'Two Souls Alas': Jung's Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology

Saban, Mark

ISBN 10: 1630517496 / ISBN 13: 9781630517496

Published by Chiron Publications, 2019

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781630517496

Bibliographic Details

• Title: 'Two Souls Alas': Jung's Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology
• Publisher: Chiron Publications
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1630517496
• ISBN 13: 9781630517496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In his memoir, Memories Dreams Reflections, Carl Jung tells us that, as a child, he had the experience of possessing two personalities. ‘Two Souls Alas’ is the first book to suggest that Jung’s experience of the difficult dynamic between these two personalities not only informs basic principles behind the development of Jung’s psychological model but underscores the theory and practice of Analytical Psychology as a whole.

Mark Saban suggested that what Jung took from his experience of inner division was the principle that psychological health depends upon the avoidance of one-sidedness – a precept that underpins Jung’s seminal notion of individuation. In practice, this process requires again and again that any one-sided position, approach or belief is brought into tension with a conflicting ‘opposite’ position, in order that a third position can be achieved which transcends both of the earlier positions.

In the second part of the book, Saban takes up this principle and uses it to perform an internal critique on Analytical Psychology as enshrined in Jung’s Collected Works.  He suggests that in certain arenas Jung’s personal one-sidedness – specifically his persistent tendency to prioritise the inner dimension of psychological work, and to downplay or ignore the outer dimension - undermined Jung’s capacity to fully follow through the ‘logic’ of the two personalities.  Saban argues that, as a result, Analytical Psychology has failed to find a stance from which it can creatively engage with political, social and historical matters.

This book opens up a new direction for post-Jungian psychology, and indicates some ways in which, by following the logic of the two personalities, the one-sidedness that has long shadowed Jungian psychology can begin to be corrected.

About the Author

Mark Saban is a Jungian analyst. He trained with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, with whom he is a senior analyst. He sees clients in Oxford, and also enjoys teaching Jungian and post-Jungian studies. For the last two years he has been employed as a lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Mark studied Classics at Oxford and then worked for twenty years as an actor, performing all over the world, doing everything from Shakespeare to street comedy. He has published numerous papers and book chapters, and co-edited Analysis and Activism - Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology with Emilija Kiehl and Andrew Samuels (Routledge 2016) (Finalist American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize, Nominated Gradiva Award for Best Edited Book). This is the first book he has written.