Jung's recalcitrant fourth comes in from a place of opposition, demanding that what has been neglected be considered. It is in the spirit of the fourth that the author examines the use of Ubuntu in Jungian literature, cautioning against a decontextualized appropriation of the notion that overlooks its diverse interpretations and usages, particularly in terms of its role in shaping the new South Africa. The author notes a tendency among Jungian scholars to view Ubuntu as the exotic Other, inadvertently perpetuating the same colonial mindset that Jung held towards non-European cultures. Moreover, she suggests that the Jungian viewpoint on Ubuntu has been heavily influenced by Desmond Tutu's Christianized version of the notion, and that this assimilation holds significant implications. As chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the archbishop employed the idea of Ubuntu in the service of nation building. Ubuntu was part of a political strategy designed to reconcile the South African people, whilst also silencing critics of a process that failed to fully address structural injustices. Now assimilated into Jungian literature, this version of Ubuntu took on aspects of a punitive cultural superego, thereby undermining its original appeal as an autochthonous form of humanism invoked to liberate the oppressed.

"God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere." Jung repeats this ancient saying often when describing the Self. This article frames the saying as a type of koan and uses Zen Buddhism's conception of the Buddha-nature to unlock the psychological meaning of Jung's saying and to suggest new perspectives on Jung's notion of the Self. Parallels between Jung's notion of the Self and Zen's Buddha-nature emerge with particular clarity in Mysterium Coniunctionis in connection with Jung's discussion of the alchemical unus mundus and caelum. The essay further delves into the relationship between Zen teachings on enlightenment and Jung's notion of individuation and explores how these insights can inform Jungian theory and practice. By addressing the implications of Zen concepts for understanding the Self, the essay ultimately seeks to illuminate the shared spiritual dimensions of Jungian psychology and Zen Buddhism and to provide new perspectives on both.

During December 1915, C. G. Jung recorded a series of fantasy dialogues in The Black Books with a female shade who instructed him to seek "community with the dead" (2020, Vol. 5, p. 255). The female shade also taught Jung a prayer for the redemption of the dead and she indicated the defining tasks of the second half of Jung's life-namely, the creation of Liber Novus, or The Red Book, and the foundation of the community of analytical psychology. In this paper, the author explores the significance of these key passages in the context of Jung's emerging "theology of the dead", as documented in the initial volumes of The Black Books (Shamdasani, 2024, p. 118). She considers Jung's interrogation of his own dream history as part of this creative writing process, including several significant dreams about the dead, and she explores the extent to which Jung regarded one of these dreams as prompting him to start an extra-marital relationship with Toni Wolff.

The construct of mentalization has a growing resonance in the theoretical and clinical spheres across different clinical and psychotherapeutic approaches, including that of analytical psychology. The aim of this paper is to relate the Reflective Function to the concept of Compensation, as it was re-invented by Jung (1914). Beginning with the original reading proposed by Jung in his work about the "interpretation of Daniel's interpretation" of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the authors go so far as to propose that the interpretation of dreams can be a method for critical confrontation with oneself. In this perspective, the reflective function and the compensation principle can be considered as promoters of a critical (re)view of one's own assumptions/attitudes through confrontation with other points of view. This critical (re)view must be conducted first of all in the interior life of the person. In clinical practice, reflective function and the concept of compensation serve as essential tools for seeing differently and reshaping one's understanding of self and others. A brief "modern" clinical case is provided to illustrate the practical application and therapeutic value of this approach.

A core group of mainly Jungian analysts have contributed to an ongoing archetype debate in the Journal of Analytical Psychology since the 1990s. Most of the participants have provided some sort of scientific definition for Jung's archetype-as-such. However, to view the archetype as a property of the dynamic inherent in complex formation, as in Saunders & Skar (2001), is quite different from what others have proposed. This has led to misunderstandings of our theory. The current paper examines some of these misunderstandings alongside other issues that have arisen in the debate. For example, some writers have suggested that we could get rid of the term archetype altogether and still retain the important aspects of Jung's psychology. While this may be true, for some Jungians archetypes may serve symbolically as progenitor gods acting within a system that is a good substitute for traditional religions. Others may simply consider the term useful for their clinical work. A key feature of Saunders and Skar's theory is that it requires no progenitor archetypes for complexes to form. It permits us to keep the concept of the archetype firmly within the Jungian canon while at the same time respecting the findings of modern science.

In this paper, I would like to highlight how the view of the psyche as a network of complexes is central to understanding how trauma works and its treatment from a Jungian perspective. Despite Jung's theory of complexes and his study of the splitting processes of the psyche being at the very core of his understanding of psychic functioning, analytical psychology has struggled to find its proper place in the international debate on trauma. The Word Association Tests (WAT) opened the way to Jung's first insights on the complex psyche, i.e., a psyche made up of complexes. Currently, the complex is a cornerstone concept in analytical psychology; it is understood as the smallest functional unit of the psychic structure and can become autonomous when there is "a so-called trauma, an emotional shock or some such thing, that splits off a bit of the psyche" (Jung, 1934, para. 204). The work of Donald Kalsched on trauma and complexes has helped to further the debate on the role of the theory of complexes in Jungian analysis and practice. A clinical case is presented to highlight the functioning of the psyche when facing trauma and how analysis can work with split-off complexes throughout a whole analytic journey. Furthermore, similarities between the concepts of complexes-as seen in current analytical psychology-and emotional schemas as conceptualized by the Freudian analyst Wilma Bucci (2009) are highlighted.

Emotions are evident in Jung's work with regard to feeling-toned complexes and the feeling function in psychological types as well as in the clinical processes of therapeutic change and transformation. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is an empirically-grounded theory that involves a set of abilities for working with emotions, allowing the patient to unlock the inherent wisdom and meaning that emotions convey. EI can be embedded in analytical psychology and other dynamic-oriented therapies as an approach for engaging with emotionally charged material. The four EI abilities include the perception, facilitation, understanding and management of emotions. The emotion-management ability is particularly necessary during a client's confrontations with the unconscious. The case of a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder in Jungian psychotherapy is examined from an EI perspective. A series of active imagination activities in the clinical encounter is presented, outlining the transformation of imagery that accompanies the individuation process. The case illustrates the use of EI strategies to attenuate the over-powering effect of complexes in the service of building ego strength. There is also emphasis on the importance of transference and the therapeutic container in this process of building EI capacity.

While C. G. Jung largely eschewed the term "narcissism" following his split with Freud, his writings describe in archetypal language conditions that closely resemble narcissistic disorders. One such archetype, the puer æternus, appears phenomenologically similar to clinical descriptions of Heinz Kohut, in particular his case of "Mr. Z", and what has been termed elsewhere as hyper-vigilant (as opposed to oblivious) narcissism. While narcissism as a concept has been addressed at length in post-Jungian literature, this paper uses Kohut's case as a starting point to explore the corresponding alchemical process of life-renewal, the ambivalence of regression, and the dangers of the lesser coniunctio, or the archetypal basis of the weak ego's desire for incest with the collective unconscious in the form of the Great/Terrible Mother. It also addresses the clinical relevance of this topic when working with the individual who fits Kohut's description of Tragic Man, or Jung's puer æternus.

This author read W. R. Bion's (1974) unpublished, personally annotated copy of C. G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR). The interest here is to conjoin Bion's reading of Jung with his own contemporaneous work. After setting out a context for Jung and Bion's meeting one another in 1935, we look at Bion's subsequent psychoanalytic development over the decades until 1974, particularly in the area of clinical intuition. The author takes up Bion's clinical seminars in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in 1974. He maintains that direct correlations can be made between Bion's marginal comments in MDR and material that he directly lectured on in his 1974 clinical seminars. Bion's interest here centred on the development of clinical intuition, dreams and precocious intellectual development. Even though he never mentioned Jung by name in 1974, it seems that Jung was clearly to the back of his mind as he lectured to his Brazilian colleagues in 1974. The fields of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology can be further enhanced by exploring how Bion and Jung's ideas converge as well as diverge.

This paper explores the moment of change in analysis I call "the still point" through consideration of the phenomenology of when that which is known is sacrificed and the new has not yet appeared. The change process is understood as inherently relational where transformation comes about when the analyst is as vulnerable and open as the patient. Ghent's work on surrender, Stern's on moments of meeting, Jung's on transformation in the I Ching, and Strachey's work on the mutative interpretation are each considered. The still point is rooted in the collective unconscious, which provides the underlying energy for the interpersonal dimension of change in analysis. The image of the pendulum swinging to an undetectable stillness in the instant before it changes direction is used to illustrate the still point.

In this lecture, I wish to speak about the faithless analyst. This is an analyst without fixed religious notions, without specific preferences with regard to religious faith and practice, without religious commitments or attachments of the kind that would influence the course of the analysis. Is this possible? Analysts like everyone else grow up in specific cultures that are deeply entangled with religious traditions. Can analysts shed this formation when they enter the consulting room? Should they? Values come with religious faith and practice. Should the analyst shed such religiously based values for the sake of absolute neutrality? I want to think about such faithlessness as an impossible ideal for analytical practice and how to work with failures to remain faithless in the presence of different faiths or the absence of faith among patients.

This article explores the concept of gender expansiveness. This term refers to a person's self-identifying as gender fluid, genderqueer, transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, or gender nonconforming. Young people, including older children and adolescents, increasingly are experimenting with crossing gender lines. This trend can be understood as a sociocultural process for humanizing more terrifying archetypal forms of gender diversity. Using Henderson's (1988) concept of the cultural unconscious, the author posits that current social developments among youth are attempting to bring gender expansiveness more into collective consciousness. This issue has occasioned a strong counterreaction with panicked appeals to upholding traditional gender norms and needing restrictions on gender-affirming care. Examples from myth, literature and clinical practice help to contextualize the intense emotions aroused by gender diversity. A case example shows how gender fantasies are worked through within an empathic analytic relationship. The author makes an appeal for updating and humanizing older psychological theories that have relied heavily on splits, polarities, and oppositions, all of which are more characteristic of a 20 century way of thinking about the psyche. A potential approach to incorporate gender expansiveness is through a model of the psyche as a mosaic.

The realization of the Self, although the absolute basis of Jungian psychology, has internal inconsistencies, is difficult to understand, and offers a promise of realization that cannot be fulfilled. This has weakened it, and its existence is now one of speculation. If this is the case, what is to be done with it in the consulting room? How should it be introduced and accounted for, if at all? This paper suggests some alternatives but concludes that the myth of the Self has gravitas in other established traditions, and it is those that offer a more coherent framework for the emergence of the Self.

Each collective trauma holds its own particularities and forms of horror. When the violence is exerted by the government responsible for the care of the population it is termed state terrorism. The traumatic experience and its subsequent negation create a profound dissociation between two narratives: the explicit, which conceals the true facts, and the implicit, which remains unconscious and unbridgeable. In the gap between the two, life becomes suspended. From a Jungian perspective, this can be understood as the interruption of the process of translation and integration (terms that I will explore in some depth) from implicit sensory phenomena to an explicit representational narrative. This profoundly affects the development of the ego-self axis. In turn, it creates a special challenge for analytic technique that calls for new ways of listening to, and meeting the patient in, that non-verbal, unrepresented territory. Drawing upon clinical material, an embodied perspective of Jungian clinical work is offered to show how the inclusion of the body of patient and analyst enables access to the non-represented, though implicitly encoded, traumatic affective memories stored in the somatic unconscious.

The symbolic nature of taboo is examined as a container that differentiates developmental stages between the social values order/disorder through a ritual, liminal process of separating order as clean/blessed/safety and disorder as polluted/disassociated/risky. Unconscious/conscious taboos embody that perilous journey across margins in rites of passage and their emotional value and intensity in the form of symptomology varies cross-culturally. Two clinical cases are presented to illustrate the influence of taboo on obsessive compulsions and anorexia nervosa. Particular attention is given as to whether dirt as disorder/rubbish can be recycled at the margins between safety and risk and value redistributed to the intrapsychic and psychosocial anomalous bits and pieces that are discarded as rubbish.

One of Jung's most significant contributions concerns the mysterious, inexplicable and always out-of-reach nature of the self. In this paper, I will focus on the borders of the self and their nature, location and dynamics of maintenance and change in geographically, historically, and culturally situated subjects. Reflecting on the refugee experience, I intend to gain more insights into our psychic functioning and the dynamics of the self in relation to itself, the other and groups. The experiences of some refugees, marked bysignificant trauma and migration, shed light on how the boundaries of the self are frequently contested and perpetually negotiated with others, and how our subjectivity is shaped by ongoing dynamics of occupation, dispute and/or negotiation, conducted at various levels of our social and individual existence. My argument is that these processes occur at a specific site: the boundaries of the self, involving intrapsychic, interpersonal and group psychological dynamics, with reverberations in the socio-political and cultural spheres, and reciprocal influences between all these levels. This paper aims to concentrate on the shifts in these boundaries, illustrated through clinical vignettes.

Traditional psychoanalytic approaches view excessive parental, social or relational involvement in human development as an opportunity for linking complex gender and identity experiences. The analyst's unconscious bias might present them with an opportunity for interpretation that might resemble something akin to conversion therapy. All of which leaves the patient feeling alienated thereby confirming their exiled Self. Early relational trauma affects every gender and sexual identity. In turn each traumatic situation, from inappropriate interference to traumatic abuse, affects how an individual forms and experiences relationships. Gender and sexual identity are fluid agencies of the Self within all human development. For people who are non-normative when it comes to their gender, identity or sexuality, evidence of early relational trauma should not unthinkingly be treated alongside mental health struggles. This clinical paper explores the once-weekly analytic work with a young trans man who was exiled and lived in a dysregulated state of mind from his early relational trauma. This paper uses images from the artist Louise Bourgeois to explore the early development of projective identification and to propose that this becomes a way of exiling unwanted feelings into the Other with the hope of finding a place of belonging as if through a psychic umbilical.