“The psyche consists essentially of images.” (Jung, 1926, CW 8, p.325) / “A psychic entity can be a conscious content, that is it can be represented, only if it has the quality of an image.” (Jung, 1926, CW 8, p.322) / Central to all the basic functions of the personality is the process of mental imaging. Without imaging, self-consciousness, speaking, writing, remembering, dreaming, art, culture - essentially what we call the human condition - would be impossible. Depth psychology developed out of the struggle to understand the process of imaging (e.g. dreams, associations, memories, and fantasies) and the role it plays in personality formation and the development of psychopathology. In attempting to account for the structuring of mental images and their effect on the personality, both Freud and Jung opted for some form of “universal.” Freud posited the existence of phylogenetic “schemata,” the Oedipus complex and its world of desire, whereas Jung opted for “archetypes.” While both subscribe to universals, the difference between the two theories resides in the particular originary principle each adopted. Where Freud initiates his theoretical perspective by postulating a world of desire (eros) prior to any kind of experience, Jung's originary principle is the world of images. Image is the world in which experience unfolds. Image constitutes experience. Image is psyche. For Jung the world of psychic reality is not a world of things. Neither is it a world of being. It is a world of image-as-such.

We often employ symbolic thinking in our quest to represent some of the mystery and power that we feel in the world around us. Such symbol-making can be unconscious as well as conscious, and finds especially congenial vehicles for its expression and artistic elaboration in dreams, myths, and storytelling. Hence it is no surprise that literature in general, and in particular those literary genres that are closest to the fantasy structures of myths and dreams - that is, folktale and epic - yield themselves easily and successfully to symbolic readings. Psychology and anthropology (with its offshoot in folklore) are the two disciplines that have most systematically offered us both theories and methodologies for making sense of the elaborate symbol systems that individuals and societies employ for their visions of what is most vital in life. I hope to demonstrate how the archetypal theory of Jungian psychology, supported with insights derived from folklore and anthropology, can illuminate a significant aspect of one of the cornerstones of the Western literary tradition, Homer's Odyssey. Much of the distinctive complexity of this epic poem is generated by the moral ambiguity of its hero, Odysseus, commonly acknowledged by critics but never fully explained. I believe that this quality in the hero strikes us and disturbs us deeply because it draws its energy from a major universal archetype, that of the Trickster.

Jung noted that for centuries the symbols, rituals, and dogmas of religions, east and west, gathered the psychic energy of individuals and nations alike into traditions that bore witness to life's meaning and acted as underground springs nourishing different civilizations. What religious symbols symbolize, however, is the God who escapes human definitions. With the shock of the world wars and brutal inhumanity, for many people in the twentieth century, the collective containers of religious symbolism no longer channeled their psychic energy. As a result, many felt uprooted from religious traditions and the symbolic life that put them in daily touch with a sense of transcendent meaning at the center of life. Now in the opening years of the twenty-first century religion again takes a dominant place in the clash of civilizations, thus underlining Jung's perception of the inescapable importance of religious experience that channels psychic energy into individual and communal forms. Called or not, Jung holds, God will be present, and if not God, then what we substitute in that central place. Afraid of becoming unanchored, we create religious, political, and sexual fundamentalisms to keep us close to the reality the religious symbols once conveyed, but at the price of persecuting those who disagree with us as. Or we can just drift far away from the life-giving waters of religious experience, confined to humdrum carrying on, without joy or purpose.

Jung's writings are peppered by seemingly throwaway comments and assertions that have contributed to Jungian analysis earning the reputation of being a psychodynamic therapy that does not concern itself much with the transference. For example: “I personally am always glad when there is only a mild transference or when it is practically unnoticeable.” (CW 16, pp. 172-173) / When taken out of context, such statements can easily undermine the strength of an arc of development in Jung's treatment of the transference which spans fifty years. Already in 1913, alluding to the transference, Jung wrote: “Thanks to his personal feeling, Freud was able to discover wherein lay the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis.” (CW 4, p. 190) / And toward the end of his life he is quite adamant when he states: “The main problem of medical psychotherapy is the transference. In this matter Freud and I were in complete agreement.” (Jung 1963, p. 203) / Where Jung and Freud were very much in disagreement was in their views on countertransference, which Freud regarded as an unwelcome interference in the analyst's receptivity to communications from the patient. This interference occurred when the patient activated unconscious conflicts in the analyst which had the effect of making the analyst want to counter the patient, in the sense of warding the patient off. Freud's approach was to insist on the analyst recognizing and overcoming countertransference, a conviction which led him to apologize to his analysand, Ferenczi, for his failure to suppress countertransference intrusions (Freud, 1910).

Jung sometimes described the relationship between the ego and the unconscious as a power struggle (CW 9.i, paras. 522-523; CW 7, paras. 342 and 381). In this struggle, when an unconscious complex takes over the ego, there is “possession” (see Sandner and Beebe, 1984, p. 310; CW 7, p. 224). When the ego takes over from the unconscious certain attributes that belong to the Self, there is “inflation” (CW 7, pp. 228-229). Jung compared the progressive transformation of this power struggle in the individuation process to a sequence of political regimes. He calls the initial unconscious unity of the psyche a “tyranny of the unconscious.” The situation in which the ego is predominant he compares to “a tyrannical one-party system.” And when the ego and the unconscious “negotiate” on the basis of “equal rights,” the relation resembles a “parliamentary democracy” (CW 18, p. 621). This apt political metaphor for the individuation process points to a larger issue, the contribution of Jungian psychology to the study of politics. This chapter explores three topics: (1) the relationship between “the political development and the psychological development of the person” (Samuels, 1993, p. 4); (2) the relationship between the psychological development of the person and democracy (Odajnyk, 1976, pp. 182-187); and (3) the prospects for Jungian psychopolitical analysis. The writings on the first two topics fall into two categories. The first revolves around Jung's own political thought, including several of Jung's writings that deal directly with politics: Essays on Contemporary Events, The Undiscovered Self.

“The present day shows with appalling clarity how little able people are to let the other man's argument count, although this capacity is a fundamental and indispensable condition for any human community. Everyone who proposes to come to terms with himself must reckon with this basic problem. For, to the degree that he does not admit the validity of the other person, he denies the “other” within himself the right to exist - and vice versa. The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity.” (CW 16) “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.” (W. Blake, 1790) / When Polly Young-Eisendrath first asked me, sometime in 1995, to write this essay on the interface between analytical psychology and other psychoanalytic schools, it sounded like a daunting task and I doubted that I was qualified to undertake it. I equivocated, asking her what exactly she meant by “other psychoanalytic schools.” “Oh, you know,” she replied with an ambiguous smile, “hermeneutical approaches, object-relations theory, interpersonal psychology, the various 'self'-psychologies, Kleinian theory, and your personal favorite, drive theory.” I felt an immediate sense of relief, born of a deep inner certitude that I would be utterly incapable of writing such an essay. Well, to be honest, Polly didn't actually say “and your personal favorite,” but it's the sort of thing she might have said. We had been discussing such matters for ten years (1985-1995) in a weekly study group of psychologists and psychiatrists.

In the following pages, three experienced and accomplished Jungian analysts comment on where they would focus, what they would do, and what they imagine to be the course of treatment for “Joan.” Joan is a pseudonym for a patient whose printed case material each analyst received and read closely before writing a response. Each received the same case report, summarized from the actual records of a forty-four-year-old female patient at the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders, a private hospital in the Philadelphia area. Renfrew generously made available this material, which had previously been used in the public domain at a national conference on eating disorders. Each analyst was asked to see things primarily from the perspective of her or his “school,” each one being a prominent representative of that approach. Dr. Beebe writes from the classical approach, Dr. McNeely from the archetypal, and Dr. Gordon from the developmental. The analysts did not consult with each other on the case. As you read their responses, you may note how they highlight the model sketched out by Andrew Samuels in the Chapter 1 in which he weighs the importance of the archetype, Self, and the development of personality as well as the clinical issues of the transferential field, symbolic experience of Self, and the phenomenology of imagery for each of the Jungian schools. What he has sketched as an interpretive model for the three schools of analytical psychology (see chapter 1, pp. 8-11) works very well in understanding the interpretations of these authors.

In university settings, it is my habit to begin lectures on analytical psychology, especially to those not taking degrees in Jungian psychology, by asking those present to do a simple association exercise to the word “Jung.” I ask them to record the first three things that come to mind. From the (by now) 900+ responses, I have found that the most frequently cited theme, words, concepts, or images have (in order) to do with (a) Freud, (b) psychoanalysis, and (c) the Freud-Jung split. The next most frequently cited association concerns (d) Jung's anti-Semitism and alleged Nazi sympathies. Other matters raised include (e) archetypes, (f) mysticism/philosophy/religion, and (g) animus and anima. Obviously, this is not properly empirical research. But if we “associate to” the associations, we can see that there is a lingering doubt about the intellectual, scholarly, and ethical viability of taking an interest in Jung. Even so, in these pages, I shall argue that there is more to the question of Jung and Freud's psychoanalysis than the oft-repeated story of two wrestling men. Over the past decade, there has been increasing clinical and academic interest in analytical psychology in non-Jungian circles, in spite of the fact that its core texts are not effectively represented on official reading lists and curriculum descriptions. Outside of this interest, though, Jung is mentioned primarily as an important schismatic in the history of psychoanalysis and not as a contributor worthy of sustained and systematic study in his own right.

For Jung, the psyche was a many-splendored thing: fluid, multi-dimensional, alive, and capable of creative development. Having been Assistant Director of a psychiatric hospital, Jung was no stranger to disease, psychosis, and inertia. But he possessed a love for the orderly chaos of the psyche and a trust in its integrity, which both informed his conception of it, and shaped his psychoanalytic vision. This chapter explores Jung's major discoveries, the bedrock upon which his psychological vision rests and the ideas which continue to inform contemporary thought and practice: the prospective, emergent nature of psychological process; the subjective, individual path to objective awareness; and the creative use of imagination and unconscious material. Although Jung is infamous for having drawn on esoteric sources such as alchemy, actually he was prescient in terms of his post-modern view of the psyche. Disturbed by the trend in which the scientific knowledge of matter was outstripping knowledge of the psyche, Jung noted that just as chemistry and astronomy had split off from their origins in alchemy and astrology, modern science was distancing itself from the study and understanding of the psychological universe. He foresaw the enormity of the discrepancy we face now: while cracking the genetic code and creating biological life we remain virtually ignorant about psychological life and our consequent ethical imperatives. Jung was drawn to symbol systems like astrology and alchemy because they were oriented toward a synthetic understanding of matter and psyche.

“D'où venons-nous / Que sommes-nous / Où allons-nous” (Gauguin, 1897) / The first literary criticism written from a psychoanalytic perspective appeared in 1907, just over one hundred years ago. Very few people even noticed the centenary. Psychoanalytic criticism is no longer as topical as it was in the 1950s or 1960s. Many think that it has run its course; that all that can and needs to be said from such a perspective has already been said. Other more recent approaches have nudged it to the margins of debate. The ninth volume of the recent Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, which covers 'Twentieth-Century Historical, Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives' (Knellwolf and Norris, 2007) accords only one chapter to 'Psychoanalytic Approaches' - one out of thirty chapters, of which only a few pages deal with Jungian criticism and Hillman is not even mentioned. And this more or less accurately reflects the place of Jungian criticism in the broader history of the discipline. In this chapter I want to look at some possible reasons why Jungian criticism lost its place in literary and critical debate. I also want to outline some reasons for thinking that it was at one stage ahead of its time, and to ponder on issues that might need attention if it is ever to take a more prominent place in broader critical debate. There had been both biographical and even psychological studies of literary texts before 1907, but most of these are better described as pathographical studies, that is, they were primarily concerned with social and moral categories (e.g. degeneracy) rather than psychological processes per se (Wright, 1984, pp. 38-39). Freud's (1907) “Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's 'Gradiva'” which consists of an analysis of a work by a minor German novelist, marks the first time that a literary text was examined with the objective of exploring its specifically psychological implications.

How long ago was 1964? A long time ago, some would say. The Beatles had just arrived in America, the World Trade Center design was underway, and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to his eventual 27-year imprisonment. The world of 1964 seems very distant from the world of today.

In that year, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act became law in the United States, outlawing discrimination in employment in any business on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Black or white, male or female, the gateway to opportunity opened.

Yet, stunning levels of segregation still exist in the workplace (Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006). In the United States, male–female and black–white segregation lessened between 1966 and 1980, but after 1980, only male–female segregation continued to significantly decline. Black–white segregation has essentially remained the same since 1980, and may have worsened in some sectors since 1995.

In fact, in order for sex-neutral employment distribution (i.e., true desegregation) to exist, more than half of all workers would have to switch jobs; for race-neutral (black–white) employment distribution to exist, more than half of all African-Americans would need to switch jobs (Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006). Both race and gender segregation remains significant, more than 30 years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This puzzling state of affairs can be explained, we propose, by distinguishing between the gateway to opportunity and diversity in the workplace, and the pathway to success and effectiveness in the workplace.