In his memoir, Memories Dreams Reflections, Carl Jung tells us that, as a child, he had the experience of possessing two personalities.
Two Souls Alas is the first book to suggest that Jung’s experience of the difficult dynamic between these two personalities not only informs basic principles behind the development of Jung’s psychological model but underscores the theory and practice of Analytical Psychology as a whole.
French version of this book presentation
Also read the interview with Mark Saban centered around this book.
Mark Saban suggested that what Jung took from his experience of inner division was the principle that psychological health depends upon the avoidance of one-sidedness – a precept that underpins Jung’s seminal notion of individuation. In practice, this process requires again and again that any one-sided position, approach or belief is brought into tension with a conflicting ‘opposite’ position, in order that a third position can be achieved which transcends both of the earlier positions.
In the second part of the book, Saban takes up this principle and uses it to perform an internal critique on Analytical Psychology as enshrined in Jung’s Collected Works. He suggests that in certain arenas Jung’s personal one-sidedness – specifically his persistent tendency to prioritize the inner dimension of psychological work, and to downplay or ignore the outer dimension – undermined Jung’s capacity to fully follow through the ‘logic’ of the two personalities. Saban argues that, as a result, Analytical Psychology has failed to find a stance from which it can creatively engage with political, social and historical matters.
This book opens up a new direction for post-Jungian psychology, and indicates some ways in which, by following the logic of the two personalities, the one-sidedness that has long shadowed Jungian psychology can begin to be corrected.
From the introduction
I use what I understand to be Jung’s own model of individuation to provide an internal critique of the particular version of Jung’s psychology that has come down to us and remains fundamental to Jungian training organizations throughout the world. I am, in effect using Jung to critique Jung.
In Chapter One, I perform an initial survey of Jung’s experience of the two personalities and bring it into tension with his notion of the personal myth.
Having set the scene in this way, in Chapter Two, I examine the ways in which Jung set about developing a model of the psyche within which the dynamics of the two personalities can be properly understood.
Chapter Three looks at Jung’s attempt to process an encounter with personality No. 2 via his crucial relationship with Freud, why that relationship failed, and what that failure had to do with his early experiences.
In Chapter Four, Jung’s relationships with a series of important women are looked at in detail, with special attention given to the way in which Jung tended to internalize aspects of his outer relationships and to appropriate them for the purposes of his inner development.
In Chapter Five, I focus upon Jung’s emphasis upon the inner dimension and neglect of the outer, a theme I develop in Chapter Six, where I examine some of the ways in which Jung’s one-sided approach shows up in clinical work and political analysis.
Publisher: Chiron Publications – 2019 – 266 pages – ISBN 9781630517489 – 229 x 152 x 15 mm
Mark Saban, PhD
Mark Saban trained with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, with whom he is a senior analyst, working in London and Oxford. He is also the director of the MA in Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.
Publications
Mark Saban co-edited (with Emilija Kiehl and Andrew Samuels) Analysis and Activism – Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology (Routledge 2016) and wrote Two Souls Alas: Jung’s Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology (Chiron 2019) which won the International Association of Jungian Studies’ Best Book of 2019.
Learn more
Interview Peggy Vermeesch with Mark Saban centered around his book Two Souls Alas.