Collected Works Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy

Collected Works Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy is a work by C.G. Jung (1954).

Core claims

• Jung’s “Psychology of the Transference” does not merely describe an interpersonal phenomenon between analyst and patient but maps it onto an alchemical sequence — the Rosarium philosophorum — thereby revealing the transference as an archetypal process of psychic transformation that precedes and exceeds any clinical technique.
• The volume’s Part I essays collectively argue that psychotherapy cannot be practiced as applied method without a philosophy of life, making Jung’s clinical writing inseparable from his epistemology — a position that directly anticipates and challenges the evidence-based movement’s attempt to isolate technique from worldview.
• Jung’s concept of the “dialectical procedure” introduced in “Principles of Practical Psychotherapy” redefines the analytic relationship as mutual transformation, dismantling the subject-object structure of the medical model decades before relational psychoanalysis claimed this territory.

Related questions

• How does Jung’s concept of “kinship libido” in “Psychology of the Transference” compare to Erich Neumann’s theory of the primal relationship in The Child — do they describe the same archetypal bond at different developmental stages?
• In what ways does Hillman’s critique of the individuation narrative in Re-Visioning Psychology target precisely the teleological structure Jung lays out in the Rosarium sequence, and does Jung’s own text contain defenses against that critique?
• How does Jung’s insistence that the analyst undergoes transformation in the dialectical procedure relate to Donald Kalsched’s account of the self-care system in The Inner World of Trauma — does Kalsched’s model of the archetypal transference presuppose Jung’s rejection of analytic neutrality?

See also

• Library page: /library/the-clinic/jung-cw16-practice-of-psychotherapy/

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