Andrew Samuels

Post-Jungian analyst, author, and principal cartographer of the contemporary Jungian field. Samuels is a Professional Member of the Society of Analytical Psychology in London and has practised in private and taught at several centres for analysis, psychotherapy and counselling. He was responsible for the analytical-psychology section of the Yale Handbook of the History of Psychiatry and the relevant entries in the Glossary of the American Psychoanalytic Association (Samuels 1985, front matter).

His principal contribution to the Lineage is Jung and the Post-Jungians (1985), which at once describes and constitutes the post-Jungian field. The book advances three major conceptual interventions. First, the threefold taxonomy — the Classical, Developmental, and Archetypal schools — differentiated by how each weights the definition of archetypal, the concept of self, personality development, transference-countertransference, symbolic experience of the self, and the examination of differentiated imagery (Samuels 1985, p. 12). Second, the post-Jungian vertex: the six theoretical-clinical variables constitute a “common core or base” (p. 14) that defines the discipline across its internal differences. Third, the reading of transference-countertransference as a [[mundus-imaginalis-two-person|two-person mundus imaginalis]] (p. 213), which holds the Developmental School’s interactional dialectic and the Archetypal School’s imaginal realism within a single frame.

Samuels is himself a member of the Developmental School (his name appears in its column in Figure 2 of the book), but his theoretical sympathies are bridge-building; he follows Hillman in the critique of monistic readings of the self and prepares the ground for his later monograph on the plural psyche. His own clinical vocabulary includes uroboric omnipotence (Samuels 1980a), the defensive return to object-less oneness through incestuous fantasy.

Later monographs — The Plural Psyche (1989) and The Political Psyche (1993) — elaborate two further trajectories: a sustained critique of monistic readings of Jung’s self, and the project of a depth psychology adequate to political life. Neither is presently in the library.

Key concepts

Major works

samuels-jung-postjungians