Winnicott Redux: A Reply to Saban

Mark Saban's (2016) spirited affirmation of what he presents as the intrinsic integrity of Jung as a man and a metaphysician is much to be welcomed. Picking up the thread introduced by Morey (2005) he tracks back the origins of analytical psychology to its roots in the distinctive dissociative vision of Fournoy et al; he reaffirms it as a discipline sui generis and protests at the tendency for it to be patronizingly viewed from what has become the more established (‘higher’?) ground of mainstream psychoanalysis. This is the essence of his objection to the stance he reads Winnicott (1964) as adopting in that contentious review of Jung's (1963) ‘autobiography’ Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR). Moreover he certainly implies - ‘it is sometimes hard to differentiate Meredith-Owen from Winnicott’ (Saban 2016, p. 330) - that my recent contributions on this subject suffer from just such a bias.

Saban has at least half a point here, especially if we attend - as Saban certainly does - not only to the explicit content of a passage of writing but also to its tone: rereading my earlier papers I have to acknowledge traces of what had not been evident to me at the time of writing, and that is a whiff or two of what Sedgwick has called ‘damning the half-mad Jung with faint praise’ (, p. 553). This I regret. By way of retrospective explanation I suspect this element crept into my writing because of my own struggle in making the transition from regarding Jung as an - even as the - inspiration of my youth to a later appreciation of him as a less idealized, more human figure rounded out with the inevitable shadow elements. I hesitate to claim this ‘later appreciation’ as more mature because it is only thanks to Saban's critique that I am able now to notice, and that still uncomfortably, these traces of what might be termed ‘adolescent attitude’ in those earlier papers of mine.

However, this element acknowledged, I remain inclined to hold my theoretical ground despite the eloquence and