Deintegration

Fordham reserves the term splitting for disintegrative experiences that are pathological and threaten to overwhelm the infant or adult. He preferred instead the idea of deintegration and reintegration to describe the dynamic process whereby the primary self reac

This passage articulates Fordham’s foundational distinction between pathological splitting (disintegration) and the normative, developmental rhythm of deintegration and reintegration through which the primary self engages the world.

Wiener, Jan, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009thesis

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sometimes they are predominantly stable (integrated), sometimes they are unstable (deintegrated). Continuing this comment on Hillman’s 1971 paper, Fordham understands Hillman to be arguing for the inclusion of deintegrated states within the individuation process

Samuels shows Fordham asserting that psychic structures oscillate between integrated and deintegrated states, and links this view to Hillman’s insistence on polycentrism and the legitimacy of instability within the individuation process.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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Fordham prefers to conceive the self not as an archetype, but as beyond archetypes and ego, which are then seen as arising out of or ‘deintegrating’ from the self.

Samuels identifies Fordham’s metapsychological innovation: the self is prior to and beyond both archetypes and ego, each of which arises through deintegrative movements from that primordial totality.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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F. sees a process of continual development. This is based on deintegration-reintegration movements as the various archetypal

In comparing Fordham with Neumann on maturational processes, Samuels identifies deintegration-reintegration as the structural engine of Fordham’s developmental model, operating continuously as archetypal elements emerge.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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especially, from deintegration of the self. In brief, the post-Jungian contribution is a model which can incorporate innate potentials, inner processes and external objects, using both a subjective and an objective perspective.

Samuels situates deintegration of the self as a key explanatory node in the post-Jungian synthesis, one that bridges innate archetypal potential and actual experience of external objects.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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F.’s views on early development stress their derivation from objective observation of mothers and infants; he seems, therefore, to occupy the empirical end of the empiricism-empathy dichotomy.

Samuels contextualises Fordham’s developmental framework — within which deintegration operates — as empirically grounded and distinct from Neumann’s more empathic-mythological account of early states.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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