Premium
The return of the prodigal: the emergence of Jungian themes in post‐Freudian thought
Author(s) -
Stephens Barbara D
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/1465-5922.00084
Subject(s) - freudian slip , psychoanalytic theory , psyche , subject (documents) , psychoanalysis , epistemology , transformative learning , mythology , countertransference , agency (philosophy) , philosophy , psychology , theology , library science , computer science , pedagogy
Stories about reality and the nature of truth constitute the essence of psychological theory. This paper is an overview of the various Jungian‐sounding ‘storylines’ that have slowly been woven into the fabric of Freudian theory, that is, those broad ranges of therapeutic approaches labelled ‘psychoanalytic’. These include: hegemony of subjective experience; centrality of the Subject; the ineffable nature of the Subject and its agency; the role of countertransference as primary data in analysis; autonomous structures in the psyche; the nature and function of symbols; desire and its purposiveness; the nature and transformative aspects of primitive affective states. Speculation on the reasons for this occurrence is not considered as merely a function of enlightened theoretical or fraternal interchange, but of an archetypal dynamic of exclusion and reconciliation inherent in the nature of theory building and illustrated by the biblical myth of the prodigal.