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Jung's Chief Original Contribution to Analytic Practice was his emphasis on the analyst's involvement in the therapeutic situation. Specifically, Jung was prescient in emphasizing the countertransference dimensions in therapy, the inevitability of a psychological intermingling of patient and analyst at an unconscious level, the primary therapeutic importance therefore of “the doctor's personality” and vulnerability, and thus the need for analysts to themselves be analyzed. Jung (1958) stated that transference is “the crux, or at any rate the crucial experience, in any thoroughgoing analysis” (p. vii), and Jung meant by transference a mutual, psychological interpenetration in depth (i.e., transference and countertransference in complex conjunction). In practice, many Jungians maintain this primary focus on the therapeutic dyad. Brief illustrations of all this are not feasible, but longer examples from my own practice can be found in a book I wrote on countertransference (Sedgwick, 1994).
Another significant contribution was Jung's approach to and use of dreams, fantasies, and metaphor. This usage is predicated on his hypothesis of a creative, collective unconscious that could generate symbolic images of either personal or archetypal (nonpersonal) quality. Most Jungians tend to respect these unconscious images in their manifest forms, not boiling them down immediately but approaching them, if possible, without preconception or, failing that, with a positive anticipation of an unfolding meaning. Jung's (1961) assumption, based