In the Editorial Note to Volume 1 it was pointed out that Jung’s interest had gradually transferred itself, over the years, from psychiatry through psychoanalysis and typology to the theory of archetypes, and finally to the psychology of religious motifs. This facilitated the grouping of his published researches under the relevant headings, even though some of the material could equally well fit into any of several volumes. It follows that there is an underlying network linking, in time or subject-matter, each volume with others, and that wide reading among the volumes is required for a thorough grasp of Jung’s views on any particular topic. From no single volume, whatever the arrangement, could the continuity of development be seen in historical perspective.
The present volume gives the substance of Jung’s published writings on Freud and psychoanalysis between the years 1906 and 1916; two later papers are, however, added for reasons which will become apparent. Anyone familiar with Jung’s work will be aware that references to Freud’s observations and theories occur frequently throughout his writings; indeed, the discussion of them has engaged his interest from the beginning of the century to the present day. The scientific papers in this volume, while falling short of a complete account of Freud and psychoanalysis, nevertheless give the essential elements in Jung’s changing views on this subject.
Between the years 1907 and 1912, when Jung was a psychoanalyst, his association with Freud was very close. Though the personal relationship between the two then became strained, largely owing to the publication of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido in 1911–12, Jung continued to serve as president of the International Psycho-Analytical Association until 1914. Part I of this volume covers the period of Jung’s close and “enthusiastic” collaboration with Freud; the papers in Parts II and III contain the essentials of the criticism that led to the formal rupture. The contents of Part IV are more in need of explanation. “The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual,” having been originally written in 1908, is associated with the material of Part I. It was, however, considerably revised by the author in 1949, and the revisions are sufficiently extensive to warrant its being placed in Part IV. In view of their special interest, the most important differences between the two versions have been indicated by the use of brackets and footnotes (a comparative method applied also to “The Theory of Psychoanalysis” in Part II). The essay “Freud and Jung: Contrasts” was commissioned in 1929 by the editor of the Kölnische Zeitung in view of the then current interest in the relation between Freud and Jung. It is included here because it shows the continuity in Jung’s thinking from the time he wrote “The Theory of Psychoanalysis” (1912), serving at the same time as an outline of the changes that had taken place in the interim. In particular, it stresses that the element of confession and the personality of the investigator cannot be eradicated from psychological formulations and may even be considered an essential part of them. Jung’s estimate of Freud must be seen in this light, not only in the writings in the present volume but in Volume 15, where Freud is viewed in his cultural setting. “Freud and Jung: Contrasts” and the Introduction to Kranefeldt’s Secret Ways of the Mind (1930) therefore form a basis for further study of Jung’s reassessment of psychoanalysis in that and other volumes of this edition.
The concept of personality is closely bound up with the subject of typology, first broached in this volume and elaborated systematically in Psychological Types (Volume 6). Indeed, Jung has once again declared (in his British television broadcast, November 1959) that it was the difference between Freud’s views and his own that originally impelled him to work out a psychology of types. We can see this very clearly in the publications between the years 1913 and 1921, when Psychological Types was published. The break with Freud was followed by a relatively fallow period. Except for a handful of publications chiefly in English only two works appeared during those years, but they are very important indeed: “The Conception of the Unconscious” and “The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes” (a revision of a 1912 work), published in 1916 and 1917. Through periodic revision these ultimately became the celebrated Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Volume 7), and they contain in embryo the whole future development of analytical psychology both as a therapeutic technique and as a method of investigating the unconscious. In these two seminal works and their subsequent revisions, Jung progressively elaborates and clarifies his basic concepts and carefully differentiates his position from that of Freud. They deepen our understanding of Jung’s relation to psychoanalysis in that they set his concepts of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, and the individuation process side by side with his assessment of the theories of Freud and Adler. In this respect, they amplify the papers published in Parts I, II, and III of the present volume and form the link between them and Jung’s more critical approach to Freud in Part IV.
The combination of scientific with less technical essays illustrates another aspect of editorial policy in this and other volumes. Over the years Jung has responded again and again to the widespread interest which psychoanalysis, and later analytical psychology, aroused. The Editors, therefore, have not hesitated to assemble in the same volume scientific articles with essays of a more popular nature.