This module explores the historical, philosophical, cultural, and religious background of analytical psychology. It includes a core of seminars in which special attention is paid to Jung's collaborative relationship with Freud and to their divergence. In the other seminars, issues more specific to Jung's own thinking and to their development in analytical psychology are explored. This structure allows the development of a comparative as well as a contextual view of analytical psychology.
Aims:
To provide historical, philosophical, and cultural background that will enrich understanding of the origin and nature of analytical psychology;
To foster a critical approach to the history and theory of analytical psychology and, more particularly, to the nature and validity of evidence and interpretation; and
To explore the value of contextual understanding for the comparative study of analytical psychology and psychoanalysis.
Objectives:
By the end of the module, you should be able to:
Show how analytical psychology emerged out of, differentiated itself from, and continues to develop in relationship to specific but complex socio-cultural conditions (both immediate and long-term), and use this ability to illuminate similarities and differences between the two main schools of depth psychology, psychoanalysis and analytical psychology;
Discuss analytical psychology with awareness that it is diverse and complex, has a past and disputed histories of that past, and changes continually;
Demonstrate how analytical psychology 'bites its own tail', i.e., provides critical theoretical perspectives both on the events and circumstances of its own past and on the disciplines (e.g., biography, history, philosophy) by which we might try to establish and evaluate its past;
Deploy various critical and academic skills (e.g., how to evaluate historical sources, philosophical arguments, or cultural artefacts) in the investigation of the theories and texts of analytical psychology; and
Understand the process and limits of interpretation as a form of enquiry.