The analyst in action: An individual account of what Jungians do and why they do it1

This paper describes some similarities and differences between contemporary approaches to analysis as practised by ‘Freudians’ and ‘Jungians’ in London today. It aims to contribute to mutual understanding between different schools of analysis by showing how the analyst’s interventions can only be understood in terms of the theoretical context from which they arise (cf. ‘the analyst’s preconscious’, as discussed by Hamilton [1996] ). A discussion of five key themes of Jungian theory is followed by an account of clinical work with a patient who enacted her inner world through the use of material objects brought to the consulting room, presenting difficult technical dilemmas concerning boundaries and enactment. The paper aims to shows how these Jungian themes influenced the analyst’s response, particularly in relation to ideas of symbolic transformation, the unknowable nature of unconscious processes and the purposive orientation of the self towards wholeness and integration.     

A revolution of the mind: some implications of George Hogenson's ‘The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking’ (2001)

George Hogenson's 2001 paper ‘The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking’ developed the radical argument that, if archetypes are emergent, they ‘do not exist in the sense that there is no place that the archetypes can be said to be’. In this paper, I show how Hogenson's thinking has been seminal to my own: it is not just archetypes but the mind itself that has no ‘place’. The mind is a dynamic system, emergent from the cultural environment of symbolic meanings to which humans are evolutionarily adapted. Drawing on the work of philosopher John Searle, I argue that symbols constitute the realities that they bring forth, including the imaginal realities of the psyche. The implications for clinical work include a rejection of structural models of the psyche in favour of the emergence of symbolic realities in the context of psychoanalysis as a distributed system of cognition.     

Dynamic probability of reinforcement for cooperation: Random game termination in the centipede game

Experimental games have previously been used to study principles of human interaction. Many such games are characterized by iterated or repeated designs that model dynamic relationships, including reciprocal cooperation. To enable the study of infinite game repetitions and to avoid endgame effects of lower cooperation toward the final game round, investigators have introduced random termination rules. This study extends previous research that has focused narrowly on repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games by conducting a controlled experiment of two‐player, random termination Centipede games involving probabilistic reinforcement and characterized by the longest decision sequences reported in the empirical literature to date (24 decision nodes). Specifically, we assessed mean exit points and cooperation rates, and compared the effects of four different termination rules: no random game termination, random game termination with constant termination probability, random game termination with increasing termination probability, and random game termination with decreasing termination probability. We found that although mean exit points were lower for games with shorter expected game lengths, the subjects' cooperativeness was significantly reduced only in the most extreme condition with decreasing computer termination probability and an expected game length of two decision nodes.     

Team reasoning: Solving the puzzle of coordination

In many everyday activities, individuals have a common interest in coordinating their actions. Orthodox game theory cannot explain such intuitively obvious forms of coordination as the selection of an outcome that is best for all in a common-interest game. Theories of team reasoning provide a convincing solution by proposing that people are sometimes motivated to maximize the collective payoff of a group and that they adopt a distinctive mode of reasoning from preferences to decisions. This also offers a compelling explanation of cooperation in social dilemmas. A review of team reasoning and related theories suggests how team reasoning could be incorporated into psychological theories of group identification and social value orientation theory to provide a deeper understanding of these phenomena.     

Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy

This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that describes sexual behaviour and fantasy in terms of object relations (interpreting 'away from sex', while simultaneously describing object relations in terms of the sexual body (interpreting 'towards sex').     

The wrong side of history

Psychoanalysis (including analytical psychology), once a pioneering and forward‐looking movement of the early 20^th century has now become a conservative backward‐looking ‘tradition’. After considering some of the internal problems associated with this historical change such as idealization and tribalism, some ways forward are suggested – a focus on clinical excellence as practical craft, openness to the unknown and engagement with others beyond the confines of private practice.