Discussion of Zinkin's Paper ‘Your Self: Did You Find it or did You Make It?’

Editor's Note: Zinkin's paper was written for a meeting of the monthly ‘analytic group’ open to all members and trainees of the Society of Analytical Psychology in November 1991. As the paper was pre-circulated, Zinkin made only a brief introduction before opening the meeting for discussion. This discussion was tape-recorded and this edited transcript1 provides the opportunity to hear how he responded to questions and challenges from other points of view and clarified points in a way that he might have done had he revised the paper for publication. The constructivist view of the self that Zinkin proposed in the paper was controversial and provocative at the time, possibly deliberately so, as it succeeded in encouraging a lively debate in which many opposing views of the self were expressed. It is this that makes this discussion so worthwhile, since in it can be heard many of the issues about the nature of the (Jungian) self that are still being debated today.

The meeting was chaired and introduced by Christopher Perry who invited Louis Zinkin to begin.