Objectivity in the depth-psychology corpus is not a settled epistemological achievement but a contested, dynamically contested ideal that different authors approach from sharply divergent angles. Jung treats it simultaneously as a developmental attainment—the fruit of withdrawing projections and dissolving emotional coercions through individuation—and as a permanent methodological impossibility, given that every act of psychological observation is already colored by the personal equation. Hillman inherits this tension but radicalizes it: objectivity in analytic training is the capacity to amplify personal wounds toward collective, archetypal levels, thereby escaping the solipsism of mere empathy, yet archetypal psychology ultimately insists that true phenomenological neutrality is itself a fantasy structure that can never be fully inhabited. McGilchrist recasts the problem through the lens of hemispheric asymmetry, arguing that what passes for objectivity in scientific culture is a left-hemisphere artifact—a detached, propositional posture that mistakes a particular cognitive style for a neutral standpoint—and proposes instead that genuine objectivity is a disciplined disposition, provisional and self-critical, rather than a finalized product. Winnicott introduces a developmental-clinical dimension, noting that objectivity is itself relative, since for many individuals external reality remains partly subjective phenomenon. Across these voices a fundamental tension persists: objectivity is both indispensable—as an ethical and epistemic aspiration—and structurally unattainable in any absolute form, calling instead for ongoing reflexive practices of standpoint-awareness.
Objective cognition lies hidden behind the attraction of the emotional relationship; it seems to be the central secret. Only through objective cognition is the real coniunctio possible.
Jung identifies objectivity—achieved by withdrawing projections from emotional ties—as the precondition for genuine psychological union and as an apex of individuation.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
the ‘objectivity’ lies not in propositions, but in a disciplined disposition; in a modest recognition that our existing answers are inadequate, and in a constant awareness of limitations in handling the possible alternative, always provisional, answers.
McGilchrist reconceives objectivity as an ongoing, self-critical habit of mind rather than a set of external procedures or a terminal epistemic state.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the ‘objectivity’ lies not in propositions, but in a disciplined disposition; in a modest recognition that our existing answers are inadequate, and in a constant awareness of limitations in handling the possible alternative, always provisional, answers.
McGilchrist reconceives objectivity as an ongoing, self-critical habit of mind rather than a set of external procedures or a terminal epistemic state.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Were understanding to be merely an identification with the other’s viewpoint and sharing his personal suffering, all judgments about a case would be subjective. The analyst would be trapped in a solipsistic circle of empathy and there would be no objectivity at all.
Hillman argues that analytic objectivity emerges only when personal wounds are amplified to collective archetypal levels, distinguishing genuine understanding from solipsistic empathic identification.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964thesis
Archetypal psychology maintains, however, that we can never be purely phenomenal or truly objective. One is never beyond the subjectivism given with the soul’s native dominants of fantasy structures.
Archetypal psychology holds that the phenomenological epoché is itself a fantasy and that radical objectivity is therefore structurally foreclosed by the psyche’s inherent fantasy activity.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
Archetypal psychology maintains, however, that we can never be purely phenomenal or truly objective. One is never beyond the subjectivism given with the soul’s native dominants of fantasy structures.
Archetypal psychology holds that the phenomenological epoché is itself a fantasy and that radical objectivity is therefore structurally foreclosed by the psyche’s inherent fantasy activity.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We mus[t acknowledge the personal equation].
Jung insists that pure objectivity in psychological observation is impossible because the personal equation inevitably shapes both the act of observation and the presentation of findings.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
THE ‘SUBJECT-OBJECT DIVIDE’ AND WHERE THAT LEAVES THE CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVITY Since this matter of the relation between opposites is going to recur, let me say something of the troublesome subject-object divide
McGilchrist frames objectivity as inseparable from the subject-object divide, situating both within a broader critique of left-hemisphere either/or thinking and its distortion of how opposites relate.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
THE ‘SUBJECT-OBJECT DIVIDE’ AND WHERE THAT LEAVES THE CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVITY Since this matter of the relation between opposites is going to recur, let me say something of the troublesome subject-object divide
McGilchrist frames objectivity as inseparable from the subject-object divide, situating both within a broader critique of left-hemisphere either/or thinking and its distortion of how opposites relate.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
‘objectivity can only be the author’s, and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel’. Any statement about anything is always both an inclusion and an exclusion, its meaning derived both from what is said and what is not.
Via Tarkovsky, McGilchrist demonstrates that every claim to objectivity is constitutively selective, embedding irreducible authorial subjectivity within apparently neutral representation.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
‘objectivity can only be the author’s, and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel’. Any statement about anything is always both an inclusion and an exclusion, its meaning derived both from what is said and what is not.
Via Tarkovsky, McGilchrist demonstrates that every claim to objectivity is constitutively selective, embedding irreducible authorial subjectivity within apparently neutral representation.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
training aims at increasing objectivity. When suicide is the problem of the hour an analyst should be expected to have achieved a conscious point of view beyond his subjective concerns.
Hillman defines analytic objectivity as an achieved openness that transcends both personal bias and collective moral opinion, requiring deliberate training rather than natural endowment.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting
We just waste a lot of time and money pretending we’re avoiding it, and then kid ourselves that the outcome was ‘objective’ – a more dangerous position, because it introduces complacency and is a much more difficult thing to fight, precisely because of its appearance of objectivity.
McGilchrist argues that the pretence of achieved objectivity is more epistemically dangerous than acknowledged bias because it generates complacency and conceals its own partiality.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
We just waste a lot of time and money pretending we’re avoiding it, and then kid ourselves that the outcome was ‘objective’ – a more dangerous position, because it introduces complacency and is a much more difficult thing to fight, precisely because of its appearance of objectivity.
McGilchrist argues that the pretence of achieved objectivity is more epistemically dangerous than acknowledged bias because it generates complacency and conceals its own partiality.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust … not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second’s notice.
Through Polanyi, McGilchrist exposes the reductio ad absurdum of a purely external, perspective-free objectivity, showing it entails the erasure of human relevance from inquiry.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust … not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second’s notice.
Through Polanyi, McGilchrist exposes the reductio ad absurdum of a purely external, perspective-free objectivity, showing it entails the erasure of human relevance from inquiry.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
‘Bias for impartiality is as much a bias as is partisan prejudice, though it is a radically different quality of bias’, wrote John Dewey … A standpoint which is nowhere in particular and from which things are not seen at a special angle is an absurdity.
Via Dewey, McGilchrist argues that the aspiration to a view from nowhere is self-defeating, while insisting that not all standpoints are of equal value—the richest perspective requires inhabiting multiple points of view.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
‘Bias for impartiality is as much a bias as is partisan prejudice, though it is a radically different quality of bias’, wrote John Dewey … A standpoint which is nowhere in particular and from which things are not seen at a special angle is an absurdity.
Via Dewey, McGilchrist argues that the aspiration to a view from nowhere is self-defeating, while insisting that not all standpoints are of equal value—the richest perspective requires inhabiting multiple points of view.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
our psychological judgment is neither objective nor independent but is enslaved to affect. This truth holds good for the majority of men, and on it rests the psychological possibility of murderous wars
Jung identifies affect-enslaved judgment as the normal condition of consciousness, making genuine psychological objectivity a rare and ethically consequential achievement rather than a default state.
, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
Is not every experience, even in the best of circumstances, at least fifty-per-cent subjective interpretation? On the other hand, the subject is also an objective fact, a piece of the world.
Jung dissolves the sharp subject-object dichotomy by arguing that subjectivity is itself an objective datum of the world, grounding even the most personal experience in universal facticity.
, Collected Works Volume 1: Psychiatric Studies, 1902supporting
objectivity is a relative term because what is objectively perceived is by definition to some extent subjectively conceived of.
Winnicott introduces a developmental-clinical qualification, arguing that objectivity is not a fixed epistemic category but a gradient shaped by the degree to which external reality has been distinguished from inner experience.
, Playing and Reality, 1971supporting
The polarity between the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ points of view is a creation of the left hemisphere’s analytic disposition. In reality there can be neither absolutely, only a choice between a betweenness which acknowledges itself, and one which denies its own nature.
McGilchrist locates the subject-object polarity as a specifically left-hemispheric construction, arguing that both poles are abstractions from an irreducible relational betweenness.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
Freud, for most of his life, considered countertransference as an obnoxious interference of the analyst’s pure position as observer of the analysand.
Papadopoulos contrasts Freud’s pursuit of analytic objectivity through elimination of countertransference with Jung’s positive revaluation of it as an epistemologically necessary instrument.
, The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006aside
the subjective factor has, from the earliest times and among all peoples, remained in large measure constant, elementary perceptions and cognitions being almost universally the same, it is a reality that is just as firmly established as the external object.
Jung elevates the subjective factor to objective standing by demonstrating its cross-cultural constancy, thereby complicating any simple opposition between subjective bias and objective truth.
, Psychological Types, 1921aside
objectivity, 66-72 … otherness, relating to, 62-63, 66-72, 91-92
Jacoby’s index collocates objectivity with the problem of relating to otherness in the analytic encounter, indicating its conceptual proximity to transference, narcissism, and the Logos function.
, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984aside