Post-Jungian psychology

1. Introduction

Version followed: Andrew Samuels' own clinical writings. The school map comes from Jung and the Post-Jungians (1985) with A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (Samuels, Shorter & Plaut 1986). Clinical imagery and countertransference come from The Plural Psyche (1989; Classic Edition 2015, same chapters). Political clinical work comes from The Political Psyche (1993), "Citizens as Therapists" (1994), "The Political Person" (1997), Politics on the Couch (2001), the 2006 chapter "Working directly with political, social and cultural material in the therapy session", the 2016 Warnecke interview and "The 'Activist Client'" (2017).

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, including bodily and imaginal responses, is a main instrument, and the client's political and social life counts as real clinical material. Samuels gives no phases, protocols or session counts. Everything procedural below is either what he actually describes or is marked [synthesis] [source: Samuels 1985; 1989 (Routledge contents page); Samuels & Warnecke 2016].

How change happens. Change comes through a two-person, imaginal field. Analyst and client share an in-between reality, Corbin's mundus imaginalis, in which the client's psychic contents take shape in the analyst's feelings, fantasies and body. Change occurs when these contents are recognised and worked with, and Samuels holds that "both parties are transformed" [source: Samuels, Jungpage article; Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Change also comes from holding many inner divisions together without forcing a single answer (pluralism), and from recovering the client as a political and social being. That last move can shift a client from helplessness toward initiative and choice [source: Routledge description of The Plural Psyche; Avissar 2016 summarising Samuels 2006].

2. Framework

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 [uncertain: no session frequency is stated in the sources; this is standard Jungian practice, not a Samuels prescription]. His frameworks are maps of emphasis, not sequences.

Map A: the three schools as clinical emphases [source: Samuels 1985, as excerpted on Goodreads author blog]. Samuels compares schools on three clinical areas: (1) analysis of transference–countertransference, (2) emphasis on symbolic experiences of the self, and (3) examination of highly differentiated imagery. In theory, he compares their definitions of the archetypal, of the self, and of personality development.

• Classical (Jung's own priorities): self first, then imagery or transference; Samuels was unsure which came second. Main tools are dreams, amplification and active imagination.
• Developmental (London, Fordham): transference–countertransference first, then the self, then imagery. Infancy and childhood are reconstructed in the transference.
• Archetypal (Hillman): differentiated imagery first, then the self, with transference last. The image is honoured rather than translated.

Map B: Samuels' own pluralist practice [synthesis organising his 1989–2017 material into a working sequence; not his structure]:

No source gives an ending criterion or session count for Samuels' practice [uncertain].

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section: Samuels & Warnecke 2016; Samuels 1994, 1997; Jungpage article; Avissar 2016 quoting Samuels 2006; Routledge description of The Plural Psyche; Samuels 1985 school map; IARPP abstract of Samuels 2017]

• Pluralism. Hold many inner divisions, theories and viewpoints together without forcing one to win. Practically: when two readings of the material compete, keep both alive and let the material decide over time.
• Schools are emphases, not truths. Each school ranks the same clinical areas differently [source: Samuels 1985]. Practically: choose transference, self-symbolism or imagery for this client now, and be ready to switch.
• Countertransference is in-between, not private property. The analyst's reactions are "imaginally real not subjectively real" (Jungpage article). Practically: ask what your reaction says about the shared field before you treat it as "my issue".
• No enmeshment, no self-blame. Samuels calls it "a great mistake" to stay stuck in subjectivity, compulsive introspection or self-blame (Jungpage article). Practically: note the reaction, use it, and then move on.
• The body carries collective material. "The body is often where collective phenomena lie" (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: track your bodily responses, especially to social and political material.
• Mutual transformation. "Both parties are transformed" (Samuels & Warnecke 2016); this links to Jung's alchemical model [source: Jungpage article]. Practically: expect to be changed, and supervise that change.
• Images deserve differentiated attention. This is the archetypal-school contribution Samuels includes in his map. Practically: stay with the details of an image before you interpret it.
• The work is political "always, already" (Samuels 2006, quoted in Avissar 2016). Practically: treat class, race, gender, economics and ecology as part of the person, not as intrusions on the work.
• Don't decode politics automatically into family. Political figures are not necessarily "idealized fathers or terrible mothers" (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: first engage the political content on its own terms.
• Real and symbolic at once. Depression may have roots outside personal circumstances. Ecological damage can also carry symbolic meaning (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: keep both readings open.
• Selectivity. Work politically "not with everyone and not all the time with anyone" (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: check fit, timing and consent, and take it to supervision.
• Conviction over detached neutrality, without imposing. Samuels criticises reflexive "triangulating" from a stance of reasonableness as avoidant (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: you may have and own a view, but the client's political development is the focus.
• Unknowing and humility, especially with marginalised groups [source: Samuels 1994]. Practically: ask before you assume what an identity or position means to this client.
• Tolerance is reached through aggression. "You cannot leap into tolerance" (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: let hostility toward the other side be spoken before you look for empathy.
• Subjective limits are real. Samuels names an "irreducible, subjective limit" (citing Dimen's "yuck factor") and says unconditional positive regard can't always be kept (Samuels & Warnecke 2016). Practically: recognise when you have reached your limit and supervise or refer.
• Question taken-for-granted alliance and empathy. The 2017 paper questions the therapeutic alliance from democratic perspectives and challenges the unquestioned valuing of empathy [source: IARPP abstract of Samuels 2017; full text: uncertain]. Practically: treat the relationship as something two people negotiate, not as something the therapist manages.
• The father "of whatever sex"; gender beyond fixed principles. The Plural Psyche has chapters "Beyond the Feminine Principle" and "Gender and the Borderline" [source: Routledge contents page]. Practically: separate parental functions from the parent's sex [uncertain: the phrase is recalled from Politics on the Couch].

4. Intervention inventory

A note on provenance. Samuels mostly describes what analysts attend to and how he thinks about it, not scripted steps. Entries 4.1–4.7 are school techniques as Samuels maps them; their procedures are standard Jungian practice as defined in the Critical Dictionary (1986), which is not drawn on here. Entries 4.8–4.15 come from The Plural Psyche. Entries 4.16–4.24 are his political clinical work. All step sequences are [synthesis] unless a source is tagged on the step. All example language is illustrative.

4.1 Pluralist formulation: choosing the emphasis

• Purpose / when: At assessment and whenever work stalls. You decide which of the three clinical emphases this material needs now: transference–countertransference, symbolic experiences of the self, or differentiated imagery. Samuels' school map [source: Samuels 1985] used as a case-formulation tool [synthesis].
• Steps: (1) After 2–4 sessions, list the main material: dreams and images, relational patterns with you, longings for meaning or wholeness, and childhood history. (2) Rank the three emphases for this client. Strong pull in the room points to transference first. Rich dreams with weak relational engagement point to imagery first. Crisis of meaning or a big symbol points to self first. (3) Write down which school's ranking you are using. (4) Review every few months and at impasses.
• Example language (illustrative): "Your dreams seem to be doing a lot of the talking just now. I'd like us to spend time with them before we draw conclusions."
• Watch for: Defaulting to the emphasis of your own training school. It is working when switching emphasis frees up stuck material.

4.2 Analysis of the transference–countertransference

• Purpose / when: The developmental school's first priority [source: Samuels 1985]. Use it when the client's difficulties show up live in the relationship.
• Steps: (1) Notice repeated patterns in how the client relates to you: lateness, idealisation, contempt, compliance. (2) Check your countertransference (see 4.8–4.10). (3) Name the here-and-now pattern tentatively. (4) Link it to inner figures or to history only when the client can use the link. (5) Watch what happens next: new material, a dream, or more resistance.
• Example language (illustrative): "When I said we'd need to stop, something in you seemed to shut the door on me. I wonder if that's familiar."
• Watch for: Interpreting too early, or using "transference" to deflect a real failure of yours. It is working when the client starts to notice the pattern themselves.

4.3 Developmental reconstruction (infancy and childhood in the transference)

• Purpose / when: The developmental school links present patterns to early experience, including the Fordham line [source: Samuels 1985]. Use it when present relating repeats early deprivation or intrusion.
• Steps: (1) Gather history without forcing it. (2) Let the transference show the early pattern. (3) Offer reconstructions as hypotheses ("perhaps as a small child…"). (4) Keep the archetypal or imaginal dimension alongside the personal story, so the work is not reduced to history alone [synthesis consistent with pluralism].
• Example language (illustrative): "It sounds as if, early on, needing someone meant being let down. That might be why needing me now feels dangerous."
• Watch for: Reductionism, where everything becomes mother. It is working when the client relates to the past with more compassion and less compulsion.

4.4 Dream work: compensation and subjective/objective levels

• Purpose / when: Classical Jungian work aimed at symbolic experience of the self [source: Samuels 1985; Critical Dictionary 1986: uncertain on exact definitions].
• Steps: (1) Get the dream told in full, in the present tense, with associations to each element. (2) Ask what conscious attitude the dream may be compensating. (3) Read figures on the objective level (the real person) and on the subjective level (a part of the dreamer). (4) Agree on a provisional meaning, and keep it open for later dreams in the series.
• Example language (illustrative): "If the stern teacher in the dream were also a part of you, what would that part be saying?"
• Watch for: Interpretations the client accepts politely but that produce nothing. Check the next dreams, which often "answer" the interpretation.

4.5 Amplification

• Purpose / when: Classical. You enlarge a personal image with parallels from myth, religion, art and culture, so the client sees its collective dimension [source: Critical Dictionary 1986: uncertain].
• Steps: (1) Exhaust personal associations first. (2) Offer one or two cultural parallels that genuinely fit. (3) Ask how the parallel lands. (4) Drop it if it doesn't resonate.
• Example language (illustrative): "Going down into the cellar to find something lost has a long history in fairy tales. Does anything in that ring true for you?"
• Watch for: Intellectualising, and the analyst showing off erudition. It is working when the client feels less alone with the image and more curious about it.

4.6 Active imagination

• Purpose / when: Classical. The client engages an inner image or figure while awake, usually between sessions, and reports back. Use it when the ego is stable enough [source: Critical Dictionary 1986: uncertain on procedural detail].
• Steps: (1) Choose an image from a dream or mood. (2) Client focuses on it quietly and lets it move or speak without directing it. (3) Client responds as themselves, in dialogue. (4) Record it in writing, drawing or movement. (5) Bring it to session to reflect on, without over-interpreting.
• Example language (illustrative): "Stay with the image and see what it does next. Don't steer it. If it speaks, answer as yourself, then write it down."
• Watch for: Flooding, dissociation, or fragile ego boundaries. In those cases stop or ground the client (see section 5). It is working when the image gains autonomy and the client takes a real stance toward it.

4.7 Staying with the differentiated image (archetypal emphasis)

• Purpose / when: The archetypal school puts particularised imagery first, ahead of the self or the transference [source: Samuels 1985 on Hillman's school]. Use it with clients who over-explain, or when interpretation has gone dry.
• Steps: (1) Ask for the image's precise qualities: colour, texture, movement, mood, setting. (2) Resist translating it into a concept. (3) Let the image's own logic suggest what it wants. (4) Return to it over several sessions.
• Example language (illustrative): "Before we decide what it means, tell me more about the water. How dark, how still, how cold?"
• Watch for: Aestheticising pain, or ignoring the relationship. It is working when the client's imagination and emotional range enlarge.

4.8 Reflective countertransference

• Purpose / when: Samuels distinguishes two kinds of countertransference. In reflective countertransference the analyst's feelings reflect or mirror the client's own current state, often one the client cannot yet feel [source: Samuels, The Plural Psyche ch. "Countertransference and the Mundus Imaginalis"; the Jungpage article names both kinds. Definitions given from knowledge of the primary text, which is not drawn on here: uncertain in wording]. It resembles Racker's concordant identification [synthesis].
• Steps: (1) During and after sessions, note any feeling that seems out of keeping with your usual self: despair, boredom, irritation. (2) Ask whether this could be the client's unfelt state. (3) Test it gently by naming a version of it as possibly theirs. (4) Do not disclose your feeling as such unless that is clearly useful [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "As you tell me this so calmly, I find myself feeling quite hopeless. I wonder if some hopelessness is here that's hard to feel directly."
• Watch for: Mistaking your own life for theirs. Cross-check with supervision. Countertransference can be dystonic (upsetting) as well as syntonic [source: Citrinitas lecture summarising Samuels, secondary: uncertain]. It is working when the client recognises the feeling and owns it.

4.9 Embodied countertransference

• Purpose / when: In embodied countertransference the analyst finds themselves concretely embodying a figure or part of the client's inner world, such as a critical parent or a seductive or rejecting other. This happens in feeling, impulse and sometimes physical sensation [source: Samuels 1985 JAP paper and 1989 chapter. Definition from knowledge of the primary text: uncertain. The Jungpage article confirms the term and calls bodily responses "bodily visions" and "'not-me possessions' of the analyst"]. It resembles Racker's complementary identification [synthesis].
• Steps: (1) Notice body states: sleepiness, heaviness, a headache, a sexual or aggressive impulse, an urge to rescue or reject. (2) Ask whom you are being, that is, which figure in the client's world. (3) Contain the impulse; do not enact it. (4) Use the recognition to understand the inner relationship. (5) Interpret the pattern, not your body state, unless disclosure is clearly useful [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "I notice I've been pulled to correct you all session, rather like the father you describe. Maybe that's a relationship that keeps finding you."
• Watch for: Acting out the role, or treating every sensation as communication. It is working when the client can step back from the old relationship rather than repeat it.

4.10 Imaginal reading of countertransference ("analytical visions")

• Purpose / when: Samuels places both kinds of countertransference in the mundus imaginalis, an in-between realm shared by analyst and client. He calls countertransference experiences "analytical visions" and the countertransference an "organ of visionary knowledge" [source: Jungpage article]. Use this reading when a reaction feels gripping, ineffable or as if it is "happening to" you.
• Steps: (1) Let the image or feeling form fully rather than censoring it. (2) Treat it as "imaginally real", produced by the relationship, not as your private pathology. (3) Do not get stuck in self-blame or compulsive introspection, which Samuels warns against [source: Jungpage article]. (4) Ask what the image shows about the client's psychic reality. (5) Bring it into the session only in a form the client can use [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "An image came to me as you spoke: a child waiting by a window. Does that mean anything to you?"
• Watch for: Self-indulgent mysticism. Samuels says this needs context and communication with the psychodynamic mainstream [source: Jungpage article].

4.11 The alchemical metaphor (reading the relationship through the Rosarium)

• Purpose / when: Samuels follows Jung's Psychology of the Transference (CW16), reading the Rosarium woodcuts as both a two-person process and one person's individuation, a "seamless field of reference" [source: Jungpage article; The Plural Psyche ch. "The Alchemical Metaphor"]. Use it for intense, erotic or merger-laden transferences, as a way to think rather than as a technique to tell the client about [synthesis].
• Steps: (1) Locate where the relationship is on the alchemical stages: meeting, immersion, union, death or blackening, renewal. (2) Use the stage to anticipate what may come, for example a depressive "death" after a phase of closeness. (3) Keep strict boundaries; the union is symbolic. (4) Share the image with the client only if they are imaginally minded.
• Example language (illustrative): "After feeling so close, this flatness may not mean something has broken. Sometimes it's part of how change happens."
• Watch for: Using the metaphor to justify closeness that crosses boundaries (see section 5).

4.12 Working with parental images, including "the image of the parents in bed"

• Purpose / when: The Plural Psyche has chapters on "Parental Images and the Self-monitoring Psyche" and "The Image of the Parents in Bed" [source: Routledge contents page]. Samuels treats such images as images of the psyche's capacity to link different elements, not only as memories [uncertain: this is a summary from knowledge]. Use it when the client's picture of the parental couple, or its absence, is charged.
• Steps: (1) Ask how the client imagines the parents together: what they are doing, the mood, who is excluded. (2) Explore the image's qualities as in 4.7. (3) Consider what it says about how the client links, or keeps apart, opposites in themselves [synthesis]. (4) Track how the image changes over the therapy.
• Example language (illustrative): "When you picture your parents together, not with you, what do you see?"
• Watch for: Shame and intrusiveness, so go at the client's pace. It is working when the image becomes more alive and varied.

4.13 Father work, including "erotic playback"

• Purpose / when: The Plural Psyche chapters "A Relation Called Father" and "The Father and his Children" address the father's role for sons and daughters [source: Routledge contents page]. Samuels describes "erotic playback": the parent's (especially the father's) affirming, non-enacted erotic regard for the child, which supports the child's sense of being desirable and their own person. He sees both its absence and its enactment as damaging [uncertain: concept recalled from the primary text]. Use it with clients whose sexual self-worth or separation from mother seems blocked.
• Steps: (1) Explore how the father, or a father-figure "of whatever sex", looked at and responded to the client. (2) Separate admiring regard from intrusion or abuse. (3) Notice the father-transference and your own embodied countertransference (4.9). (4) Hold the boundary absolutely. The aim is understanding and internalisation, not re-enactment [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "Did you feel your father enjoyed who you were becoming, or did he seem to look away?"
• Watch for: Disclosures of abuse, which need safeguarding responses, and erotic transference (see section 5).

4.14 Holding plural inner positions

• Purpose / when: Samuels describes pluralism as the personal struggle to hold one's many inner divisions together [source: Routledge description of The Plural Psyche]. Use it when a client is torn, or pushes for one "true" self. The procedure is [synthesis].
• Steps: (1) Name the competing positions as distinct voices. (2) Give each its full say, with its fears and what it wants. (3) Ask the client not to choose yet. (4) Look for an arrangement that keeps the difference, not a merger. (5) Revisit over time.
• Example language (illustrative): "Let's not decide which of these is the real you. Both have a case. Tell me what the cautious one is protecting."
• Watch for: Relativism used to avoid ever deciding. It is working when the client can act while still knowing the other voices are there.

4.15 Moral process: "original morality"

• Purpose / when: Samuels' chapter "Original Morality in a Depressed Culture" treats moral sense as innate and plural rather than only imposed [source: Routledge contents page; content: uncertain]. Use it with guilt-ridden or morally rigid clients [synthesis].
• Steps (synthesis): (1) Separate the client's own moral sense from internalised punishment. (2) Explore the moral conflict pluralistically, as in 4.14. (3) Support the client's moral imagination in finding their own position.
• Example language (illustrative): "Underneath the voice that says you're bad, what do you actually think was right here?"
• Watch for: The therapist moralising.

4.16 Taking a political history

• Purpose / when: Samuels proposes building the impact of political life events, the client's "political history", into understanding the person. This includes the politics inherited from family, class, ethnicity, religion and nation, and "accidental, constitutional… fateful" influences [source: Samuels 1997, "The Political Person"]. Use it at assessment, or when political or social themes appear.
• Steps: (1) After the usual history, ask about political events that marked the client's life, such as wars, strikes, migrations, elections or recessions. (2) Ask what politics the family held, and how they were lived and spoken about at home. (3) Note class, ethnic, religious and national position. (4) Link presenting problems to this context as well as to inner conflict [source: Samuels 1997]. Asking for the client's earliest political memory is widely associated with Samuels' workshops [uncertain: not confirmed in sources].
• Example language: Samuels' own questions: "Did your parents foster or hinder the flowering of your political potential?" and "How did you develop the politics you presently have?" [source: Samuels 1997]. Illustrative: "What was politics like at your kitchen table growing up?"
• Watch for: Interrogation, or signalling which answers you prefer. It is working when the client discovers links between their politics and their personal story.

4.17 Exploring the "political myth of the person" and political development

• Purpose / when: Samuels focuses on how clients "think about, feel about, explain and communicate" how they came to their political positions, which he calls their political myth [source: Samuels 1997]. The question is how someone became, for example, a "Hampstead (or Manhattan) liberal", not whether that is right. Clients may find they are "not where they thought they were politically" [source: Samuels 1997].
• Steps: (1) Invite the story of how they arrived at their current position. (2) Ask about turning points and influences. (3) Ask about direction of travel. Samuels' question: "In which direction are your politics moving?" [source: Samuels 1997]. (4) Reflect on surprises, gaps and borrowed positions. (5) Stay curious and non-evaluative about the content.
• Example language (illustrative): "You said you've 'always' been on the left. Was there a moment you chose it, or did it feel like it chose you?"
• Watch for: Debate in place of exploration. It is working when the client holds their politics as their own, more freely.

4.18 Taking political material as political ("ordinary therapy" questions)

• Purpose / when: Use this when a client brings strong feelings about a political event or figure. Samuels advises against automatically decoding this as family material [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016].
• Steps: (1) Receive the content as real and meaningful. (2) Ask the ordinary therapy questions he describes: how long the client has felt this, where the strength of feeling comes from, who told them they shouldn't feel it, and why it is coming up now [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016, paraphrased]. (3) Only then, if useful, explore personal resonances. (4) Return to what the client might do with the feeling, supporting agency [source: Avissar 2016 summarising Samuels 2006].
• Example language: Samuels: "Who has told you that you shouldn't have these feelings" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Illustrative: "Let's take the rage about this seriously as rage about this, before we look at anything else."
• Watch for: The client testing whether you will dismiss them. It is working when the client feels less helpless and less split about the issue.

4.19 Dual reading: real and symbolic

• Purpose / when: Samuels holds that economic or ecological conditions can cause real distress, so depression may have roots outside personal circumstances. Collective material can also be symbolic: he gives the Kleinian reading that "the planet does represent the breast" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Dreams of disaster may reflect real ecological concern, not only personal material [source: same].
• Steps: (1) Acknowledge the real-world referent explicitly. (2) Ask how the issue affects the client's actual life. (3) Then explore symbolic and personal resonance. (4) Hold both readings and don't collapse one into the other. (5) With dreams of collective events, ask about both the world event and the inner event.
• Example language (illustrative): "The floods in your dream are real floods happening in the world, and they may also be about something flooding you. Can we keep both in mind?"
• Watch for: Psychologising real oppression, or the opposite: avoiding inner meaning by staying only with the news.

4.20 "Uninterpretably political" dialogue: a dialogue of difference

• Purpose / when: Samuels allows some exchanges to be open discussion rather than interpretation, treating political difference as "a worthwhile dialogue of difference" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. This is selective: "not with everyone and not all the time with anyone". Check it with supervisors and peer groups [source: same].
• Steps: (1) Judge readiness: alliance, ego strength, and whether the client invites a real exchange. (2) Ask permission to step out of the interpretive stance. (3) Speak briefly and own your view as yours. (4) Return to the client's experience of the exchange. (5) Process it later in supervision [steps 1–4 are synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "You've asked what I really think, and I'll say, briefly. Then I'm more interested in what it's like for you to hear a view that differs from yours."
• Watch for: Compliance, where the client adopts your view, or a hidden rupture. It is working when the client can disagree with you and the relationship holds.

4.21 Working with the therapist's political and bodily countertransference

• Purpose / when: Samuels says responses to political material can be visceral and can lead clients to "shut down". He names an "irreducible, subjective limit" and asks when to "step away from the transference… and fight for your own identity" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Use it when a client's politics or prejudice provokes you, or when you are on the receiving end of a projection, such as racist or antisemitic material.
• Steps: (1) Note body and affect: disgust, fear, contempt, fight impulse. (2) Separate what may be communicated, through reflective or embodied countertransference, from your own political position. (3) Decide whether to keep working inside the transference or to state a limit about your own identity [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016 frames this as the choice]. (4) Supervise. Consider referral if the limit is reached [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "I can hear how strongly you feel. I also need to say that some of what you said about people like me isn't something I can just leave unanswered. Can we look at what just happened between us?"
• Watch for: Retaliation dressed as interpretation, or over-accommodation.

4.22 Working through aggression toward tolerance

• Purpose / when: "You cannot leap into tolerance" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Use it when the client hates the political other, or when you are tempted to steer the client to premature understanding. Samuels also uses Benjamin's "stuck complementarity": each side attributes the extremes to the other [source: same].
• Steps: (1) Allow the aggression full expression in words. (2) Explore its fantasies and targets. (3) Look for the shadow aspect, for example in privilege or superiority. (4) Only then explore the other side's humanity and the complementarity. (5) Expect cycles back to aggression [steps synthesis; concepts sourced].
• Example language (illustrative): "Say it all, as harshly as you feel it. We're not going to tidy this up yet."
• Watch for: Enacted threats or risk to others, which need standard risk procedures. It is working when hatred becomes thinkable rather than driven.

4.23 Supporting the activist client and the "inner politician"

• Purpose / when: Samuels' 2017 paper addresses "activist clients". The category extends to a wider range of clients than literal activists. He uses the tag "the inner politician", focuses on working directly with political material in the session, and raises the limits of individual responsibility [source: IARPP abstract of Samuels 2017; full text: uncertain on techniques].
• Steps (synthesis): (1) Value the client's political commitment as part of the self, not as a symptom. (2) Explore what the inner politician wants, fears and is driven by. (3) Help sort out personal responsibility from collective responsibility, which helps with burnout and guilt. (4) Notice where alliance and empathy may be functioning as unexamined power, a theme Samuels raises.
• Example language (illustrative): "How much of this is yours to carry, and how much belongs to many people?"
• Watch for: Burnout, martyrdom, and the therapist's envy or idealisation of the activist.

4.24 Citizens-as-therapists workshop (group format; somatic analysis of the political)

• Purpose / when: Samuels' group method treats a political problem as "the client" and uses participants' bodily and fantasy responses as "organs of political wisdom" [source: Samuels 1994; Jungpage article]. It is for workshops, training groups or community settings, not individual therapy.
• Steps [source: Jungpage article]: (1) The group chooses a political theme, relaxes and attends to breathing. (2) A scribe records everything that comes up, including bodily reactions, without censoring. (3) Scan the notes and discard obviously rational content. (4) Look for strands of imagery or ideas and discuss any pattern. (5) Hold an ordinary discussion of the theme, noting any sense of empowerment. Samuels adds three levels of somatic analysis of the political: explore the bodily state thoroughly; learn the body's language in political discourse; then interpret the imagery to make its implicit meaning explicit [source: same].
• Example language (illustrative): "Imagine 'homelessness in this city' has walked into your consulting room as a client. What happens in your body? What images come?"
• Watch for: Participants fear their responses won't "pass muster" in political discourse [source: Samuels 1994]. Samuels reports cathartic effects and new practical ideas. In his homelessness workshop, participants proposed free storage for possessions [source: Jungpage article]. His examples are anecdotal [source: Samuels 1994].

5. Handling problems

Samuels' sources say little about problem management. Items without a source tag are [synthesis] built from his principles.

• Stuck client or impasse. Re-run the pluralist formulation (4.1) and change emphasis. If you have been interpreting transference, turn to the image (4.7) or to dreams (4.4). If you have been working with images, turn to the here-and-now relationship (4.2). Check whether the stuckness is a countertransference you are enacting (4.9) [synthesis grounded in Samuels 1985 school map]. Also ask whether the stuckness has a real social or economic cause that therapy has been treating as purely internal (4.19) [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016 on depression's roots outside personal circumstances].
• Resistance and negative transference. Samuels says some of his practice still follows the traditional acceptance of negative transference [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Let hostility toward you be expressed and explored rather than soothed. Look for the inner figure you are embodying (4.9). Apply "you cannot leap into tolerance" to the relationship as well (4.22).
• Analyst overwhelmed by countertransference. Treat the experience as in-between, "imaginally real", and don't sink into self-blame or compulsive introspection [source: Jungpage article]. In practice: write it down after the session, take it to supervision, and ask "whose is this?" before acting on it.
• Client overwhelmed (flooding, dissociation, psychotic-like imagery). Suspend active imagination (4.6) and deep image work (4.7). Shift to grounding, the present relationship and ego support. Resume only when the ego is stable [synthesis; standard Jungian caution, not stated in Samuels sources]. If there is risk to self or others, follow your service's standard suicide and risk assessment and safety-planning procedures.
• Non-adherence (missed sessions, no dreams, no active imagination). Don't prescribe these. Explore the absence in the transference: what you may represent, and whom the client is resisting. Offer an alternative channel, such as drawing, a mood or a bodily image [synthesis].
• Rupture over politics. Use the dialogue-of-difference stance (4.20). Acknowledge your part. Return to the client's experience of the difference. Supervise. Samuels advises selectivity and checking this work with supervisors and peer groups [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Repair test: can the client disagree with you and still feel held? [synthesis]
• Client feels you are pushing politics. Stop. Name it, apologise if warranted, and return to their agenda. Remember "not with everyone and not all the time with anyone" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Check that your interest isn't serving your own political needs [synthesis].
• Client's politics or prejudice provokes you. Separate what is communication from what is your own conviction (4.21). Recognise the "irreducible, subjective limit" [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. If you can't work in good faith, supervise and refer, taking care that the referral isn't punitive [synthesis].
• Client attacks your identity (racist, antisemitic, homophobic or misogynist material aimed at you). Samuels frames a real choice between staying in the transference and stepping out to defend your identity [source: Samuels & Warnecke 2016]. Decide in supervision. You may state a boundary while continuing the work [synthesis].
• Political disagreement about the therapy frame itself (fees, power, "neutrality"). Samuels questions the alliance and empathy from democratic perspectives [source: IARPP abstract of Samuels 2017]. Be willing to discuss the power arrangements of therapy openly rather than interpret every challenge [synthesis].
• Collective trauma affecting both of you (elections, war, pandemic, climate events). Acknowledge the shared field. The mundus imaginalis framing suggests the analyst's own responses carry information [source: Jungpage article]. Contain your own distress outside sessions and avoid using the session for yourself [synthesis].
• Activist burnout or martyrdom. Distinguish personal from collective responsibility (4.23) [source: Samuels 2017 abstract raises the limits of individual responsibility]. Explore guilt and grandiosity. Support sustainable rather than heroic political life [synthesis].
• Conspiracy or paranoid political beliefs. Use the dual reading (4.19). Acknowledge real grievances or fears without endorsing false claims. Explore what the belief does for the client emotionally. Assess for psychosis and risk where indicated [synthesis; not addressed in sources].
• Erotic transference or countertransference. The alchemical model (4.11) and erotic playback (4.13) are symbolic frameworks. Sexual or physical boundary crossing is never therapeutic and is an ethical violation under every professional code. Contain your countertransference, supervise, and seek personal therapy if it persists [synthesis; Politics on the Couch reportedly addresses sexual misconduct: uncertain].
• Mystical inflation (analyst or client). Samuels warns that the imaginal, visionary view of countertransference needs grounding and communication with the psychodynamic mainstream, so it doesn't become self-indulgent. He contrasts responsive work with guru-like imposition of solutions [source: Jungpage article]. Keep interpretations tied to observable material and supervision.
• School loyalty conflict (e.g. trainee caught between supervisors of different schools). Use Samuels' map to name the different emphases rather than treating one as wrong (4.1) [synthesis grounded in Samuels 1985; 1989 pluralism].
• Harm note. None of the Samuels techniques covered here has documented serious harm in the sources. The main ethical risks are boundary violations (above) and imposing the therapist's politics on the client.

Sources

Sources:

• Countertransference, the Imaginal World and the Politics of the Sublime (Samuels, Jungpage; page 2 of 2 accessible)
• The Political Person (Samuels, Self & Society 25(1), 1997)
• Citizens as Therapists (Samuels, Self & Society 22(3), 1994)
• Relational Approaches to Social and Political Issues: Andrew Samuels interviewed by Tom Warnecke (Psychotherapy and Politics International 14(2), 2016)
• Inside and/or Outside? Working Sensitively with Political Material in Psychotherapy (Avissar, PPI 14(3), 2016)
• Review of The Political Psyche (Pirani, Self & Society 22(2), 1994)
• The 'Activist Client' (Samuels 2017), abstract on IARPP
• The Plural Psyche, Classic Edition: description and contents (Routledge)
• A New Therapy for Politics? / Classic Editions listing (IARPP)
• A New Therapy for Politics? (Association of Jungian Analysts)
• Andrew Samuels: Post-Jungian Schools of Analytical Psychology (excerpt, Goodreads author blog)
• The Jungian Schools: Andrew Samuels' Map (secondary)
• Citrinitas Module 2: Transference Part 1 (secondary lecture)
• Andrew Samuels (Wikipedia)
• The Political Psyche (Taylor & Francis record)

Books and papers cited (not drawn on in full):

• Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the Post-Jungians. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Samuels, A. (1985). Countertransference, the mundus imaginalis and a research project. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 30.
• Samuels, A., Shorter, B. & Plaut, F. (1986). A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. Routledge.
• Samuels, A. (1989). The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father. Routledge (Classic Edition 2015).
• Samuels, A. (1993). The Political Psyche. Routledge.
• Samuels, A. (2001). Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal Life. Profile.
• Samuels, A. (2006). Working directly with political, social and cultural material in the therapy session. In L. Layton, N. Hollander & S. Gutwill (Eds.), Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics (pp. 11–28). Routledge.
• Samuels, A. (2015). A New Therapy for Politics? Karnac.
• Samuels, A. (2017). The "activist client". Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 27(6), 678–693.
• Jung, C. G. The Psychology of the Transference, Collected Works vol. 16.