Post-Jungian psychology

Domain I · Psychodynamic & depth psychology · Andrew Samuels · 1985

What it is

Post-Jungian psychology in Samuels' sense is not a manualised therapy. It is two things. First, a comparative map of how Jungian analysts work: classical, developmental and archetypal schools, each a different emphasis. Second, a pluralist clinical attitude in which the analyst's subjectivity,…

Format

• Samuels specifies no phases, stages or transition criteria. He works within ordinary Jungian / relational analytic psychotherapy: open-ended, individual, face-to-face or couch, usually one or more sessions a week. His frameworks are maps of emphasis, not sequences.
• No source gives an ending criterion or session count for Samuels' practice.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• The therapist moralising.
• Retaliation dressed as interpretation, or over-accommodation.
• Burnout, martyrdom, and the therapist's envy or idealisation of the activist.
• Using the metaphor to justify closeness that crosses boundaries (see section 5).
• Disclosures of abuse, which need safeguarding responses, and erotic transference (see section 5).

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.