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This book is to be commended for its openness and accessibility: anyone wishing to know, as opposed to imagine, how analysts from the Jungian section of the British Association of Psychotherapy work, what theories inform their practice, how practice, theory, analyst and patient evolve and mutually influence one another, and what some of the preoccupying questions of the zeitgeist are for the profession as a whole, would do well to read it.
Intended as the clinical counterpart to the largely theoretical Jungian Thought in the Modern World , also edited by Christopher and Solomon, the book is laid out clearly in four parts. Part I comprises an extensive introduction by the editors, including an exposition of the aims and ethics of such a volume, touching upon the immense difficulties, as well as the cogently argued necessity of publishing such detailed clinical work, always with the patient's consent, a theme returned to in detail in Part IV.
The second and third parts represent the clinical heart of the book, as one is taken inside the consulting room via the mind of the clinician. Part II consists of four qualifying papers for associate membership and Part III of six further papers by more experienced analysts illustrating the trials and tribulations of longer term analytic work. The book concludes with a series of chapters addressing, again in a very personal, heartfelt and soul searching way, contemporary, nonetheless archetypal, ethical issues such as racism, analytic dependency, the effects of asking permission to publish clinical material, supervision in whatever form it takes, retirement, and the clinical paradigms which underpin our work, consciously or unconsciously.
A selection of chapter headings does much to convey a flavour of the book. ‘An Oedipal struggle towards individuation’, ‘The search for emotional truth in a perverse scenario dominated by the trickster’, ‘The difficulties inherent in having your own mind’, ‘Excretions and interpretations: some thou