The Classical School

The first of the three post-Jungian schools as named by Samuels in Jung and the Post-Jungians (1985). The Classical School weights theoretical priorities in the order self, archetype, development, and clinical priorities in the order self-symbol, transference or imagery, with the integrating movement toward the self as the central concern of analysis (Samuels 1985, p. 12).

Samuels names it “Classical” because it represents, “in general terms, Jung’s own ordering of priorities” (Samuels 1985, p. 13). Its representative figures — Gerhard Adler, Erich Neumann, Barbara Hannah, Marie-Louise von Franz, Edward Edinger — keep Jung’s later religious and alchemical work at the centre and read individuation as the emergence of the integrated personality around the self as archetype of order. The school corresponds broadly to what Fordham had called the “Zürich School” and Adler had called “orthodoxy” (Samuels 1985, p. 13).

The Classical School’s signature emphasis is captured in Adler’s remark that “we put the main emphasis on symbolic transformation”, citing Jung’s letter to P. W. Martin that “the main interest of my work is with the approach to the numinous… the fact is that the numinous is the real therapy” (Adler 1975, quoted in Samuels 1985, p. 13). The numinous, the symbol, the coniunctio oppositorum — these are the school’s idiom.

Relationships

• developmental-school
• archetypal-school
• individuation
• self

Primary sources

• samuels-jung-postjungians (Samuels 1985)