Jungian Psychotherapy: A Study in Analytical-Psychology, by Michael Fordham. New York:  John Wiley, 1978,  170 pages.

This slim but comprehensive volume is the first in a Wiley series on Methods in Psychotherapy. Written by the dean of London

Jungians, the theorist who has done the most to extend Jung's theories to early childhood development and one of the editors of Jung's Collected Works, Fordham's study is a distillation of the mature thinking of a highly creative analyst. With his subtitle A Study in Analytical Psychology, Fordham wishes to establish that analytical psychology is “a discipline in its own right”, (p. ix), not restricted to the works of Jung that are at its base.

There are today at least three distinct Jungian treatment approaches. Dr. Fordham represents a branch of the London school of Jungians, a group which attempts in the treatment of patients to combine Jung's archetypal theory, especially his approach to dreams, with Fordham's own maturational schema; many of the forms of psychoanalysis, including couch use and up to five weekly treatment sessions, are used. This approach contrasts with that of the classical Jungian school, which is centered in Zurich, but is well represented in Germany, England, and America also. In the classical system the key element is the archetypal amplification of unconscious material. Its aim is to help the individual place his personal psychology and complexes within a wider historical frame of reference, and to transform his suffering by making a connection with the underlying collective substrate. It also contrasts with the perspective of James Hillman and his followers in archetypal psychology, for whom the empirical side of Jung is primary. The therapeutic task as seen by this group is to work as closely as possible with the exact images the psyche produces. The analyst is to guide the patient more deeply into the image so that he discovers the environment which is a suitable home for that image. Healing is presumed to come from the image's taking root in its own soil, like a plant that flourishes in just the right earth. In