Freud and Jung; their Contrasting Psychological types

Some twenty years ago I had the privilege of sitting at a small luncheon next to Adolf Meyer and asked him whether any reasonably impartial psychiatrist had endeavored, in a series of patients who had been the round of psychotherapists, to assess the relative success of treatment by different schools of thought. His answer was yes, and that the most successful seemed at that time to be a woman physician, who was not a disciple of his psychological school, nor indeed a precise adherent of the doctrine whence she started, but, like so many experienced psychiatrists, practiced according to her own psychology.

His broad-minded statement has often come to mind during the years, particularly in respect to the dilemma faced by every rising generation of physicians: Orthodoxy versus independence, or loyalty versus deviation, secession, schism, apostasy. After a period of apprenticeship, say five or ten years, a ripening physician usually separates from his established teacher. To the faithful this appears to be evidence of competitiveness or inability to accept authority, personified by the teacher as spiritual or intellectual father. To the disinterested onlooker this separation appears to be healthy independence and originality. This has been the case of certain students of Freud, notably Jung and Adler. Older people, presumably by unconscious identification of interest, are apt to take the first view, while younger people take the latter. Every generation is necessarily biased. Plainly a cool verdict must be left to posterity, hoping that will be impartial.

For every man fancies a completeness of his doctrine, no matter how much he maintains that it is no system. He is reluctant to accept modifications of his views, however admiringly done, while often ready to make revisions which seem to originate in his own mind, perhaps via cryptamnesia. The majority however, possibly from the human love of a fight, hold that “It is better to advance through a