Jung's Psychoid Concept Contextualised

Ann Addison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351376822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie jungienne

Jung's Psychoid Concept Contextualised investigates the body-mind question from a clinical Jungian standpoint and establishes a contextual topography for Jung's psychoid concept, insofar as it relates to a deeply unconscious realm that is neither solely physiological nor psychological. Seen as a somewhat mysterious and little understood element of Jung's work, this concept nonetheless holds a fundamental position in his overall understanding of the mind, since he saw the psychoid unconscious as the foundation of archetypal experience.

Situating the concept within Jung's oeuvre and drawing on interviews with clinicians about their clinical work, this book interrogates the concept of the psychoid in a novel way. Providing an elucidation of Jung's ideas by tracing the historical development of the psychoid concept, Addison sets its evolution in a variety of contexts within the history of ideas, in order to offer differing perspectives from which to frame an understanding. Addison continues this trajectory through to the present day by reviewing subsequent studies undertaken by the post-Jungian community. This contextual background affords an understanding of the psychoid concept from a variety of different perspectives, both cultural and clinical. The book provides an important addition to Jungian theory, demonstrating the usefulness of Jung's psychoid concept in the present day and offering a range of understandings about its clinical and cultural applications.

This book will be of great interest to the international Jungian community, including academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of Jungian or analystical psychology. It should also be essential reading for clinicians.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Setting the scene

The present book concerns a particular aspect of the clinical situation, being especially occupied with unconscious interactions between patient and analyst of a kind involving psyche and soma in relation. It thus has a bearing on the mind-body question, as experienced in the analytic consulting room, and hence embraces not merely a philosophical or theoretical position but also most especially an empirical one.

There is a very long history in the discipline of philosophy to the issue known as the mind-body problem, one having many contributors, just a relevant few of whom are highlighted below. The primary origins are popularly attributed to René Descartes. In his search for a solid foundation for knowledge, Descartes started from the one premise that he considered to be reliable, that of his own existence, conceived as the certainty of himself as a thinking being (cogito ergo sum). He came to the view that his existence as a thinking being was independent of the existence of anything non-mental, that is, of anything in the physical world. The mind as substance is distinct from its objects in the material world. This led him to the Cartesian dualism that the substance that is mind is independent of the physical body.

According to Descartes, the behaviour of physical objects was governed by the rational principles of science, and could be understood in these terms, and the body, its health and its disease, could thus be assigned to a mechanistic model. The mind, distinct from the body, could not be so understood but was seen by Descartes as guided by reason-explanations, in the form of rationales for this wish or that emotion.

The Cartesian approach still leaves open the question of the body-mind interaction, which has been addressed since from various viewpoints. Some twentieth-century philosophers (e.g. Place (1956) and Smart (1959)) argue for a mind-brain identity to deal with this question, and this is cogent in the face of increasing understandings of the brain imparted by neuroscience; and, in the field of psychoanalysis, this has generated a neuropsycho-analytic strand of thinking (e.g. Solms and Turnbull (2011)). Other, earlier approaches to this question came from the monists, such as Spinoza, James and Russell, who opposed the dualist views of Descartes and conceived the universe as comprising a single unifying reality or substance embracing both the mental and the physical. In contemporary analytical psychology, Atmanspacher and Fach (2013) subscribe to a monistic approach, ascribing a dual-aspect monism to the ideas of Carl Jung in respect of his psychoid concept, which is the subject of this book.

A further contemporary line of philosophical argument is provided by the phenomenologists, such as Edmund Husserl and the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology as a theory of knowledge distinguishes between perceptual properties of objects and universal abstract properties or essences, reflecting especially on essences and their relations. We can perceive indirectly aspects of physical objects or directly, by intuition, their totality or essence. Acts of consciousness may also be reduced from acts of sense-perception to essences common to all such acts. Merleau-Ponty developed on these ideas and those of Descartes, by formulating a view of the world as the field of experience in which I find myself. He located access to the world in the body, neither as subject nor as object but as an ambiguous mode of existence wherein perception is primary.

This philosophical backdrop sets the scene for the present study. The present work, by contrast, originates and is grounded in clinical experience: not merely in a single analytic case, and not just in personal analytic practice, although the project stems from personal clinical work as its starting point. Such clinical origin drew attention to certain embodied phenomena, taken by the analyst to reflect the state of the analytic process, and has guided but was not the focus of a research project, generating at the outset the hypothesis that phenomena, combining experiences of body and mind in sensation at a psychic level, arise and are communicated to the analyst during periods of regression by the patient to states where issues concerning separation and bodily integrity are at the forefront.

The literature highlights a babel of theories, as well as a lack of coherent clinical description, language and theoretical elaboration, surrounding this clinical area, showing firstly that the area is not well delineated and secondly that it is difficult to establish a conceptual terrain. At the same time, there has been increasing interest in psychoanalytic circles, in recent years, on the role played by the body in psychoanalysis, whether in terms of the physical presence of the analyst and their embodied response to the patient or in terms of the ways in which the patient perceives and employs their own body in communications with the analyst, as evidenced by a proliferation of publications and conferences addressing this topic from a wide variety of angles. In all of these instances, a common issue is the question, how are we to think about and understand embodiment in psychoanalysis, the talking cure? There is, therefore, a manifest need for a mapping of the area and for specifying a conceptual terrain, and this is what the present book attempts to do, from a Jungian point of view.

In the clinical arena, the history of the issue of the relationship of mind and body reaches back to the beginnings of psychoanalysis and beyond, and the present project selects and tracks a single conceptual strand in the clinical debate, employing a form of conceptual research based on a methodology proposed by Dreher (2000), having an historical aspect and an empirical aspect. Jung’s psychoid concept is selected as the focus, as a theoretical position relating to an ultimately unknowable area that is neither psychological nor physiological but that somehow partakes of both.

The historical conceptual research grounded in Jung’s psychoid concept traces the origination and evolution of the concept to show how a present-day understanding has developed. The research locates the origins of the concept in the work on Das Psychoid of the biologist and neo-vitalist Hans Driesch (1903) around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and follows the development of this early thinking into Die Psychoide of Eugen Bleuler (1925), director of the Burghölzli from 1898 to 1927. Jung’s adoption and extension of the ideas of both thinkers are set in the context of his own oeuvre and his relationship with the psychoanalytic movement. Trends in his own professional development, and comparisons from the work of other psychoanalytic sources, serve to clarify a characterisation of the psychoid concept according to Jung. Elaboration and refinement of this view is then achieved by contemplating subsequent developments by the post-Jungians. In this way, the book attempts to establish what was in Jung’s mind when he conceived and formulated his psychoid concept, and to arrive at a contemporary understanding of events to be anticipated in clinical manifestations of psychoid processes.

This historical work does not confine itself to a narrow tracing of variations in the meaning of the psychoid concept. It also acknowledges influences on the thinking of Jung and his followers from other sources and employs a comparative approach based on ideas from other psychoanalysts, most notably Freud with his influence on Jung and Bion with his parallel development of his proto-mental concept. The result is a comparative contextual analysis.

Apart from the inherent historical interest of such an approach, the advantages of a comparative contextual model are the ensuing tightening of conceptualisation, something that is especially pertinent given the allusive style of writing adopted by Jung increasingly, following his Red Book work, in direct contrast to his scientific style in his early work on the Word Association Tests (WATs). Rowland observes that all of Jung’s works after World War II “are devoted to finding a form of psychic healing that would avert the acting out of the apocalyptic myth”, and so he experimented with “kinds of writing in which the word has the power to heal through appeal to more than rational understanding” (2005, p. ix). Thus, he came to a style combining aesthetic and scientific forms in a manner, described by Rowland as a “literary playing with metaphors”, that seeks not merely to describe the psyche but also to “enact and perform it” (ibid., pp. 2–3). Jung’s terminology is also constantly in flux, as can be seen from the fact that, whilst he employs the word “psychoid” in twenty-eight passages in the Collected Works, he refers inter alia to a psychoid reflex-instinctual state (1947/1954, para. 385), psychoid processes (e.g. 1947/1954, para. 380), psychoid functions (1947/1954, para. 382), a psychoid factor (e.g. 1947/1954, para. 417), a psychoid unconscious (e.g. 1955/1956, para. 787) and a psychoid archetype (1958, paras. 849/51), as well as describing the archetype as having a psychoid nature (e.g. 1958, para. 852), a psychoid property (1952, para. 947), a psychoid form (1945/1954, para. 350) and a psychoid essence (1958, para. 854). Accordingly, every contextual aid to the development of a more precise understanding of the concept is to be appreciated, whilst at the same time acknowledging that the ultimate unknowability of the psychoid unconscious, according to Jung, limits what can be said about it.

Having acquired an enhanced appreciation of the evolution of the psychoid concept from the historical first part of this book, a contemporary view is elicited using empirical techniques, in the form of expert interviews, as proposed by Dreher. Here, it has been necessary to devise a suitable methodology. Whilst Dreher describes the use of semi-structured interviews of analysts by analysts to elaborate the meaning and modes of employ of a concept, this approach to interviewing was felt likely to yield consciously constrained theoretical accounts, and hence to be too limiting for the present task. Rather, what has been sought in this research is a more unconscious formulation, such as arises in case discussion in response to clinical material through free association. Therefore, an interview design was formulated based on the process notes for a single session, actually the one that prompted early thoughts of the present research, and interviewees were asked to describe their own way of understanding and approaching the session, as well as their free associations in the face of the example given. The interviews were recorded, and the transcripts subsequently analysed by grounded theory techniques. It is to be emphasised that the transcripts, and not the process notes, constitute the data, and that grounded theory was selected in order to extract the personal models or theories of the interviewees, both conscious and unconscious, and to generate a set of parameters that could then be compared with the characteristics previously derived from the historical review of the psychoid concept. Jung’s psychoid concept was thereby interrogated, by evaluating whether the contemporary views obtained from the empirical work matched the historical summary.

A comparative approach was again adopted, by selecting interviewees both from psychoanalysis and from analytical psychology. Since psychoid phenomena are a Jungian conceptualisation and are acknowledged in the language of analytical psychology, it was to be anticipated that the analytical psychologists would be more likely to generate accounts consistent with the historical psychoid formulation. By contrast, such phenomena are not recognised in the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, and therefore a finding of congruent phenomena, regardless of terminology, from any of the psychoanalysts would lend significantly greater weight to the validity of Jung’s psychoid concept. Very surprisingly, some of the psychoanalysts did indeed also produce similar conceptualisations, effectively providing unexpected confirmation of Jung’s psychoid concept, in the manner proposed by the philosophy of science of Popper.

This research has employed a methodology based generally on Dreher’s model for conceptual research, but modified to suit the present project by:

• (a) Adding a contextual dimension to the historical study, from the history of ideas in the twentieth century and from psychoanalysis generally.
• (b) Interrogating rather than elaborating the selected psychoid concept in the empirical work, by undertaking clinical interviews and extracting theory from them, using grounded theory, and only subsequently assessing whether the extracted theory matches the psychoid concept as derived from the historical review.
• (c) Supplementing the entire conceptual study, both historical and empirical, with comparative elements to clarify, push and refine definitions derived from the basic analysis.

Bifurcations

The trajectory taken by the research work and the manner in which at each stage the current position influenced the ongoing course of the project is of interest.

Once Jung’s psychoid concept was selected as a focus for study, the work began with a review of Jung’s writings on the subject, his main publications being On the Nature of the Psyche (1947/1954) and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952). Hans Driesch (1903) is acknowledged in the former, and a footnote directs the reader to Die “Seele” als Elementarer Naturfaktor for an early vitalist account of the psychoid. Following the initial review of Jung’s own works, the conceptual line was traced back to its origins in the biological thinking and vitalist ideas of both Hans Driesch and Eugen Bleuler. The former published his accounts of Das Psychoid from 1903, and likewise gave lectures, most notably the Gifford Lectures, in both English and German on his experimental research that formed the basis for his psychoid concept (Driesch, 1907/1908). The latter also published in both languages, starting with his Die Psychoide als Prinzip der Organischen Entwicklung (Bleuler, 1925). Accordingly, a direct trajectory could be developed from these beginnings to Jung’s writings in On the Nature of the Psyche and could be set in the context of ideas current in psychoanalysis during the same period.

As discussed below, and as evidenced by their correspondence, Jung mentions the psychoid to Freud in their famous 1907 meeting as a suitable designation for the unconscious, presumably, given the timing, referring to the biological ideas of Driesch (McGuire, 1991, p. 58). Based on this biological foundation, he goes on to develop a vitalistic understanding of the concept, as described in On the Nature of the Psyche to embrace a unified or monistic view of body and mind, designated “bodymind” herein.

According to this view, the psychoid constitutes an ultimately unknowable aspect of the unconscious, underlying the archetypes and linking body, mind and spirit in a purposive dynamic. The biology of instinct and the numinosity of spirit are both entrained in a teleological urge towards human development under the guidance of psychoid processes.

Jung’s mature work also links the psychoid concept with synchronicity, his earliest recorded discussions of synchronicity arising in his Dream Seminar given in 1928–1930, when he developed a line of thinking from internal and external events that “synchronise”, to the notion of “synchronism” in Eastern forms of thinking, to his invention of the term “synchronicity” to cover coinciding but unconnected events (1984). Subsequently, as a result of his collaboration with the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, he brings in a basis for his psychoid concept in quantum physics, as described in Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, covering a panpsychic view of mind and matter generally.

At this point, it became apparent that Jung’s account of the psychoid is derived from biology insofar as it concerns a monistic view of the body-mind issue, and from physics insofar as it concerns a panpsychic view of the matter-mind issue, and that chronologically he moved from the former to the latter. More especially, this move took him from a vitalistic base, wherein the origins of consciousness are embedded in living, organic matter, to an unus mundus, embracing mind and inorganic as well as organic matter. Although he presented his later ideas on the psychoid concept as an extension of his earlier ones, he did not offer an explanation for the traverse from the field of biology, applicable to his earlier thinking on the psyche-soma, to the field of physics, covering his later ideas on synchronicity. Actually, once he adopted his later thinking, he then applied it ex post facto to his understanding of the relation between body and mind, but he still omits an explanation for applying a principle from physics to a biological issue.

It was also apparent that Jung’s earlier understandings of the psychoid and his later understandings of synchronicity are conceptually different. The former is considered as a teleological ordering factor immanent as potential in the stuff of the organism and creating an emergent dynamism by which the life process of the organism unfolds, as discussed in detail in Chapters 2 to 5. The latter, by contrast, is considered as a form of knowledge or meaning arising when two or more events that are not causally related nonetheless have a meaningful connection. The latter may arguably supervene on the former, but not underpin it, whereas the former may be usefully investigated without reference to the latter.

This same separation occurs also in the post-Jungian community, both theoretical and most especially clinical. Writers such as Dieckmann (1974, 1976, 1980), Clark (1996, 2006), Merchant (2006) and Stevens (1995) focus primarily on the biological approach to a monistic bodymind, whilst others, such as Fordham (1957, 1962), Aziz (1990, 2007), Von Franz (1992), Zabriskie (1995), Bright (1997), Meier (2001), Main (2004, 2007), Gieser (2005), Hogenson (2005), Cambray (2002, 2009), Colman (2011), Haule (2011), Giegerich (2012), Atmanspacher (2014), Atmanspacher & Fach (2013) and Connolly (2015) focus on an unus mundus embracing mind and matter, synchronicity, the occurrences of meaningful coincidences, their unknowability, and their associations with quantum physics. There is truly a proliferation of pub...