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This is a truly excellent book. A little gem in the series of monographs published by Karnac for the Society of Analytical Psychology.
It is written ‘primarily for the benefit of trainees on psychotherapy and psychodynamic counselling courses’. And its guiding principle is taken from Jung: ‘How does one come to terms in practice with the unconscious?’ (Jung 1957, p. 67). But its scope is wider than the apprentice analyst and I learned much from reading it. I had not, for instance, made the connection Clark does between Kalsched's description of the ‘preexisting images’ of figures which can provide a self care system for the very damaged personality, stopping it from falling into permanent psychoses, and Rosenfeld's concept of a type of narcissism which ‘often acts as an essential protector of the self’ (Rosenfeld 1987, p. 105).
The writing is clear and jargon free, the expression is economical and subtle and often profound thoughts are presented modestly almost as asides which nevertheless do their work in the unconscious and return to mind. When discussing ego and self Clark succinctly summarizes contemporary neuroscientific work and writes, ‘Archetypes are the psychic equivalent of what contemporary neuroscientists describe as neural pathways in our brain; we are born with these structures but it depends on our life experiences whether or not they will be activated’ (p. 19). Immediately we are in the territory of the mind/brain distinction and psychosomatic symptoms which Clark brings out, underlining the fact that Jung's archetype theory has at its core the link between the physical and the psychic. Where Clark is also clear and helpful is in bringing out fundamental distinctions between Freud and Jung in their conceptualizations of the psyche. In particular the centrality of the self in the Jungian model is brought out clearly in ways which by juxtaposition and contrast deepen our understanding of the differences between Jung's model and Freud's, who gives more pr