Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2025, 70, 5, 759–763
Editorial
With the publishing of this edition, it is autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern, and hopefully we will meet many of you online at the JAP’s 70th Anniversary conference on 7th and 8th November. It is not too late for registrations! (www.thejap.org). We have been to the IAAP congress in Zurich, with its abundant offerings, where we were pleased to meet so many of our contributors and readers in person. As in previous years, the Journal of Analytical Psychology again has the privilege to publish the IAAP’s plenary papers in a special issue. The papers included in this issue, however, are no less exciting and relevant with explorations into clinical conundrums, research, synchronicity, sociology, and cultural exchanges. This current issue offers a rich collection of analytic thought and is testimony to the creativity and endeavours of our authors. Christian Roesler contributed to this issue with his paper entitled “Jung’s Theory of Dreaming and the Findings of Empirical and Clinical Dream Research”. He points out that although dreams have been used in psychotherapy since the early days of psychoanalysis with the effectiveness of therapeutic work with dreams now well documented, there is still no empirically based model for contemporary therapeutic dream work that integrates the findings of empirical and clinical dream research. Roesler’s research tool, Structural Dream Analysis (SDA), fills this gap. It allowed him to develop a typology of six dream patterns that can be used to identify over 90% of dreams in clinical practice. In particular, SDA explores the relationship of the dream ego to other figures and elements in a dream, and the extent of agency of the dream ego. The author describes the research project and how it was tested empirically. He identifies a typical pattern of transformation in the structure of the dreams. Roesler’s research confirmed Jung’s viewpoint that the dream provides a picture of the current situation of the psyche, and particularly the approach to interpreting all elements in the dream as representations of parts of the psyche. However, the assumption that specific symbols have typical meanings could not be confirmed and the compensating function is questionable as opposed to a confronting function which alerts the conscious psyche to the actual reality of the psychological situation.
In “The Analysis of a Catastrophic Sream and the Hypertrophy of Modern Consciousness”, Henrique Pereira presents an analysis of a patient’s visionary dream. In the dream, a girl living on an island wishes for perpetual daylight, causing 30 additional suns to appear. This inflation of light triggers the destructive rise of a massive black octopus from the sea, which destroys people and vessels without resistance. Pereira interprets the dream as archetypal rather than personal, amplifying its core images—sun, island, sea monster, industrial complex—through mythological, alchemical, and cultural parallels. Through amplification of these images, the author sees the girl’s wish as a Promethean act symbolizing the hypertrophy of modern consciousness: the hyper-rational expansion of the ego that destabilizes the needed balance between conscious and unconscious. He posits that the octopus, as an embodiment of the destructive shadow of this inflation, is akin to the alchemical sol niger, the Gnostic Abraxas. Linking the dream to the perils of unrestrained technoscientific development, Pereira proposes an “Orphic” attitude of reverence, mystery, and symbolic life for the individual’s counterbalance to Promethean excess. In their paper entitled “Synchronicity in Post-Jungian Astrology”, Zeng and Fraikin explore the concept of synchronicity and how it has been applied to astrology. The authors’ starting point are Jung’s own studies into astrology inan attempt to find scientific evidence for his concept of synchronicity. The authors concluded that “Jung eventually realized that the quantitative approach of statistics is unable to establish scientifically the principle of synchronicity.” However, contemporary astrologers frequently conceive synchronicity as a way of explaining the nature of correlations between the movement of the stars and the corresponding human events. Zeng and Fraikin focus on publications by Liz Greene and Richard Tarnas and find that their attempts to affirm the legitimacy of astrology are unconvincing. Instead, they highlight the numinous dimension of synchronicity and how the astrologer can be part of a synchronistic relationship due to the archetypal
nature of time. Three case studies are in the centre of Barry Proner’s paper entitled “Thoughts on Dependency, Trust, Perversity and Addiction in the Analytic Relationship.” What these patients all have in common is a high degree of anxiety, suspicion, and distrust, originating in overwhelming anxieties to do with being lost—through being controlled, devoured or annihilated, wholly or partially—in the early developmental process of making a relation with the object. Proner describes the defence that they have in common as “do-it yourself-without-Mother” where omnipotent denial of the need for the object (mother) predominates. He explains how, in a state of despair, hope no longer exists and dependency upon good objects is replaced by a passive-addictive relation to an inner tyrant. The author illustrates in his case material how the near impossibility of connecting to a good object results in narcissistic isolation, addiction, and perversion, and how this manifests itself in the transference in which any sense of relatedness is avoided out of a fear of dependency.

In referring to the work of the French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu, Clare Simmonds, in her paper entitled “Towards a Socio-Analysis of the Psychotherapy Field”, makes us take a critical look at our own profession. Using Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of “habitus”, “field”, “capital” and “doxa”, the author explores the “psychotherapy field”. She points out that the therapy profession is bound to its own orthodoxies and dogma and then critiques the role of class, “an uncomfortable conversation”: The “emphasis on the singular, rather than the social, established psychotherapy as a setting in which members of the middle-upper social classes would feel at home.” Furthermore, she highlights how the psychotherapy field by privileging humanities and sciences underrates social sciences, resulting in an overvaluing of theory over practice. This preference for a scholarly attitude—homo academicus—tends to neglect economic realities, with the consequence that “those trainees who come from social backgrounds where there has never been the possibility of escaping the strictures of economic necessity find the world of psychotherapy to be at best, uninviting habitats.” Sulagna Sengupta’s paper entitled “Cultural Crossings, Critical Dialogues
and the Emergence of Hybridity” looks at transcultural encounters against the backdrop of Jung’s journey to India and the larger colonial environment in which depth psychology emerged in India. The author starts by introducing the reader to the early history of depth psychology in India, and we read about Jung’s journey to India and his reaction to encountering the “otherness” of Indian culture. Following Arwind Vasavada, originally a young student of philosophy at Benares Hindu University, to Zurich to train with Jung as the first training candidate from India, Sengupta points out the epistemological differences between Western psychology and Indian
spirituality, and she explores cultural crossings and the experience of hybridity in transcultural encounters. The author makes us feel the loneliness of Vasavada in seeing himself as a “misfit” between two different traditions, a feeling he shared with others who became alienated  etween cultures. In a response to Robert Tyminski’s paper, “Humanizing different archetypal expressions of gender expansiveness” (JAP, 69(5), 809–826), Lisa Marchiano, Artemis Papert and Robert Withers agree with Tyminski’s rejection of gender essentialism but criticize his affirmation of a youth’s self-diagnosis as gender fluid without clearly distinguishing biological sex from gender expression.
Drawing on Freud, Jung and Winnicott, they stress the importance of playful exploration over fixed identities or medical interventions, urging clearer differentiation between symbolic and concrete understandings of gender in analytic work. Tyminski offers his response to this critique, highlighting that his paper focused on applying Henderson’s concept of humanizing an archetype using myth, literature, and clinical example rather than discussing the medical complexities of gender care, transitioning, or detransitioning. Tyminski notes that gender play rarely poses physical or psychological risk and advocates for analytic freedom and exploration, supported by recent research. In a case of a
patient self-identified as gender-fluid, he warns against imposing analytic authority over a patient’s reality. Nora Swan-Foster interviews Jungian analyst Mary Dougherty in a warm conversation that traces the development of Dougherty’s early artistic sensibilities through her father’s illustration work and her long fascination with dust as a metaphor for psychic energy. Their dialogue reflects on Dougherty’s early obstacles and what nurtured her creative drive, her exploration of printmaking, performance art, and Generative Systems. Personal analysis, feminist influences, and Progoff Journal Workshops led her to train as an art therapist and eventually as an analyst, and in this capacity
she integrated image-making into analytic work as active imagination, focusing on affect, trauma, and the symbolic function of art. Her extensive teaching, writing, and workshops bridge art and psyche, using film, literature, and visual media to explore individuation, shadow and creativity.
Book Reviews
Derron Santin offers a timely review of Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C. G. Jung, written by Aniela Jaffé and Elena Fischli. This book combines Jaffé’s unpublished “protocols”—the unedited content stemming from her conversations with Jung—and Elena Fischli’s historical account of the creation of Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR). Jaffé’s vivid, wide-ranging narratives, omitted from MDR due to editorial constraints, offer intimate glimpses into Jung’s humour, travels, dreams, and reflections on death. Fischli’s commentary details the publishing politics that minimized Jaffé’s role, her perseverance amid professional injustices, and her deep integrity in bringing Jung’s vision to a broad audience. As Santin notes, regarding MDR, “we now have part two, and more.” Jane Phillimore, in her review of The Complexity of Trauma: Jungian and Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Treatment of Trauma, edited by Luisa Zoppi and Martin Schmidt, conveys the richness of this book which arose from a course by the Italian Analytical Association. The reader is guided through Jung’s concept of feeling-toned complexes and Kalsched’s Self-Care System before focusing on the devastations of early relational trauma and its manifestations in the countertransference, including psychoid and bodily aspects. Further topics incorporate a discussion of Jung’s concept of dissociation, neurobiological and developmental impacts of trauma, sexualized transference as well as cultural and sociological issues. The book
concludes with a chapter on the Chinese “psychology of the heart” by Heyong Shen. Steve Zemmelman affectionately reviews Jung and the Jewish Experience: Reflections of a Jungian Analyst, written by Aryeh Maidenbaum. He summarizes: “This is the well told story of a mature analyst’s individuation journey as he developed from a Brooklyn born yeshiva bucher (a boy who attends a school of Jewish learning) through his discovery of Jungian psychology working with first generation Jungian analysts in Israel and Zurich, to integration of his Jewish roots as part of his individuation journey.” Zemmelman’s review sympathetically traces the various stations towards becoming a mature analyst. The relational dimension of dream interpretation is highlighted, there is a resumption of the discussion about Jung’s anti-Semitism, and this is followed by insights into levels of forgiveness in the Jewish tradition. While it is obvious throughout the review how much Zemmelman values and even admires Maidenbaum, he does not shy away from criticizing him for the omission of a discussion of Jewish humanitarian values in light of “the level of killing and suffering in Gaza and the West Bank being perpetrated by Israel in the wake of the horrendous attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.”
Diane Finiello Zervas gives us an insightful review of the book, Dedicated to the Soul, the Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung. This intriguing book presents newly uncovered writings, drawings, and paintings by Emma Jung from the Jung Family Archive. Also included are Emma Jung’s significant talks and papers, revealing her as an early and influential thinker in analytical psychology, which Zervas notes is “a welcome corrective” to both prior works and lore that have focused more exclusively on her domestic roles.
Edited by Ann Conrad Lammers, Thomas Fischer, and Medea Hoch, this volume includes Jung’s reflections on myth, nature, individuation, and the feminine, as well as her dreams, fantasies, and a visionary “System” of cosmic creation. In all, we are given an enriched picture of the person Emma was and are therefore better able to appreciate her many heretofore unsung contributions to analytical psychology.
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As always, we welcome your ideas, your suggestions and your concerns. Please, send us your papers, ideally with a clinical relevance. We are happy to collaborate with authors towards a paper that is of interest to the readership of the JAP.