Samuels Bridges Developmental and Archetypal

Samuels is formally a member of the Developmental School — his name appears in its column in the classification figure (Samuels 1985, Fig. 2, p. 17) — but his theoretical work consistently builds bridges to the Archetypal School. The bridge runs along two lines.

The first line is the reading of images as themselves active agencies of psyche. Samuels notes that while the Archetypal School takes imagery as primary, the Developmental School has also “done much work to resolve the question of how unconscious imagery leads to emotion and affect” (Samuels 1985, p. 212) — image is not encoded feeling but active agency in both frames.

The second line is the [[mundus-imaginalis-two-person|two-person mundus imaginalis]]. Samuels argues that interactional dialectic, the Developmental School’s clinical hallmark, and Hillman’s imaginal ontology converge the moment both are taken seriously:

We can place the interaction of patient and analyst firmly within the imaginal realm without forgetting that there are two people present. Illusion, fantasy and imagery are the stuff of transference. (Samuels 1985, p. 213)

Corbin’s [[mundus-imaginalis|mundus imaginalis]], retrieved by Hillman as the ontological ground of archetypal psychology, is returned by Samuels to the consulting room as a shared dimension of experience. Hillman’s “flavour of contrivance” in dismissing development (Samuels 1985, p. 212) and Fordham’s own refusal to collapse the analytic encounter into either pure interaction or pure imagery are both held, in Samuels, within a single field.

Sources

• andrew-samuels: “We may speak of a shared, two-person mundus imaginalis.” (Samuels 1985, p. 213)
• james-hillman: “All events as psychic realities.” (Hillman 1975a, p. 138, quoted in Samuels 1985, p. 213)
• developmental-school: Fordham’s interactional dialectic.
• archetypal-school: imaginal ontology.