Editorial: History, Science and Subjectivity

This year, two important new books on Jung and his psychological project have been published. Sonu Shamdasani's Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology. The Dream of a Science was reviewed in the September issue and Deirdre Bair's Jung: A Biography in this issue of this journal.

Both of these books, as well as the papers in these two issues rely on a range of different kinds of supporting evidence for the themes they explore. Historical and biographical studies, such as the books reviewed, sometimes rely on evidence which consists of detailed and thorough research into archives which provide us with new information about Jung and those who developed his ideas; in other cases it takes the form of a meticulous study of the evolution of the theories themselves in their historical and cultural context. Both of these approaches provide new and invaluable insights in relation to the emergence of analytical psychology and the personal, cultural and intellectual influences which shaped its early development.

However, analytical psychology is above all a clinical field and, as practitioners, we have a great responsibility to offer the most effective therapeutic approach we can to our patients. Our analytic theory and practice must always be open to the challenge of new discoveries from other scientific and clinical disciplines which can enable us to refine our understanding of the human psyche. The explosion of new information from neuroscience, developmental psychology, complexity and attachment theories plays an increasing role in the development of new models of the mind and their implications for clinical practice. This has been a particular focus for all five issues of the Journal this year, with many of the papers in these two issues continuing to explore themes from the last conference, ‘Science and the Symbolic World’. Ted Hughes was prescient in his belief that science would someday begin to catch up with Jung (Middlebrook, D. (2003). Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a