Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2010, 55, 130–144

Book reviews

Edited by Linda Carter and Marcus West

KAUFMANN, YORAM. The Way of the Image: A Life Remembered Through Theory and
Practice. New York: Zahav Books, 2009. Pp. xvii + 71. Hbk. $17.95.

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one’s own
philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one’s ultimate interpretation of the
facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one’s subjective principles.
As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.
(Jung 1966, para. 181)

This book review serves to honour the life of Yoram Kaufmann who died on 21 July
2009, following a brief bout with pancreatic cancer. The Way of the Image, his only
book, was published just a week before he died—a few months shy of his 70th birthday.
He was born on 3 October 1939 in Israel. (An additional detail, for the astrologically
minded, is that the time of his death corresponded with the moment of the most
significant total eclipse of the sun in this century.) Between those dates, Yoram was
a PhD candidate in physics (in Israel), moved to the United States, earned a PhD in
clinical psychology from NYU, married, and trained to be an analyst at the C.G. Jung
Institute of New York. At the training institute, he was in a generation of analysts who
came in contact with Edward Edinger and Christopher Whitmont.
Yoram’s primary insight and the overall topic of his book are that all images carry
within them the information needed to diagnose and treat mental illness. What is more,
images that arise from a particular person present the specific guidelines for that person.
The term he used to designate these guidelines is the orient of the image. Although this
seems simple, the consequences of following it through are quite striking. This book
explains how to find the orient and how to apply the guidelines to clinical practice.
Since Yoram was deeply concerned with the pedagogical aspects of theory (more
than the charismatic or personal parts) it was through a careful study of Jung’s work
that his methodology was fleshed out and to which it can return for reference. The
volume he taught most often was Aion (1959/1979), with Psychology and Alchemy
(1953/1980) close behind. He also referred to unpublished seminars, one of which has
come out recently as the new volume Children’s Dreams (2007).
This last book shows Jung pressing home a particular manner of understanding
dreams which is very close to what Yoram developed. In Children’s Dreams, Jung
shows how a very accurate portrait of a person can be built using just dream material
without any associations or other information. That is, he is showing the deep structure
of the dream. This is the key information and the guideline for that person, irrespective
of personal development or opinion. Part of my interest has been to trace back some
of Yoram’s aphoristic-sounding principles (such as the orient) to Jung’s writings and
to understand how one can update aspects of theory without eliminating the original
inspiration.

0021-8774/2010/5501/130 
C 2010, The Society of Analytical Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Book reviews 131

The Way of the Image

Yoram Kaufmann did not write much. This tiny book contains it all, and the first essay,
also entitled ‘The Way of the Image’ was for many years a tiny pamphlet that had been
privately printed. The book is so condensed that huge philosophical territories are
covered with a sentence or two. The whole work is seventy-one pages long and yet
addresses a range of topics from symbolic meaning to the nature of healing, methods
of interpretation, understanding transference and the corrections that emerge from
patient material (corrections for the analyst) as well as the truly radical idea that the
information for specifically how and when to reply to a patient is included in the
material itself. It would be easy to get stuck pondering some philosophical background
question while missing the practice-transforming importance of his analytic method.
For example, Kaufmann’s perspective cuts across the debate between essentialism
and a post-modern free-for-all. However the treatment of these positions is scanty. It is
my opinion that he did not, in fact, take the time to uncover the constructive dimension
of a close-reading, anti-master-signifier stance (as found, for instance, in Jacques Lacan)
informing some of the post-modern criticism. However, this shortcoming should not in
any way reduce the importance of this method. Also this points out to a particular spirit
of the book. It asks us to work an image all the way through so that disagreements can
be engaged at the level of evidence rather than at the level of belief.
The book begins by declaring itself fully essentialist. This is misleading, because
Kaufmann’s method carefully incorporates context into the process of deciphering and
applying symbolic content. However, his stance does put the stress on Jung’s principle
of the specificity of the image. He pushes Jung’s injunction to ask: why this image at
this moment is appearing in this way? These questions imply a specific answer, backed
up by evidence. Clinical stances that ignore the specificity of the image risk one of two
pitfalls. They can end up being reductive, i.e., everything looks like ‘x’, or they become
‘wild analysis’ to the extent that, with association as the defining tool, any symbol can
mean anything.
Kaufmann declares that ‘In Jungian theory, the mandates and guidelines arise from
the image or symbol’ (p. 7; italics in original). From this statement arises the rest
of the theory. On the one hand it is so very simple, and yet it is both arduous and
endlessly varied. It is arduous because it pushes the clinician to know the guidelines (or
discover them), and it infers that there are right ways and wrong ways. This idea will
be encouraging for some, challenging for others, depending on one’s attitude toward
psychic specificity and understanding of what it means for something to be collective.
This stance is really no different from Jung’s, it is just pushed toward the next logical
set of consequences. Jung writes about the role of images and comments that

it is in the way of dreams to give us more than we ask . . . They not only allowed us
an insight into the causes of neurosis, but afforded a prognosis as well. What is more,
they showed us at what point the treatment should begin.
(Jung 1955, p. 5)

This is a radical position that has lost some favour in recent years, probably due to
the popularity of the client-centred therapies on one side and the post-modern stances
toward structure and ideologies on the other. Neither one, of course, is an analysis of
the unconscious nor do they take into consideration the specific logic of unconscious
processes such as explored by Wolfgang Giegerich (1998).
Kaufmann emphasizes Jung’s metaphor of translation for understanding symbolic
content. The argument is that if clinicians use either their own or their patient’s
132 Book reviews

associations to determine the symbolic meaning then the collective aspect of the
unconscious is eliminated and images lose their specificity. For example, while
translation gives some room for artistic licence, a set of directions to the market,
translated from one language to another, should still get you to the market. If it doesn’t
then the subject becomes lost. That seems obvious but it is really quite radical. It implies
that clinicians may take slightly different routes, go at their own pace, and so on, but
should eventually all arrive at the same (symbolic, notional) place.
Kaufmann’s concept of therapeusis is also embedded in the translational method
since the correct translation allows the energy in the specific images to be available to
the patient. Again, the burden is on the analyst, as ‘It is both the science and art of
analysis to find this unique imaginal language for every analysand’ (p. 8). Compassion,
what Kaufmann called exquisite attunement, begins with this effort.
Translating the image is part of what Kaufmann describes as finding the orient of
the image. This means to extract the objective aspect of it. This is a loaded statement
and can be attacked on many grounds. However it can’t really be denied that each
image has unique characteristics—and part of the orientational method is to discover
what they are. Even if there is disagreement or confusion about the unique orient of
an image, the idea that there is something specific that an image conveys changes the
field.
To determine the orient one might ask: how does this image function, or what makes
it like no other? The functioning of an image relates to its formal dynamic aspect. The
dynamic can then be reliably translated into psychological language and the related
issues or patterns can be found in the patient’s life. This opens up new choices for each
subject, potentially changing the fate otherwise in store.
Kaufmann gives many examples of translation. He asks us to consider the difference
between a beach scene involving a shark and another involving an octopus. For
the former, let us say the fantasy or story or dream was: a bather is on the shore
contemplating a swim. A shark fin (then switch to octopus) is seen, close to the shore.
Without any other knowledge of the image, we can ask about the symbolic significance
of the beach, the water, and the shark. It is not hard to get to the idea of the beach
being a liminal area between familiar, conscious life on land and somewhat unfamiliar
unconscious life in the shallows and finally the unknowable depths of the psychoid
processes.
So what is the dynamic of the shark? It would be hard to pick a more dangerous
animal. The specificity of the image demands that this be seen as a dangerous realm or
content (i.e., the dream could have used a rabbit). If there is a guideline for the analyst
it would be: don’t go there at this time. The predictive aspect would include daring
to make a description of the patient; this person has dangerously faulty judgement
since contemplating a swim with a shark nearby is foolish. This predictive aspect is
important since if this conclusion ends up being not true, then the clinician knows
his or her translation has been incorrect. The idea of falsifiability is critical since it
represents the main way to avoid solipsism in theory-building. If a theory has no
internal mechanism for self correction, it is in fact structured like a religion.
For the image of the octopus, the situation is the reverse. One might be quite scared
of an octopus because it is so alien looking, but they are in fact not predatory and so
would represent a frightening psychic content that one could approach without danger
to the well being of the patient.
Although the unconscious uses a different (symbolic) language than conscious
processes there is no naturalistic fallacy (Hillman 1975) because in fact the context
of the image itself presents its own rule-set (i.e., if the setting is deep space, then
one expects there to be no gravity). In the natural setting of the ocean, sharks are
Book reviews 133

dangerous. So the setting of the image itself gives the guideline. If the unconscious has no
internal logic, then we are dealing with belief states. Furthermore, symbolic meaning is
dependent on the collective aspect of language. The conservative and collective aspects
of the psyche are indicated by the stability of the archetypes over time and space. This
in turn suggests that images, arising as they do from complexes that are manifestations
of archetypal structure, have a highly coherent nature.
This very coherence is what allows an image to produce a diagnosis (since the
latter is a specific type of generalization). It also shows that patient associations can
be near or far (like a Rorschach test) from the archetypal norm. Rather than using
patient associations to define the image (a method which logically denies the collective
and symbolic nature of the unconscious psyche), associations instead can amplify the
experience of the image if they are relevant to it, or they can show the clinician how far
away the content of the symbol is from consciousness and how energetic the complex is.
Kaufmann writes, ‘In general, the degree of discrepancy between the objective reality of
the image and the association to it indicate the extent of the complex’ (p. 12). One could
argue about the term objective reality, but that would, again, be missing the point. After
all,

The dream presents the subjective state as it really is. It has no respect for my conjecture
or for the patient’s views as to how things should be, but simply tells how the matter
stands.
(Jung 1955, p. 5)

The Way of the Image continues with chapters on the specific meaning of patients’
dreams of their analysts, as well as on the dreams from The Epic of Gilgamesh and an
extended exploration of the symbol of the angel. While each is interesting and helpful,
I still find the first two chapters on the orient of images and the question of what
to say, when and how to be the most compelling. The idea that the guidelines for
treatment are found in the image itself changes the way we can think about all aspects
of treatment, from transference to symbolic meaning. For this reason, the book is best
read in a particular way. As a literary work or even a psychological text, it has many
shortcomings. However as the seed for a very powerful way to practise and to explore
the psyche, it is without parallel.

References
Jung, C. G. (1953/1980). Psychology and Alchemy. CW 12.
—— (1954/1977). The Practice of Psychotherapy. CW 16.
—— (1955). Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Orlando, FL.: Harcourt Harvest.
—— (1959/1979). Aion. CW 9ii.
—— (1975). Letters. Eds. Gerhard Adler & Aniéla Jaffe. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
—— (2007). Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940 (Jung
Seminars). Eds. L. Jung, Meyer-Grass, E. Falzeder. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Hillman, J. (1975). Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
Lacan, J. (2004). Ecrits. New York: W.W. Norton.
Giegerich, W. (2007). The Soul’s Logical Life. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing.
Morgan Stebbins
Jungian Psychoanalytic Association
134 Book reviews

SCHOEN, DAVID E. The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics
Anonymous, and Archetypal Evil. New Orleans, Louisiana: Spring Journal Books,
2009. Pp. 155. Pbk. $23.95 / £19.99.

This book comes at a time when we are experiencing an escalation of problems caused
by every manner of addiction. The author takes alcohol as his paradigm to delineate
the psychodynamics of addiction using the insights of analytical psychology. It throws
the spotlight on a contribution of Jung which tends to be overlooked.
The author is a Jungian analyst with many years of experience as a chemical
dependency addiction counsellor in the U.S.A. His hypothesis is that only the Jungian
view of the psyche can adequately explain in psychodynamic terms the complexity
and the unique aspects of the addiction and recovery processes. He believes that
Alcoholics Anonymous has intuitively and pragmatically discovered these dynamics,
and addressed them in a practical way in the spiritual programme of the Twelve Steps,
but that A.A. has not been able to translate its experience into the psychodynamic
language spoken by analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts and other mental
health professionals. Furthermore, he has found that in A.A. today there is little
awareness of the part Jung played in its beginnings. He aims to bridge this gap.
Schoen bases his theory on the written evidence of Jung’s perspective on addiction
documented in the correspondence which he exchanged in January 1961 with Bill
Wilson, one of the founder members of A.A. He explores the significance of the text of
these letters fully and with admirable clarity. This offers the reader a starting point for
grasping Jung’s approach, as well as explaining Jung’s indirect influence in the origins
of A.A. and exploring the reasons for Jung’s own reticence about his perspective.
From this starting point, the book unfolds in four chapters, which deal in turn with:
the development of an addiction; the essential character of addiction; the process of
recovery through the Twelve Steps of A.A.; and finally, the significance of a particular
aspect of the dreams of recovering alcoholics.
From Jung’s statement that alcoholism is ‘the spiritual thirst of our being for
wholeness’, he envisages addiction as arising from a sense of low self-esteem which
produces a ‘false self’ persona in the individual. This can only be maintained by using
alcohol as a drug, which inevitably promotes the hidden proliferation of the personal
shadow aspects of the personality, resulting in attempts at either secrecy or total denial.
While considering this point of view, it is also relevant for the reader to bear in mind
the valid contrasting perspective of contemporary Freudian practitioners, for example
Edward Kantzian, who view addiction as a defensive reaction to many different types
of unbearable psychic pain.
The author then comes to his main theme – that addiction itself is a malevolent,
murderous force, not amenable to reason or to the types of treatment, such as
medication, analysis or cognitive approaches, applied to other forms of mental illness.
If unchecked, addiction devours every aspect of the person’s life and ends in tragedy.
He brings into play images from myth and fairytales to illustrate the transpersonal
force of addiction, which he names ‘archetypal shadow/archetypal evil’.
Because of the uniquely destructive, irrational power of addiction, only a force of
equal potency can neutralize it, and in this respect he believes that Jung intuitively got it
right when he sent his American patient off in search of an environment where he could
experience a conversion experience, which Jung said might possibly offer a way out of
his alcoholism. In the event, this is precisely what happened. His former patient found
such an experience within the Oxford Group, a Christian group which had helped many
alcoholics to find sobriety. The experience of ego surrender is what happens in what is
colloquially termed rock bottom. No longer is will power believed to be strong enough
to counter the addiction. The First Step of the Twelve Steps of A.A. says, ‘We admitted
Book reviews 135

we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable’. Sometimes
as clinicians we can perhaps do best by following Jung’s example, by recommending
that our alcoholic patients go to A.A. and expose themselves there to a ‘conversion’,
or alternatively stand by and wait for the time when a rock bottom experience robs
them of their omnipotence. Certainly trying to reason with any addicted individual is
pointless.
This is the key section of the book. The practical implications of this standpoint are
vital, because confusion in assessment can arise for clinicians. Addiction evolves from,
first, the use of chemical substances (or other objects of addiction such as gambling)
without causing harm, then to what is termed misuse or abuse, where the activity does
cause harm to the individual and to others, yet is still amenable in varying degrees
to the will of the individual who still has some control over what he or she is doing.
Addiction may then develop out of this stage, and is characterized by the inability of
the individual to control what is happening. The addiction is a tsunami to the psyche
which dominates the person’s life, whether this is obvious to bystanders or not, in a
destructive way. Even close brushes with death may fail to halt the sway of the addiction
over the individual. Jung understood this, but was afraid of being misunderstood in the
matter of talking about evil. The message is unequivocal. It is crucial for the clinician
to determine to what extent the individual is still able, if at all, to exercise control over
the object of addiction.
This leads to a consideration of Jung’s intuitive understanding that only a force
equally potent can neutralize the power of an object of addiction over its victim. It has
always been the strength of A.A. to make use of this insight in having a spiritual path at
the core of its functioning. Of course not every individual who attends an A.A. meeting
will engage directly with that spiritual path, but the ethos within the room comes about
because of the dedication of many members to that path. Those who do engage with it
are all struggling on the lifelong enterprise of searching out their personal shadow and
aiming to take responsibility for that aspect of their lives on an ongoing basis, in the
knowledge that they are far from being the omnipotent creatures they felt themselves
to be during their addictions. This is the result of the surrender of their omnipotence
to a ‘Higher power’, however they may conceptualize this.
A final chapter discusses the significance of the dreams of people at various stages of
recovery. The author contrasts those in which the dreamer ‘feels great’ or ‘feels awful’
about drinking, either during the dream itself or when reflecting upon the dream later
and he illustrates how this may reveal hitherto hidden attitudes of the recovering
alcoholic towards drinking.
The message of this book, taking Jung’s line, is that addiction is an all-consuming,
destructive phenomenon and that only a radical turn-around can bring its power to an
end. From that ‘conversion’, there is hope for the individual if he or she can find an
equally powerful reorientation in life, leading eventually to the possibility of embracing
the role of wounded healer, kept well by aiding others. This book is written with
clarity and conviction. I recommend it to readers who may be unaware of the precise
nature of the historical link between Jung and A.A. and to all who are interested in
the phenomenon of addiction. It offers a welcome antidote to the current attempt to
reinterpret addiction as a behavioural problem.

References
Jung, C.G. (1976). ‘Letters. Vol 2’. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Khantzian, E.J. (2003). ‘Understanding Addictive Vulnerability: An Evolving Psychody-
namic Perspective.’ Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 5, 1, 5–21.
Mary Addenbrooke
Society of Analytical Psychology
136 Book reviews

DONFRANCESCO, FRANCESCO. Soul-Making: Interweaving Art and Analysis. Ed. D.

Finiello Zervas. London: Karnac Books, 2009. Pp. xvi + 183. Pbk. €20.99 / $31.50.

. . . if the mind, absorbed, contemplates in itself

the reflections of the world,
it makes lifeblood of them, and creates in art
the world that resembles itself.
Thus on stone the external instant carves
Its own being, and there lasts.
(Fernando Pessoa, quoted in Donfrancesco, p. 124)

The activity of the ‘mind, absorbed’ delineated in Pessoa’s poem is another name
for the imagination, in and through which the fleeting and sometimes terrifying
experience of the eternal – as raw, living, psychic material – momentarily breaks
into our everyday immediate reality and may, if appropriately received and engaged,
become aesthetic experience in the form of an image – not as an end in itself, but rather
as a transitional form that can be related to, incarnated and fully lived out. Imagination
mercurially partakes of and mediates between the unconscious realm and that of the
ego, thereby functioning as and creating a third, which the alchemist Sendivogius called
the ‘imaginative “faculty” of the soul’ (Jung 1953, para. 396).
These permutations of the imagination make up the central motif running through
Francesco Donfrancesco’s multifaceted collection of essays entitled Soul-Making:
Interweaving Art and Analysis. Donfrancesco, following James Hillman, calls this
imaginative faculty the ‘imaginal ego’, a term perhaps less felicitous than that of
Sendivogius, as it seems to suggest a more egoic placement than is warranted.
Nonetheless, he describes it, appropriately paradoxically, as both ‘a content of the
imaginal’ realm and ‘that aspect of the ego complex that takes part in imaginal reality’
(p. 46), sharing in and mediating ‘the life of images’ (p. 1). Donfrancesco brings to
vivid life the formation, structure and activity of this imaginal ego, fully embodying it
through the fabric of classical and contemporary art and literature, as well as of his
own felt and lived experience and clinical practice. Written and initially published in
the Italian journal Anima between 1980 and 2005, the essays are organized, following
a preface by the editor and the author’s introduction, into three sections of three
chapters each, with two appendices containing papers presented at the fifteenth and
sixteenth International Congresses for Analytical Psychology, in Cambridge, 2001 and
Barcelona, 2004.
In Part One, containing the chapters entitled ‘Separation and Memory’, ‘In the
Garden of Venus’ and ‘The Imaginal Action’, Donfrancesco follows the imaginal ego
from its originating matrix-level, as it gets lost and forgotten during the process of
separation necessary to ego emergence, or buried still further in the face of trauma,
until it is ‘re-called’ through the longing of the soul (Jung’s concept of anima) for its
source. These flashes of longing, he shows, act to bridge the unbridgeable gap between
our finite existence and the eternal, awakened and mediated by our experiences of
terror, beauty, nostalgia, memory, imagination and the rediscovery/creation of the
image. Consciously engaging with these flashes as they appear and allowing them to
unfold, whether in the analytic process, in active imagination or in making or engaging
with a work of art, gradually reconnects us with the imaginal world, creating the
meanings that constitute the full realization of our lives.
Part Two is an examination of the work of several artists, further illuminating for us
the inner workings of the imaginal ego as it manifests in the creative process. ‘Towards
a Living Reality’ looks at the paintings of Giorgio Morandi and Carlo Mattioli as they
Book reviews 137

strip down and ‘mortify’ conventional images to reveal the inner, essential structures,
thereby allowing the invisible to emanate through the visible. ‘Life Inside Death’ tells
movingly how, as Zoran Music faced annihilation in the death camp of Dachau, the
act of secretly drawing the dead and dying activated the imaginal ego, allowing him
to contain his unthinkable experience in a form he could later return to and process,
constructing for him an essential truth which became his internal ‘treasure’. ‘In the
Interregnum’ demonstrates how a great work of art creates a space in which we may
experience the eternal as a symbolic, sacramental event recurring in the present.
Turning toward the clinical in Part Three, Donfrancesco looks at the functioning of
the imaginal ego as it has played out in Jung’s life and work and in his own practice.
In ‘The Longing for a Mentor’, he very lucidly distinguishes between relational and the
intrapsychic dynamics, as he differentiates the mentor as an animus figure, standing to
the father as the anima stands to the mother – a figure that negotiates not the outer
world, but rather guides us towards finding/making our soul-ground in the psychic
world. ‘Unity in Multiplicity’ reexamines the importance of the syzygy, ‘characterized
by a multiplicity of coexisting points of view’ (p. 104) and the paradoxical language
essential to Jung’s thought. Donfrancesco reminds us, in ‘The Experience of Beauty’,
how central to all of Jung’s subsequent theory was his tumultuous descent into the
unconscious, which might have torn him to pieces had he not carefully teased out
and recorded ‘the images concealed in the emotions’ (Jung 1963, p. 201), as has been
luminously demonstrated with the recent publication of The Red Book.
All of these musings are revisited and tied together in the last two papers,
entitled, ‘The Care of Art’ and ‘Memory of the Invisible’. The latter contrasts the
art and sensibilities of Northern and Southern Europe, contextualizing Jung’s ideas
in his physical and cultural landscape, while the former entreats us to approach the
interpretation of art with great care, since art is itself an interpretation ‘born of the
gaze which sees the forms of time emerge from their archetypal weft, and holds them
interwoven’ (p. 150). In this rich and varied collection of essays, Donfrancesco succeeds
in doing just that.

References
Jung, C.G. (1953). ‘The psychic nature of the alchemical work’. CW 12.
—— (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Diane Fremont
Jungian Psychoanalytical Association

COZOLINO, LOUIS J. (2008). The Healthy Aging Brain. Sustaining Attachment, Attaining
Wisdom. New York: W.W. Norton. Pp. xv + 396, Hbk. $29.95.

Two of Louis Cozolino’s earlier books for professionals, both published by Norton,
The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain (2002)
and The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social
Brain (2006) have become firm favourites of mine so I looked forward with eager
anticipation to reading this book. Initially I found that I was engaging with a very
different sort of book, a book perhaps written with the need of the interested and
wishing to become well-informed public as well as the professional in mind. I found
the style in which it was written engaging rather than academic but that nevertheless
his arguments were securely grounded in findings from the fields of neural and social
sciences, based on the premise that ‘the best overall environment for a healthy aging
138 Book reviews

brain is one that optimizes challenge and maximizes attachments’ (p. 34), and a view of
the brain as ‘a social organ, built at the interface between experience and genetics, where
nature and nurture become one’ (p. 45). Throughout the book Cozolino continues a
feature which enriched his earlier writings: that is, a series of clearly worded tables
which summarize the main conclusions of research in each particular area of interest.
I always find this aspect of his books very helpful.
Cozolino begins by asserting that the old assumption about ageing is itself worn
out, principally, that neural plasticity and brain development are confined to early
development. He comments ‘that our brains change throughout life makes sense; that
all of the changes are negative makes no sense. The simple fact that many individuals
accomplish amazing things later in life defies the pessimistic neural dogma that has
guided neuroscience for so long’ (p. 5). Interestingly he also draws attention to a
research study from the field of epidemiology that indicated that ‘those with richer
vocabularies in late adolescence and early adulthood were less likely to develop
dementia as older adults’ (p. 28). He argues that people who ‘approach life as a
learning experience, continually build new neural structures that cushion them from
the effects of dementia’. If this can be substantiated then it supports the value of analysis
in adolescence and early adulthood as it surely provides just this sort of experience.
Those who value a developmental approach to mind and appreciate research from
the field of attachment will find valuable nuggets scattered throughout this book as well
as clear, concise and helpful introductions to current theory that utilizes insights from
neurobiology in relation to the ageing brain (chapter 4), the growth and adaptation of
the brain (chapter 5) and hemispheres and hormones (chapter 6). Cozolino then moves
on to issues concerning attachment and wisdom; while his exploration of the nature
of wisdom is by necessity extremely limited, the section on the maturation of emotion
may be of more interest, particularly to those who come new to the subject.
The ageing process itself firmly reminds us all more or less vociferously that mind and
body are one; that on the one hand the aches and pains of the body impinge on the mind
and on the other that imagination, curiosity and richness of mind can help to overcome
physical distress. Cozolino comments: ‘while the body may be the temple of the soul,
it most certainly is the biological environment of the brain, and the medium through
which brain connects to other brains . . . just as each neuron needs to be stimulated by
other neurons to survive, our brains need to be stimulated by those around us’ (p. 207).
Cozolino moves on to discuss body and soul with particular reference to nurturing the
body and nurturing relationships. He focuses on the experience of grandparenting and
examines research from the field of social sciences in this area, stressing the value
of grandparenting not only for the young but for those who are kept young by the
fulfilment of this role. Lastly Cozolino examines strategies to assist the healthy ageing
mind (chapter 14): he emphasizes the value of creating a coherent narrative for this age
group and briefly reviews techniques that assist with this, such as life review therapy.
He also encourages the use of techniques for memory enhancement and argues that
social interaction may be an important factor in the successful use of such techniques
with the elderly.
The closing pages of the book seem to confirm what I felt at the beginning that
this is a book written for all who seek not to defy the ageing process but rather to
embrace it in a creative and life-enhancing way. While the book may not seem to be
one of academic substance in quite the same way that Cozolino’s earlier books very
definitely are, nevertheless his breadth of knowledge, warmth and compassion, and
capacity to seize on the appropriate nuggets from the wealth of research in the field of
neurobiology shine through. This book may be of most value to the general reader, to
those at the beginning of a career in counselling or psychotherapy, or to professionals
Book reviews 139

who deliver care to older members of the community. It is not necessarily the book for
the professional to purchase for academic purposes but it may well be the good read
to purchase as a gift for a friend, or indeed to buy for oneself.
Margaret Wilkinson
Society of Analytical Psychology

LIOTTA, ELENA. On Soul and Earth: The Psychic Value of Place. London: Routledge,
2009. Pp. xii + 330. Pbk. £22.99.

Leon and Rebecca Grinberg, in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile,

write: ‘Each migration together with its “why” and “wherefore” is inscribed in the
history of the family and the individual’ (p. ix). On Soul and Earth presents what
Elena Liotta, a Jungian analyst who uses sandplay and whose theoretical orientation
is archetypal, has made of that inscription.
This book is in two parts: an exploration of the twin themes of relationship to place
and migration, based on the author’s personal and professional experience, followed by
a collection of related essays by nine fellow analysts, psychologists and psychotherapists
alongside contributions from an architect, a theoretical physicist and art educator and
a painter.
In Part 1, Liotta begins by identifying her preoccupation as a natural outcome of
the ‘permanent mark’ left by the ‘irremediable breaks in the continuity of . . . life’ (p. 1)
as a result of the family pattern of migration identifying herself with ‘a subgroup of
persons rarely recognized as migrants’ because she suffered no long-term trauma as a
result of her experiences. This telling statement establishes the sub-theme of Liotta’s
contribution: it is a meditation on the process of the recognition of what it means
to be a migrant, and thereby the recognition of the fundamental significance of the
relationship between self and place, between soul and earth. Liotta slips between these
two themes but does not fully engage with either. Although I found this unsatisfying,
it is in accord with the author’s own intention not to dwell in clinical experience
but to offer a personal, symbolic excursion through what might be unfamiliar terrain
to many. Liotta’s writing evokes her journey; she touches on political, historical and
contemporary issues such as racism, multiculturalism, the environment and the cultural
unconscious before paying attention to the founding text, Jung’s essay ‘Mind and Earth’
(1927).
Chapter 3 circumambulates the ‘place of origins’, from conception and the womb
and body as ‘place’, to recognition of myths of creation as well as acknowledging
the contributions of D.W. Winnicott, R.D. Laing and Jean Oury in imagining the
relationship between environment, place, space and creative life. There is a brief
excursus into ‘emptiness and the void’ as an originary place of creation but Liotta
quickly moves on to reflect on space, genius loci and the sacrality of place, imaginary
geography, maps, and the journey itself, in chapters 4 to 6. In chapter 7, we arrive at
her main focus, the experiences of ‘exile, nostalgia and return’, again treated primarily
symbolically.
Returning to her clinical experience was a welcome relief as it felt that she had indeed
returned to some founding earth. In chapter 8, ‘the foreign patient’, she is at her most
illuminating, bringing her experience to touch on ethnopsychoanalysis, multicultural
psychotherapy and language.
Liotta makes clear her desire to imagine the traumatic experience of migration
differently from the Grinbergs – that is, as a trauma in its own right not ‘simply’ to be
reduced or ‘interpreted in the light of theories matured in child observation’, that is,
solely in terms of the maternal transference relationship.
140 Book reviews

This I completely agree with; however she misses, I think, a crucial factor in the way
in which the Grinbergs work with Bion’s ideas of container-contained: it is implicit in
their work that as the maternal mind acts as container for the processing of primitive
anxieties and linking of the infant’s proto-self experiences, so, too, the country as a
literal container for life and definer of identity, acts as a form of mental and emotional
containment. ‘Migration is a change that . . . shakes the entire psychic structure . . . the
less consolidated that structure, the more vulnerable it is’ (Grinberg & Grinberg, p. 26)
as the spatial, temporal and social links that provide a sense of self-cohesion and
continuity in place, that is identity, are simultaneously disrupted by a change of place.
It is this experience, in fact, which underpins Liotta’s preoccupation with the social
phenomenon of migration and the experience of being a foreigner and what that means,
but she fails to really get to grips with it. To ‘achieve the status – being an immigrant
[rather than simply intellectually knowing it] – one must inhabit mental and emotional
states not easy to endure’ (ibid, p. 26).
The second part of this book comprises useful essays that expand on the central
theme. The most satisfying being Elena Angelini, who brings her architectural eye
to an examination of the city as animated place; Ricardo Mondo reflecting on his
experiences in psychiatric hospitals as places of healing; and physicist David Peat on
the way in which moving to a new place opened up a new way of thinking about
sustainability.
Peat is the only contributor who directly takes up the question not only of where he
comes from but also of where he is writing from. Liotta does not acknowledge that she
and her fellow contributors are writing through an Italian lens – obvious perhaps, but
necessary to be conscious of the place one is writing and thinking from and through,
especially when exploring what it might mean to feel in or out of place. This would
have been beneficial to Scarpelli (chapter 12) as he makes use of Bruce Chatwin’s
Songlines to explore the Australian indigenous relationship to earth via their use of
song. Being an Italian, reading an Englishman interpreting serious local Australian
spiritual indigenous matters is bound to have its problems, not the least of which is a
tendency towards idealization of indigenous themes and the absence of recognition of
the traumatic loss to that culture of many of these songs.
Thinking and writing about psyche and place is profoundly evocative. This book left
me with the impression that there was something missing, of an unstated unresolved
tension between staying and going – the fate of the migrant. Interestingly there are
more references in the index to nostalgia than to both displacement and mourning
combined, reflecting Liotta’s preoccupation with the state of longing to return. This
pays insufficient attention, in my opinion, to the central experiences of displacement
anxiety and the necessary work of recognition of the gap between where one has come
from and where one is now.
This book would have benefited from a more comprehensive edit to smooth out the
sometimes clunky feel of the translation and to catch at least one mis-attribution
(Edward Casey, p. 70, is listed as an analyst/psychologist but he is Professor of
Philosophy at the State University of New York and author of many foundation texts
on place). A more generous Introduction to gather up the themes of her additional
contributors would have also helped. It will be useful as an introductory text for those
who have not yet taken up an exploration of these themes into their clinical thinking.

References
Casey, E.S. (1993). Getting Back Into Place. Towards a Renewed Understanding of the
Place-World Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Book reviews 141

Grinberg, L. & Grinberg, R. (1989). Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile

New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1927) ‘Mind and earth’. CW 10.

Amanda Dowd
Australia and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts

FERRO, ANTONINO AND BASILE, ROBERTO (EDS.). The Analytic Field: A Clinical Concept.
London: Karnac Books, for The European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychother-
apy in the Public Health Services, 2009. Pp ix + 223. Pbk., £ 20.99/€ 20.99.

This important book is a collection of essays from many of the leading post-
Kleinian/Bionian psychoanalysts as they work to describe, define and expand the
concepts of the analytic field. From their perspective, the concept of the field in
psychoanalysis originated from the writings of Wiley and Madeleine Baranger (1961–
62) and Baranger, Baranger and Mom (1983). With no apparent awareness of the
earlier work of Jung in this area, the Barangers arrived at many of the same recognitions
of the analytic field, its characteristics and possibilities as did Jung in the alchemical
process, the transference in psychotherapy, the transcendent function and the ‘third’.
These essays are a rich expansion and explication of the field and its manifestations
and uses by eleven writers in nine chapters. No attempt is made to come to any single
definitive consensus of opinion—in fact a strength rather than a weakness of the work.
With well-developed presentations of clinical material, each writer considers and puts
forward a range of differing variables that contribute to the formation of the field and
the activities therein. They look at how one experiences, deciphers, and makes use of
the images and emotions generated by the field. Common threads throughout support
the importance of the analytic frame in the emergence of a new and distinct ‘third’
from the inter-subjective, transference/countertransference relational setting.
The first chapter, written by the book’s editors, Antonino Ferro and Roberto Basile,
effectively utilizes clinical examples in conjunction with their theoretical model thereby
providing a more precise picture of the transformative processes of field concepts in
action.
They, as well as other contributors, ground their current, evolving work on
foundational concepts from Klein (unconscious phantasy, projective identification),
Bion (container-contained, reverie, alpha function), as well as that of the Barangers.
They specifically note that their contributions to a developing literature regarding the
field are an addition to traditional psychoanalysis, not an attempt to replace it. They
posit that unconscious fantasies are brought into the present in the analytic field and
thus are at the root of one of the main characteristics of the field, its radical ambiguity.
From the processes arising between analyst and analysand emerge a shared unconscious
fantasy, a new structure—something created between the two during the session. They
recognize that the experience of this ‘third’ is usually differently experienced by the
two participants. In examining the role of the countertransference of the analyst as
an instrument of technique they also discuss the Barangers’ idea of the ‘bulwark’,
a mutually developed counter-resistance to progress in the analysis. Interpretation is
focused on the here-and-now of the relationship in the analytic session. Each of the
various other authors brings their own unique perspective to consideration of the field
concept, and cannot all be covered here.
Claudio Neri gives a particularly detailed conception of the many elements present
and involved in the analytic field as well as additional varied origins and contributions
142 Book reviews

coming from a much broader analytic perspective. His clear and careful annotation of
these also touches on collective fantasies and myths, as well as Bion’s ‘evolution in O’
(the effects of the absolute / [for us] archetypal). The unconscious bi-personal phantasy
is for Neri the specific object of analysis allowing the projective and introjective
processes (of those unmetabolized, dissociated, orphaned aspects of self) to reactivate
themselves and become known and reintegrated, as their paralysis causes suffering.
With the perspective of the Italian school in monitoring every aspect of the field
experience, particular attention is paid to modifications in sensations, atmospheres
and bodily experiences. They are alert to the formation of images. Dialogue developing
in the analytic pair is viewed as a result of the field. He discusses the recognition that it
is through the development of dialogue that unprocessed, unmetabolized unconscious
elements are given form that can become known and utilized.
Carlos Sopena gives a very cogent historical view of the development of dynamic
psychoanalytic thinking, emphasizing that the concept of the field has produced a
markedly different view of the unconscious, but one that has been a part of the thinking
of many other schools and thinkers. He, too, then goes on to update the concept, noting
its essential ambiguity, the temporal structure of the field, the impasse and need for the
second look at the unconscious and the other.
The final chapters are written by Thomas Ogden and James Grotstein, both of
whom in other works do acknowledge and reference various contributions of Jung,
although not here. Ogden, in giving two fascinating vignettes, achieves his stated goal
of presenting clinical material demonstrating methods by which ‘the analyst attempts to
recognize, understand and verbally symbolize for himself and the analysand the specific
nature of the moment-to-moment interplay of the analyst’s subjective experience, the
subjective experience of the analysand, and the intersubjectively-generated experience
of the analytic pair (the analytic third)’ (p. 159). As teaching guides, these examples
are excellent.
Finally, Grotstein, in describing psychoanalysis as a dramatic passion play, uniquely
looks at the deeper nature of the analytic process. His discussion of psychoanalysis
as an aesthetic function, as dealing with exorcism and demonology, the analyst’s
transformation in ‘O’, and the analyst as scapegoat etc., brings him full circle to
expanding not only on many of the basic concepts of Jung, but largely embracing
them, in fact, if not in notation.
An earlier Jungian publication edited by Murray Stein (1995), The Interactive Field
in Analysis, and particularly the chapters by Nathan Schwartz-Salant and Verena
Kast, explored the field with particular emphasis on its usefulness in accessing and
working with the archetypal and the collective. The focus of the current book from
a psychoanalytical perspective incorporating the influences of Klein, Bion and the
Barangers, is particularly good in stressing the interpersonal relationship, the need
for the contained two-mind dyadic relationship, and the use of reverie and counter-
transference in analysis of the field. The analytic utility of this process is in making
available to the analyst the undigested beta-elements of the analysand present in the
field, metabolizing them into a form, that through narrative or interpretation, can be
taken back into the analysand in a recognizable or acceptable way, and be used by the
analysand for dreaming and thinking. Overall, this is an excellent, readable book, and
one that unites many schools of thought.

References
Baranger, M., & Baranger, W. (1961–62). ‘La situacion analitica como campo
dinamico’. Uruguayo da Psicoanalisis, 4, 3–54.
Book reviews 143

Baranger, M., Baranger, W., & Mom, J. (1983). ‘Process and non-process in analytic
work’. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 1–15.
Stein, M. (1995). The Interactive Field in Analysis. Wilmette, Ill.: Chiron Clinical Series.

I. Joseph McFadden
Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts

FELDMAN, MICHAEL. Doubt, Conviction and the Analytic Process. Selected Papers of
Michael Feldman. Ed. Betty Joseph. Preface by Roy Schafer (N.Y.). Introduction by
Betty Joseph. London: Routledge / New Library of Psychoanalysis, 2009. Pp. 268.
Pbk. £22.99.

Doubt, Conviction and the Analytic Process is an impressive collection of thirteen

clinical papers written by Michael Feldman, a training analyst with the BPS and current
Chair of The Melanie Klein Trust. The preface by Roy Schafer describes Feldman’s self-
questioning, or ‘self-supervision’ and an Introduction by Betty Joseph tells the reader
how Feldman gets hold of issues which are often likely to ‘de-stabilize’ the practice
of psychoanalysis. These arise from the ways in which patient and analyst affect each
other during a session. Patients may feel ‘driven’ to communicate in order to affect
the analyst as well as to be understood. It is clear that one of the ramifactions of this
could be that the analyst finds themselves off balance, resulting in an attempt to find
an equilibrium between the doubt, uncertainty and confusion that is the outcome of
the patient being affecting.
This is the theme that runs through the papers, all of which are written directly and
honestly covering big subjects like ‘The Oedipus Complex’, ‘Projective identification
and the analyst’s involvement’, ‘Envy and the negative therapeutic reaction’. Other
papers focus upon reassurance, the death instinct, parts of the self , compliance
and lastly, doubt and conviction. Much of the content of the papers reiterates
Kleinian/Freudian theory—this is both helpful to trainees and those who wish to revise.
It also clarifies the theoretical basis for Feldman’s style of working. The clinical content
of the papers focuses upon Feldman’s self-supervisory style, where he both values and
questions doubt, suspects conviction and remains steadfastly accountable to himself.
He writes convincingly about his openness to himself and his patients, always reminding
the reader of the pressures of unconscious communication.
Feldman makes it clear that he is always fully aware that the psychoanalytic
encounter involves two people and the interaction of their respective internal worlds at
both a conscious and unconscious level. This brings to mind Jung’s ‘intercrossing
transference relationship’ (Analysis, Repair and Individuation by Lambert, 1981).
Feldman shows how the experience of being de-stabilized by a patient’s projections
is the moment when the analyst’s defences are likely to strengthen and when there is
the greatest need to reflect upon them in order to avoid collusion or acting in. At the
same time, he points out the usefulness of the analyst’s defences for the maintenance
of psychic equilibrium within the session. I found this the most interesting part of
Feldman’s self-supervisory process.
What is consistent throughout is the risking of uncertainty and the exploration of
situations where doubt prevails, this is often during a negative therapeutic reaction
or where conflict abounds in the patient. Most importantly, Feldman manages to put
the analyst in a position of useful vulnerability with the avoidance of fixed ideas. He
suggests that reflection and formulation without doubt can lead to a fixed state of mind
preventing psychic change. He elevates uncertainty and confusion to a higher status
144 Book reviews

than sheer discomfort and this cannot be a bad thing in analytic work as it allows for
creativity and a closer alignment with the patient’s internal world.
These papers provide a vivid account of the way in which one particular analyst
works and how we can always learn more from such detailed accounts, regardless of
orientation. I have already recommended this book to several trainees and supervisees
and would expect to see it appearing on reading lists with regard to specific papers.
Jennifer Caccia
Society of Analytical Psychology