Bridging worlds: participatory thinking in Jungian context

Abstract

Introducing the 'participatory' paradigm associated with the work of transpersonalists Richard Tarnas and Jorge Ferrer, the author outlines an approach to Jung's archetypal thinking that might offer a more adequate basis in which to ground a non-reductive approach to practice. In order to demonstrate the relevance of this outlook at the present time, the author begins by examining recent debates concerning the nature of 'truth' in the clinical setting. Reflecting on the difficulties analysts face in attempting to maintain professional authority without falling into an implicit authoritarianism, it is argued that any approach to therapy seeking to orient itself towards 'the unconscious' must posit the challenges of pluralism as a central concern for practice. With reference to the relationship between analytical psychology and the psychoanalytic mainstream, attention is drawn to the theoretical problems raised by the relational commitment to constructivist epistemologies, and a consequent tendency towards biological reductionism. Turning to the Jungian literature, similar tensions are observed at play in the present state of analytical psychology. Drawing attention to the process-oriented qualities of Jung's work, it is suggested that the speculative nature of Jung's psychology offers a more adequate basis for contemporary practice than might be assumed.

Spirituality and the challenge of clinical pluralism: Participatory thinking in psychotherapeutic context.

“…A participatory reading of Jung’s archetypal theory thus offers a significant and largely unrecognized basis from which to think about the generation of clinical meaning. Of the different approaches to Jung’s work identified by Samuels (1985), it is the archetypal school founded by James Hillman that can be considered most closely aligned with a participatory sensibility (see Brown, in press). However, in the degree to which the archetypal school has emphasized the phenomenal (the archetypal image) to the extent of rejecting the noumenal (the archetype itself) altogether, archetypal thinking has been made subject to the same kind of criticism aimed at those relationalists argued to lean too heavily on postmodern ideals—with the refusal of a metaphysics, approaches of this nature lack a theoretically satisfying ground in which to anchor meaning (see also Brown, 2014).…”