The philosophy of the Yijing and Jungian analytical psychology: a comparative study

The Yijing (Book of Changes) occupied a very significant position in C.G. Jung’s mind, which was closely related to Richard Wilhelm’s active recommendation and introduction of the Yijing wisdom. Inspired by the Yijing, Jung set forth the ‘principle of synchronicity’, by which scholars tend to discuss the relationship between Yijing and Jungian psychology. In fact, Jungian analytical psychology conceives in-depth onto-cosmological connotations corresponding to the philosophy of the Yijing. The terms invented or employed by Jung such as ‘archetype’, ‘Self’, ‘individuation’, ‘mandala,’ ‘anima and animus’, ‘persona and shadow’ are interrelated with the connotations of Taiji (Supreme Ultimate) (○) and liang yi (two-mode) () in the Yijing philosophy. A comparative study of the two disciplines can help us gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of both, and further improve the exchanges of Eastern and Western cultures.     

Reflections on the Jungian nature of psychology as the discipline of interiority: a response to Saban's ‘Misunderstandings’

Psychology as the discipline of interiority is the name of the psychology that has developed from Wolfgang Giegerich's work in the field of analytical psychology. This article offers a counterview to that of Mark Saban's claim that Giegerich's psychology is ‘irrelevant’ to Jungians today and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Jungian psychology. It will be shown that, in fact, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Giegerich's work that has led Saban to form erroneous conclusions. Links between Jung's and Giegerich's conceptions of the ‘objective psyche’ will be highlighted, along with other examples of how, contrary to Saban's conclusions, psychology as the discipline of interiority has obvious connections to, and grounding in, Jungian psychology.     

Psychosis,symbol, affectivity 2: another perspective on the treatment of psychotic disorder

This is the second of two papers concerning our study into an integrated approach to psychotic disorders conducted at the University Psychiatry Unit of Palermo’s Polyclinic over approximately 15 years; this paper concentrates on the clinical phenomena. The study aimed to find the best possible treatment and to improve the prognosis of this patient group. We have explored the efficacy of a range of psycho-therapeutic (cognitive-behavioural, systemic-relational, psychodynamic, group and others), psycho-pharmaceutical, psychiatric rehabilitative and psycho-educational treatments, with a hermeneutic approach instead of a systematic one. The study’s conclusions, described in the paper, are that all psychotic functions start with a nuclear psychic issue connected to emotional development. We describe how the most significant symptoms of acute psychotic manifestations (delusions and misperceptions) make use of an encrypted psychological meaning that can be decoded through the patient’s symbolic language. This language is a key element in diagnosis and in the choice of treatment. The paper describes how we revised our understanding of psychosis from being a brain disease to being a process aimed at the rearrangement of psychic functioning. Our significant results are described.     

George Floyd’s death and COVID-19: inflection points in the Anthropocene Era?

George Floyd’s death, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are on a continuum from the immediate shock of viewing a video-recorded murder, to millions dying worldwide from disease, to deaths related to climate change accumulating over a millennium. They participate in the powerful archetypes of death and inequality. ‘Increase’, Hexagram 42 in the I Ching, archetypically addresses inequalities at all levels – racial, economic, political and the profound imbalance between humans and the environment. Floyd’s death highlights the consequences of systemic racism and income inequalities. The pandemic as ‘nature’s revenge’ hits minority populations harder due to underlying health conditions resulting from poverty and greater exposure to the virus in the workplace. President Trump as Trickster showed Americans their shadow and his response to the pandemic amplified its severity. The pandemic has shocked our social, political and economic systems and paused our species rush into environmental disasters at many levels. The disruptions present opportunities for reflection, experimentation and developing new systems as old forms are challenged. The ecological dimensions of Jung’s concepts emphasize interconnectedness at all levels and the paradigm shift he called a ‘new age’ provides a framework for altering the course of the Anthropocene Era.     

Imaginal action: towards a Jungian conception of enactment,and an extraverted counterpart to active imagination

This theoretical paper considers the fashion in which Jung's psychology radically challenges modern assumptions concerning the nature of subjectivity. With an eye for the clinical implications of Jung's late work, the author introduces the idea of imaginal action. In order to explain what is meant by this, the paper begins by exploring how Jung's thinking demonstrates an underlying bias towards introversion. It is argued that while Jung's interest in synchronicity ultimately resulted in his developing a worldview that might address the introverted biases of his psychology, the clinical implications of this shift have not been sufficiently clarified. With reference to some short examples from experience, the author outlines a conception of relational synchronicity wherein the intrapsychic emerges non‐projectively within the interpersonal field itself. Comparing and contrasting these occurrences to the more introverted practice of active imagination, it is claimed that such a notion is implicit in Jung's work and is needed as a corrective to his emphasis on interiority. The author suggests that imaginal action might be conceived as a distinctly Jungian approach to the psychoanalytic notion of enactment. It is also shown how the idea outlined might find further support from recent developments in the field of transpersonal psychology.     

The ethical dimension of analytical psychology

The centrality of the ethical dimension in Carl Gustav Jung's analytical psychology is demonstrated through careful reference to fundamental moments in the Jungian text. Tracking Jung's statements about the primacy of the ‘moral function’ (or ‘moral factor’) in the cure of neurosis as well as in the process of individuation, the ethical nature of the psychotherapeutic praxis proposed by Jung is highlighted. This allows us to see the ethical aspect of psychological conflicts, and thus to understand better why individuation can be seen as a ‘moral achievement’. Finally, the intelligible ethical structure of Jungian psychotherapeutic praxis is exposed.     

African American cultural history and reflections on Jung in the African Diaspora

Racism is defined as a psychopathology and the ground in which the covenant of whiteness is rooted and mirrored in the system of apartheid structured by American Constitutional Jurisprudence between 1857 and 1954. This historical period overshadowed Carl Jung's visit to America between 1909 and 1937. The spirit of the times and practices of racism coloured Jung's views, attitudes, and theories about African Americans, just as colonialism coloured his attitudes toward Africa and Africans. Consequently Jung failed to see the African Diaspora and the extraordinary intellectual and artistic period of the Harlem Renaissance (1919‐1929). Its introduction here foregrounds the exceptionalism of African Americans and the cultural continuity of African ancestry. This exceptionalism was not seen by Jung and there have been no attempts to redress its omission from analytical psychology and other sub‐disciplines of Western psychology. Jung's theories of personality and psychoanalysis and his negative projections about primitivism among Africans and African American ‘Negroes’ would have been mediated by knowledge of a legislated American apartheid and the Harlem Renaissance which occurred within the barriers of apartheid. In this paper I posit that culture, kinship libido, and the African principle of Ubuntu are healing modalities that play a critical role in instinct and the relational ground of human psychology and biology, from which culture as an environmental expression constellates around common goals of the human species. Cultural equivalencies and expressions within the wisdom traditions and mythologies of the Africa Diaspora are considered. Specifically, the Bantu principle of Ubuntu or ‘humanity’ is identified as the relational ground in African cultures, while the Kemetic‐Egyptian deity Maat, as an archetypal anima figure and the religio‐mythology offer a transcendent position from which to critique the inequities and constitutional jurisprudence that structured American apartheid. Maat is the personification of truth, justice, balance and weighing of the heart in orderly judicial processes. In her we find the alignment of the spirit and matter in the law and judgement. The paper concludes with reflections on pathways toward healing the psychopathology of racism and recommendations to enhance clinical training and practice.     

Histoire et tendances de la psychologie critique en Amérique du Nord

Critical psychology in the United States and Canada identifies psychology as inherently a political enterprise. It has developed along three overlapping but distinct lines that diverge in history, focus, and purpose: (a) building on psychology's empirical research methods, employing them to help reduce injustice and advance progressive or radical social change; (b) rejecting mainstream psychology's positivist and individualistic theoretical and empirical underpinnings and developing emancipatory theory and practices in their place; and (c) challenging psychology's institutional power over individuals, especially mentally and emotionally troubled individuals whose behavior strikes others as problematic. This article first describes each approach's history, influences, and roles in academic scholarship and institutions and in professional and nonacademic organizations. It then details recent efforts to expand and institutionalize a critical psychology presence despite mainstream North American psychology's strong resistance, while noting the central intertwining of personal networks, political leanings, and psychological theory. Finally, it briefly considers the implications and consequences of the lack of consensus about what critical psychology is and should become.     

La pragmatique développementale : état des lieux et perspectives

The aim of this article is to summarise the field covered by the submitted theme: “Developmental pragmatics: normal aspects and pathological aspects”, to discuss the tracks already explored by published articles and to indicate the research tracks to be explored. We are trying to show how the developmental pragmatics allowed to take in consideration the social uses of language and communication, to renew the theoretical perspectives which model children development, to increase our empirical knowledge and to finally progress in the building of relevant methodological tools. Therefore pragmatics allow to solve the mental processes which underlie the use of communication and language by children.     

Differential effectiveness of explicit verbal feedback on children's communication skills

In order to specify by which combination of content and form dimensions the explicit verbal feedback comes to be most effective in enhancing communication skills, a training experiment was designed where both dimensions were factorially manipulated. Forty children (mean age, 5–10) were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: Interrogative Cognitive feedback, Declarative Cognitive feedback, Interrogative Perceptual feedback, and Declarative Perceptual feedback. The Cognitive type of feedback specified the successive cognitive steps underlying the comparison activity whereas the Perceptual type of feedback stressed only the necessity of describing perceptual differences when communicating. These two contents of feedback were either provided by a set of standardized questions or of declarative statements, after each trial of a speaking training task. Subjects were given a pretest, and immediate and delayed posttests comprised of a speaking task and a listening generalization task. A 2 (Contents) × 2 (Forms) × 2 (Tasks) × 2 (Post-tests) analysis of variance showed that all subjects performed significantly better on the speaking task than on the listening generalization task and that subjects in the Interrogative Cognitive condition performed better than subjects in the three other conditions, on both post-test tasks. Results emphasize the mutual facilitating effects of the Interrogative Form and the Cognitive Content of explicit feedback and are discussed in terms of the generalization and stability of the induced learning.