turned down the offer of the A.J.A Chair. On other issues raised under this point