The mundus imaginalis

The mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world, is a term employed by Henry Corbin, the French philosopher and scholar of Islam (Corbin, 1972, 1978, 1983). To use this term in an analytic context is not in itself original. Hillman's suggestion that we practise 'Jung's technique with Corbin's vision' is a precursor (Hillman, 1980). This enables us to include inside the mundus imaginalis those images that Corbin regarded as a 'secularisation of the imaginal': grotesque, painful, pathological - analytical material. The mundus imaginalis refers to a precise order or level of reality, located somewhere between primary sense impressions and more developed cognition or spirituality.

The mundus imaginalis (Hillman adds) enables us to speak of the location of the archetypal. So we begin to regard the psyche as structured by its images alone rather than by unknowable, irrepresentable, theoretical, archetypes (see Samuels, 1985, pp31-2; 1989, pp-15-65). Fordham also in a sense joined Hillman when he wondered whether the conventional archetypal structure/archetypal image split in analytical psychology has any meaning. Fordham's point was that the word 'image' in the term 'archetypal image' is redundant because no archetype can be discussed or have any being without an image; hence, 'archetype' includes and implies an image (Fordham, 1970, p.297). Hillman's version of the same argument was that, as we cannot even conceive of the so-called noumenal, hypothetical, archetype without an image, it is the image that is primary (Hillman, 1980, p.33n).

As Corbin sees it, the mundus imaginalis is an in-between state, an intermediate dimension, in his original French entre-deux, which may even have the meaning: 'neither one thing nor another' (Corbin, 1983, p.1). It is possible to see, therefore, how the mundus imaginalis acquired a relevance for the countertransference phenomena we have been discussing. They, too, are intermediate: in between client and analyst, and also in-between the analyst's conscious and unconscious. My use of Corbin's idea involves the suggestion that two persons, in a certain kind of relationship, may constitute, or gain access to, or be linked by, that level of reality known as the mundus imaginalis. For the client, the analyst him/herself is an in-between, a real person and also a transference projection. For the analyst, the world he or she shares with the client is also the client's own imaginal world.

When the analyst experiences his or her countertransference on a personal level and yet knows its roots are in the client, it is an inbetween state. To be sure, it is his or her body, his or her imagery, his or her feelings or fantasies. But these things also belong to the client, and have been squeezed into being and given substance by the analytical relationship. It would be a great mistake for the analyst to remain enmeshed in subjectivity (actually in possessiveness) or compulsive introspection or self-blame. What appeared to have happened to him or her and in him or her is truly in between the analyst and the client, imaginally real not subjectively real.

My suggestion is that there is a two-person or shared mundus itnaginalis that is constellated in analysis. To justify this, it is necessary to take the parallels further, and deeper, though bearing in mind what a further, literal translation of entre-deux as 'between two people' might suggest to us.

Corbin refers to the mundus imaginalis as having a 'central mediating function' so that all levels of reality may 'symbolise with each other' (Corbin, 1972, p.9). The parallel is with the way the analyst symbolises something for the client. The analyst's ego is a special kind of ego, highly permeable and flexible and having as its central mediating function the operation of the sluice gates between image and understanding. Again, Corbin writes of the way 'inner and hidden reality turns out to envelop, surround or contain that which at first was outer and visible' (Corbin, 1972, p.5). The analyst's countertransference response is outer and visible; what is inner and hidden is the client's psychic reality that certainly envelops the analyst. For Corbin, the mundus imaginalis is a 'fully objective and real world with equivalents for everything existing in the sensible world without being perceptible by the senses' (Corbin, 1972, p.7). In the analyst's countertransference we see equivalents of the client's internal reality, even though the sensory data for the analyst's experience is missing. Hence, there is a further rationale for referring generally to these countertransferences as images.

Of all the suggestive possibilities for analysis to be found in Corbin's work, it is his equation of the mundus imaginalis with visionary states that I should like to develop (Corbin, 1972, p.4). The experiences of countertransference, as described in this paper, may be regarded as visions. No direct sensory stimulus is involved in a vision and also the experience is not of an intellectual nature. Jung made the additional point that no deliberate act of imagination is involved either (Jung, 1963, p-327). All these facts are relevant to countertransference.

Many of the extraordinarily powerful experiences and images I have been discussing are also described by Jung when he refers to visions as 'disturbing spectacles of some tremendous process that in every way transcend our human feeling and understanding' (CW15, para.141). Jung goes on to ask: 'Is it a vision of other worlds, or of the darknesses of the spirit, or of the primal beginnings of the human psyche? 'We may add to the list: visions of another's psyche, empathic visions, analytical visions. Corbin's reference (Corbin, 1983, p.1) is to 'the organ of visionary knowledge'; for an analyst, when he is doing analysis, that organ is his countertransference.

The argument so far is that the mundus imaginalis functions as a linking factor between client and analyst and that some of the analyst's countertransference may be regarded as visions and hence part of this imaginal world. What I want to do now is to relate the proposed connection between countertransference and the mundus imaginalis to what emerged from the research project, in particular, to explore what the analyst's body and the mundus imaginalis have in common.

Using Corbin's metaphor, the analyst's body becomes less literal, a subtle body', a 'being in suspense', a link between soul and corporeality (Corbin, 1972, p.9). What I am trying to convey is that, in analysis, the analyst's body is not entirely his or her own and what it says to him or her is not a message for him or her alone. In pursuance of this healing of the body/soul dichotomy, I may add to the term 'analytical visions' another: bodily visions - 'not-me possessions' of the analyst.

It is not just Corbin who has explored this area; Jung, too, wrote of the in-between world, referring to it as esse in anima. And Jung also had something to say about these connections between body, senseimpressions, fantasy, and the subjective/objective dynamic. He wrote:

A third, mediating standpoint is needed. Esse in intellectu lacks tangible reality, esse in re lacks mind.... Living reality is the product neither of the actual behavior of things, nor of the formulated idea exclusively, but rather of the combination of both (CW6, para. 77).

Jung went on to refer to this combination as fantasy, adding that fantasy 'fashions the bridge between the irreconcilable claims of subject and object' (my italics).

Capturing what is meant by bodily visions takes me once more back to Corbin. He was interested in studying what he described as 'the organ which perceives' the mundus imaginalis; this he refers to as 'imaginative consciousness' (Corbin, 1972, p.2). The analyst's imaginative consciousness and his perception of his bodily visions, apparently so disparate, may more accurately be seen as two different ways of approaching the same goal. For bodily perception is quite different from other kinds of perception because there is no specific organ that comes to mind in connection with it. As the philosopher Armstrong puts it:

When I feel the heat of my hand, the motion of my limbs, the beating of my heart or the distension of my stomach, and do not feel these things by exploring my body with another portion of my body, there is no natural answer to the question 'What do you feet these states of your body with?' (Armstrong, 1962, p. 10).

It was this argument that led Armstrong to propose that notion of 'bodily perception' and, as I hinted just now, his use of it and Corbin's of 'imaginative consciousness' are rather similar. Whichever of these terms is used, the issue that then emerges concerns the fate of the mundus imaginalis in analysis. Corbin writes that the mundus imaginalis can be useful and productive in linking intellect and sense impressions (Corbin, 1983, p.1). Or it can-remain subservient to sense impressions and not serve the intellect. If this occurs, there is a resemblance to the analyst's remaining unaware of the implications of his or her countertransference; his or her bodily vision will not have a use.

The link between body and image is waiting to be further verbalised. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare wrote that 'imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown' (Act 5, Scene 1). If counter transference communications are both images and bodily visions, then body and image shimmer to get her almost to the point of fusion. Here we may find quite another message in the word 'incarnate', that outgrowth of 'embodied'. When Plaut explained in 1970 what he had meant when he used the word in 1956, he was worried that the religious association to 'incarnate' (spirit made flesh) had been troublesome. It seems to me, however, that his intuition was reliable. In the countertransference experience, the image is being made flesh. Where that means that the Other (the client's psyche) is becoming personal (in the analyst's body), I would conclude that an analyst's countertransference may be further understood by regarding it as a religious or mystical experience.

Before this is dismissed as fanciful, parallels might be drawn between countertransference and a well-known list of the characteristics of the mystical experience (Happold, 1963, pp.45-7).

• First, mystical states are ineffable; that is, they cannot be fully described to one who has not experienced something similar.
• Second, mystical states lead to knowledge and insight, often delivered with a tremendous sense of authority.
• Third, mystical states are transient.
• Fourth, mystical states happen to a person; even if he or she prepared him/herself, he or she is gripped by a power that feels quite foreign.
• Fifth, there is a sense that everything is connected to everything else, an intimation of purpose.
• Sixth, the mystical experience is timeless.
• Finally, the familiar ego is sensed not to be the real 'I' (see Powell, 1985).

These points can be compared to the counter-transference described in this paper. It is difficult to explain them to one who has not experienced them. The analyst does gain insights from them, often in a shattering way Countertransference states are momentary. Even analytical training cannot fully anticipate or prepare for the countertransference experience. One does feel connected to one's client, in an intimacy at once beautiful and unbearable. Countertransference reactions have no sense of history-, past and present are jumbled, Finally, the analyst knows his or her ego is not responsible for what is happening to him or her.

Koss (1986) also suggested that states of possession entered into by spirit healers may be compared to typical countertransference experiences. Similarly, in Chassidic mysticism, reference is made to a quality known as Hitlababut, or ecstasy Buber held that this quality transforms ordinary knowledge into a knowledge of the meaning of life. For the Chassids, Hitlababut expresses itself bodily, in dance. As Buber says, in dance 'the whole body becomes subservient to the ecstatic soul' (Buber, 1931, p-35). Analysis, too, is a form of dance, and ecstasy is not an inappropriate word to describe some of the emotions generated (and reported in the research project).

Corbin regards the mundus imaginalis as 'indispensable for placing the visions of prophets and mystics, this is because it is there that they 'take place' and deprived of the imaginal world they no longer "take place... (Corbin, 1978, p.4). Both reflective and embodied countertransference have their location in the mundus imaginalis, which is also the medium for their transmission. These connections between mysticism and analysis need not seem surprising. Psychology and religion cannot simply let go of each other. it is not enough to say that one explores depths and the other heights, that one is about soul and the other about spirit, one about dreams and the other about miracles, that one is concerned with immanence and the other with transcendence. It is not the case that this analytical mysticism is a mysticism of the one true God. Far from it. Analysis is a mysticism of persons - and hence polyvalent, pluralistic, many-headed, many-bodied.

The idea of a mysticism of (or between) persons is one by which contemporary theology is captivated (and this in addition to Buber's work). For example, a theologian writes: 'There is no point at all in blinking at the fact that the raptures of the theistic mystic are closely akin to the transports of sexual union' (Zaehner, 1957, p-151). The erotic dimension is introduced purposefully: transference, incest, sexuality form one spine of analysis. This is how D. H. Lawrence describes lovemaking in Sons and Lovers: 'His hands were like creatures, living; his limbs, his body, were all life and consciousness, subject to no will of his, but living in themselves.'

Throwing out an idea for a future discussion, and leaning heavily on Bion (1970), may not the analyst also function as a mystic for the wider group of society as a whole, or some analysts so function within their own milieux? That is why it is so important to keep avenues of communication open to psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic mainstream to make sure that imaginal, analytical mysticism has a context and does not expend itself onanistically and nihilistically.

So I will return to that mainstream for a while. In the way I have been writing about it, the mundus imaginalis has similar properties to what Winnicott called 'the third area', sometimes 'the area of experience', sometimes 'the area of illusion' (Winnicott, 1974). This area of the psyche lies in between external life and internal reality but both contribute to it. Of course, there are differences between Winnicott and Corbin. Corbin writes of a pre-existing intermediate dimension, Winnicott of the intermediate as a joint creation of both poles. Corbin's metaphor struck me more forcibly than Winnicott's as far as countertransference is concerned. But Winnicott evolved his ideas out of his study of what two people experience in a very special relationship. This means he had interpersonal activity in mind as well as his concern for the internal world. This helps flesh out my suggestion that we can speak of a twoperson mundus imaginalis or of a mysticism of persons. What Winnicott writes of the third area repays attention:

It is an area that is not challenged, because no claims are made on its behalf except that it shall exist as a resting place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated (Winnicott, 1974, p-3).

I will try to anticipate a few objections to what has been proposed. These could be on the traditional ground that anything to do with the archetypal must consist of the products of the collective unconscious. Mother, the analyst's anger, walking into a lamp-post - what have these to do with the objective psyche? I do not anticipate such an objection from those who have worked more deeply on what is to be understood as archetypal. Hillman, for instance, writes that 'archetypal psychology cannot separate the personal and the collective unconscious, for within every complex, fantasy, and image of the personal psyche is an archetypal power' (Hillman, 1975, pp. 179-80). There, and in numerous other passages, Hillman has reached the same place as those who, from the developmental (Samuels, 1985) perspective, regard the personal and the collective as indivisible. The distinction is that, whereas Hillman searches for an archetypal perspective on the personal, developmental writers such as Williams are committed to a personal perspective on the archetypal (Williams, 1963).

A further possible objection would be that the mundus imaginalis is too precise an explanation for reflective and embodied countertransference. These, it would be argued, are merely manifestations of the self (or Self) in its transpersonal guise, or the result of our collective unconscious heritage. I would agree that it is our joint and mutual connection to these factors that permits us even to discuss countertransference as communication. But this is insufficient as either description or explanation and may rest upon an idealisation of the self or the concept of the collective unconscious. Although it could be said that archetypal images have a power that enables them to be experienced as collective, I would prefer to say that images that turn out to be collective then generate an archetypal power.

For another group of objectors, the concept of projective identification may be sufficient to explain the aspects of countertransference phenomena I have been discussing. However, projective identification, while undoubtedly playing a part in the formation of transference and countertransference, lacks something as an explanatory theory. In fact, as Meltzer points out, 'we are still in the process of discovering what projective identification "means". Meltzer's suggestion is that projective identification is an 'empty' concept, the result of an intuition of Klein's, and requiring clinical substantiation which, in the nature of things, will in fact be based on the use of the concept itself, for analysts cannot ignore it (Meltzer, 1978, pp.38-9). The mundus imaginalis hypothesis can be used alongside the concept of projective identification by postulating on what projective identification is based, and then what it is that enables its operation to take place. Using words from other disciplines, the search is, respectively, for the 'rhizome' that nurtures projective identification and for the 'ether' that facilitates its transmission. Such factors would, by definition, be 'objective' (that is, collective or nonpersonal) and also require distinguishing from projective identification as a defence mechanism for an individual, even with an extension of its meaning to include normal, lifelong mental functioning.

By bringing in the images of the ether and a rhizome, I am trying to challenge the notion of empty space. We don't need to ask why projections travel, because they don't travel - the individuals concerned are already linked. It seems that the mundus imaginalis hypothesis fits in well with theories of personality development that postulate an initial togetherness, with fantasies of oneness. The baby in a state of being and the baby's objects are one (cf, Winnicott, 1974, p.80).

The interpersonal and the intrapsychic: on persons and images

Up to now, I have been acting as matchmaker for two views of analysis and therapy: one empirical and the other poetic, one in which countertransference becomes the root of the analyst's technique of interpretation and one in which such a clinical confine is anathema. Fordham's technique with Hillman's vision? The offspring of this particular marriage confronts us with a fascinating problem: do we gain anything from our habitual division between the interpersonal (that is, relationship) and the intrapsychic (that is, image)? What the project showed is that the interaction of client and analyst and their relationship can be placed firmly within the imaginal realm without forgetting that there are two people present. An analyst can think, feel, or behave as if he or she were the client, and also he or she can function as a part of the client's psyche so that the mundus imaginalis becomes a shared dimension of experience. When we consider or reconsider our attitude to the division between the interpersonal and the intrapsychic, there is no need to fear an abandonment of the human element. In fact, I would suggest that, in the same way that our notion of the intrapsychic, internal world includes the part played by relations with other persons, our definition of what is interpersonal may also be enriched and expanded. Then internal imagery becomes seen as linking two people, the client and analyst, and as fostering their relationship. It follows that to divorce work on the apparently imaginal and work on the apparently interpersonal is conceptually in error and practically limiting.

For it is no longer a question of opposing an examination of interpersonal communication to an examination of the imaginal world. If the idea of a two-person mundus imaginalis is taken seriously, then we must regard the interpersonal in terms of psyche speaking, and the imaginal in terms of an avenue of communication between two people, a relationship. Persons may carry imagery; imagery may originate in persons. It is necessary to see our field of reference in analysis as seamless and continuous so that ostensible 'images' and ostensible 'interpersonal communications' do not get separated, nor one gain ascendancy over the other on the basis of a preconceived hierarchy of importance. The coin is three-sided; to body and image can be added relationship.

This overlay between an interpersonal relationship and the intrapsychic image is addressed by Jung when he writes of alchemy, particularly in The Psychology of the Transference (CW 16). Looking at the woodcuts of the Rosarium, one finds it quite impossible to say with conviction that this is solely about a two-person process. Equally, what is being depicted is not just one person's individuation. The focus of enquiry includes both - the seamless field of reference mentioned just now. This led Jung to say in a letter that 'the living mystery of life is always hidden between Two' (Jaft, 1979). Or, put another way, the soul (says Jung) 'is the very essence of relationship' (CW16, para.504).

Countertransference and politics

The title of this section is a bit enigmatic, so I will give my main argument in a nutshell. Psychotherapists and analysts have in their possession a precious attribute of which they may themselves be unaware, something that would deepen and enhance our idea of the political. I am referring to the evolving body of clinical knowledge and practice that I have been describing in the previous sections concerning the countertransference. I mean especially the clinical valuing of a practitioner's subjectivity as a royal road to the client's psychic reality. Now I am going to detach the countertransference and theorising about it from its clinical moorings and insert this professional jewel in a different setting: in the world of politics. I am going to politicise the countertransference. By so doing, I will reframe and revision clinical practice: as a potential link between depth psychology and society and not as the source of an isolation of depth psychology from society (which is how critics of depth psychology usually depict its clinical project). The clinical can be a bridge to a new way to express and theorise political dissent. It will be a radical version of the clinical. Deconstruction of the opposition between the disciplines of depth psychology and politics leads to the advocacy of their occasional hybridisation.

I hope to indicate a practical contribution that depth psychology can make to working through, in a positive but critical spirit, the insight of contemporary feminism that the personal is also political. That insight supports a political valuing of a citizen's subjectivity as a royal road to the culture's social reality. I want to underscore the analogy I have made: in the world of the consulting room, as we have seen, the move is from the analyst's subjectivity to an understanding of the client's psychic reality; in the world of politics, the move is from the citizen's subjectivity to an understanding of the culture's social reality. We can take a sentence from a clinical text like this one of Christopher Bollas's (1987, p.208) and rewrite it in more political terms: 'It is essential to find some way to put forward for analytic investigation that which is occurring in the analyst as a purely subjective and private experience.' It becomes: 'It is essential to find some way to put forward for political investigation that which is occurring in the citizen as a purely subjective and private experience.'

Several art and literary critics have referred explicitly to providing therapy for an art work or text (Kuhns, 1983; Spitz, 1985). Some historians also seem to regard themselves as offering therapy to their topics of interest (Figlio, 1988). And the imagery of psychotherapy already permeates the environmental movement (ecopsychology). So it is not absolutely necessary to have a client in human form in order to do psychotherapy and analysis. It seems clear that one cannot simply evacuate the clinical element from so-called academic depth psychology. The clinical is the distinguishing feature of depth psychology. As John Forrester puts it, 'the conceptual system of transference-countertransference is built around the questions: What is an analyst? What is his or her desire?' (Forrester, 1990, p.240).

I want to relocate the very idea of countertransference so that it lies between clinical analysis and political analysis. For instance, I would say that, just as in clinical analysis, in political analysis the analyst's bodily reactions are an important part of the picture: the body is an organ of information. Bodily reactions to the surface of modem life, its sounds, smells, textures and shapes; bodily reactions to the demands of modern life, its crush, bustle, hassle and artery-blocking stresses. Bodily reactions, worked on and distilled in ways familiar to the clinical analyst, lead the political analyst to the heart of the culture and its political problems. The body of the political analyst leads in a spontaneous political analysis.

Bodily reactions and an understanding of them are starting to figure in the clinical literature on countertransference. Can the body be an instrument of political analysis? If so, then it is to the 'wisdom' of the body that we must turn as one way of politicising what we know about countertransference. In existing political discourse, there is no psychologically valid account of how we can take fear, disgust, a sense of contamination, anger and all the rest of the somatic lexicon as indicators of our political judgments. It is up to depth psychologists to provide such an account, an account of the body as a discourse of power, even a record of power (especially in the case of the female body).

Though a body-based analysis of political themes and problems will take place spontaneously, it is nevertheless possible to sketch out three stages or rather levels of a somatic analysis of the political. First, a thorough exploration of the bodily state, both the body as a whole and its constituent parts. I think this requires practice and training and an atmosphere and setting that is friendly to the enterprise. Second, we have to learn the particular language of the body when it engages in political discourse. We need to focus, clarify, differentiate and describe the somatic vocabulary and the bodily imagery. Third, we would make explicit the implicit meanings of such imagery in an act of interpretation. I believe a start has been made on each of these three stages or levels within the relatively new discipline of dance movement therapy (Chodorow, 1991-1 K. Stanton, 1991; Wyman, 1991, personal communication).

I am arguing that analytic and psychotherapeutic method serves as a base for a form of political analysis, or approach to political problems, that goes far beyond the rationalistic limitations of much political theory. Political analysis that is infused with depth psychology is a way to make the personal political, highlighting the relationship between individual and society. Affect, bodily sensations, wild fantasy, are all reframed and re-evaluated as the tools of political analysis — just as, via our theorising about countertransference, they have been reframed and reevaluated as the tools of clinical analysis.

Up to now, having empathy with a political problem has been seen from the standpoint of conventional politics as having an 'emotional' reaction to the problem (and nothing kind is meant by the word emotional in this context). Being emotional about politics is too often seen as being biased, unreliable, 'unsound', and sometimes even as having a 'feminine' attitude to politics (again, nothing kind meant by feminine here). My position is that, by accepting the parallels with countertransference in clinical analysis, the realism and utility of a politics that incorporates a subjective (and maybe an irrational) enquiry is established.

There are many implications in the advocacy of a subjective politics, a politics over which hovers that charged word 'feminine'. A subjective politics is available to both sexes - as is an 'objective' politics - but this recognition needs to be coupled with a sense that one of the features of a subjective politics is to back up the necessity for women to find a collective voice in relation to a male-dominated social reality. A subjective politics, in which women may have a significant role, must surely mount its challenge to injustice and oppression in diverse ways according to personal, socioeconomic and other circumstances. This diversity lessens the chances of replacing one hegemony by another. Making a subjective politics enables us to look at how women are denied access to political power as well as working out how to marry subjectivity to political discourse. To paraphrase Juliet Mitchell, if femininity in politics is by definition subjective, feminism is the demand for the right to be subjective in politics (Mitchell, 1984, p. 117).

The 'masculine' cast of so-called objective political analysis may have its roots in the psychological need of children to move away from a dependent relationship with either mother or father or both. To help themselves achieve personal boundaries, some individuals tip over into a rather rigid attitude to the world with an accent on distance and precision. This comes through as political 'objectivity' and is experienced as incontrovertibly objective even when its objectivity is exposed by others as being a disguised subjectivity. There are many in politics with such an outlook which I see as having been adopted for identity-saving reasons and not as a rejection of the mother or of femininity (though it can look and has been theorised like that). The feeling of being politically objective imparts a bleak political strength. But those who continue to maintain their political objectivity are uncomfortable with feeling deeply involved in social and political problematics. They fear that muddled feelings will inevitably lead to a return to the parental corral. So politics can only be approached from outside, as it were, because staying outside avoids a merger with the parent/political problematic - a merger that is experienced as identity-threatening. Subjective politics will or will not come into practical being depending on whether the psychological seductions of political objectivity can be overcome.

A question is bound to be raised concerning the untrammelled use of subjectivity in political discourse. Does this not lead to undesirable mass hysterias, such as Nazism or racism, or to markedly populist leaders such as Mrs Thatcher? And you want more of this? As far as mass movements go, I think the exact opposite argument can be made: that they destroy rather than foster the space for subjectivity in politics, in that mass movements are hostile to whatever is peculiar to an individual subject and his or her psychological functioning.

Thinking of populist leaders, if one sees them as therapists of the world, then they resemble those guru-like therapists who approach their clients with assumptions as to what constitutes well-being and how to achieve it. We know that those kinds of therapists are not working out of countertransference at all, and nor are populist leaders like Mrs Thatcher. They are not responding to the client; they're imposing something upon the client out of their own systems of belief. just as guru-therapists often get good results in the very short term, so, too, populist leaders seem to offer quick solutions to political problems. But, in both instances, before very long the complexity and incorrigibility of psychological or political problems defeats these magical cures. You could say that the problem starts to resist a solution that does not arise from itself - its history, its distinguishing features, its needs, its goals, and so forth.

Subjectivity and the politics of the sublime

I believe that we can make an explicit link between how therapists and analysts actually work and what is needed in today's political world. My belief is that developing a psychological take on politics is not just an issue for the educated, chattering classes or for New Agers. Many people want to know how they can translate their heartfelt emotional, imaginative and bodily responses to Bosnia, to ecological disaster, to homelessness, to poverty everywhere, into action. How can they begin to make use of their private reactions to public events? Could citizens become therapists of the world, citizens-as-therapists?

Closing the gap between private vision and public policy is almost the key background political issue of our times. It is -certainly something mainstream politicians should pay attention to. But how can we translate our passionately held political convictions - shall we call them political dreams? - into something that actually works on the ground?

Over the past few years, I have been running workshops and conferences on psychological approaches to politics in several countries. In this work and in my daily clinical practice I have concluded that people are much more 'political' than they thought they were. They know more about the political events of the day than they think they do - though this knowledge does not always take the form of a grasp of statistics or history. Gradually, participants discover that, all their lives, they have been living in a political world about which they had always been informed at some level. It has been fascinating hearing about people's first memories of political events, their first recognition that there is something one could call a political system, the first time that they had to face up to the fact that there are many competing ideas about how to run that system.

Similarly, what often emerges in these events is that people do have more and stronger political commitments than they knew about - a kind of 'repression' has been in operation. These commitments need time to emerge and are not always found by signing petitions, going on demonstrations, or voting.

These hidden, buried, silent sources of political wisdom lie in the private, secret 'countertransference' reactions everyone has to what is going on in the political world. Yet these private reactions have no ready outlet since they are all too often dismissed as 'subjective'. For example, at a workshop in New York, shortly after the Los Angeles riots in the 1990s, I asked a largely non-professional audience to dig up and record their emotional, fantasy, dream and physical responses to the riots. Unexpectedly just doing this in a contained setting had a cathartic effect. The participants said that they had often reacted in a bodily or other highly personal way to political events. But they feared these responses - would not pass muster in everyday political discourse. Their conception of politics fitted in with how our leaders would like us to define politics - as if it were an objective activity.

At another workshop in Santa Barbara, California, the group chose to work with the theme of 'Homelessness in America'. That is, as citizens as-therapists, they were confronted with a client called 'Homelessness in America'. The audience on this occasion contained several people with backgrounds and experience in housing and related social policy areas. One thing that emerged is how rarely we do feel 'at home'; homelessness is, in a way, the more 'normal' state. Yet in industrial cultures, the fixed and stable home is always regarded as 'where we start from', in T. S. Eliot's words.

The process of the workshop destabilised this assumption as the participants renormalised homelessness. As far as policy went, it was felt to be essential to provide for periods of homelessness by, for example, making it easier rather than more difficult to drop out of emergency accommodation or housing programmes. Moreover, swapping arrangements would be needed allowing nomadic citizens to use temporary shelters geographically distant from programmes with which they were registered. (Such arrangements do not presently exist, we were told.) Other practical proposals included free depositories for possessions and some kind of ride-sharing scheme. These ideas came out of discussions that followed the citizens-as-therapists segment of the workshop.

One other workshop on racism in Britain comes to mind. There were some specialists in race relations present. We started to get countertransference images of pristine environments, such as mountain tops, beaches, lakes, all places where there were not only no black people, there were no people at all. The group started to reflect on this collection of similar subjective responses to racism as a 'client'. The group became aware of something more profoundly anti-human in racism than they had been aware of before. Most of the group adhered to a standard psychodynamic explanation for racism. You put your bad bits, the bits you would like to eliminate, into another person or group, thereby cleaning yourself up. But we found that racists actually want to eliminate themselves - either as well, or as a primary wish.

It has been experiences like these that have led me to start to speak of the psychological citizen and of citizens-as-therapists. The aim has been to work out ways of exploring how things that are usually regarded as supremely private - early experiences in the family, dreams, fantasies, bodily sensations - may be reframed and turned into useful and even transformative political ends. Individual and society both benefit.

In the workshop, the group chooses a political theme on which they want to focus. They relax, maybe lie down, and pay attention to their breathing. One person acts as a scribe. The participants say whatever comes into their mind in relation to the political theme, thoughtful, playful or fantastical, and also do their best to concentrate on and verbalise any bodily reactions they are having in response to the political theme. They should not censor anything but say whatever it is that comes up regardless of its irreverence, irrelevance or lack of political correctness. The scribe tries to write all of this down. Then the results are scanned and anything that is obviously rational (no matter how seemingly right) gets discarded. What is left may or may not fall into strands of imagery or ideas. Either way, the group discusses what is left and see if there is a pattern. When they have done this, they then have an 'ordinary' discussion on the political theme they have chosen, paying attention to what the exercise has contributed in terms of a greater sense of empowerment to deal with the problem.

Notions of citizenship have changed quite dramatically over the past few thousand years. I think that what is emerging may be termed 'the politician within'. Similarly, the idea that citizens can (and do) approach the problems of the world in which they live as if they were its therapists and it was their client can be seen as a radical metaphor for a further shift in what we expect or imagine a citizen to be. One could say 'I am going to do my politics like an architect, acknowledging the need for foundations.' Or 'I am going to do my politics like an artist, seeking the image or phrase that opens up the door to a larger perspective.' Why should one not try to do politics like a therapist?

This will be a difficult idea to stay with because it rests on imaginative notions such as that political problems want to communicate with us, their potential therapists. The problems are talking to us, the street is talking to us, the housing crisis, the problem of unemployment, civil strife - all are talking to us. Like any therapist and his or her client, both sides of the relationship - citizen and political problem - very much inhabit the same world. Instead of regarding the citizen as the client, which is what often happens when psychologists discuss politics, we can make the radical step of regarding the citizen as the therapist. The citizen then accesses whatever power therapists have. Moreover, recasting the citizen as a therapist means that the citizen is entitled to use whatever therapists do use in relation to their clients. When we start to look at people's spontaneous reactions to politicians, political events or just to the nature of the political in modem societies, what we start to see is that there is a kind of tacit, private, secret political intelligence and wisdom at work. There is a narrative and a critique of the world locked up in people's personal experiences of it. That is what feminism taught us. But this whole point becomes greatly expanded when we add that there are images and experiences of the world that we do not know we are having or have had; these take us even deeper into the political psyche.

Concluding reflections

In this chapter, I have started to look at what depth psychology can contribute to an understanding of politics, working the field between the personal and the political. Depth psychology has always been interested in the world of politics and that the interest has burst into bloom in recent years as part of a more general attempt to resacralise and transform culture. The underlying fantasy is of providing a therapy for the world, and, if this is not taken too ponderously or concretely, the apparently inflated fantasy has considerable social utility. However, it is not in models of the psyche nor theories of development that the utility is found. Rather, it is clinical method in general, and the use of countertransference in particular, that depth psychology has to contribute to political discourse and to share with other disciplines. Countertransference theory is a validation of the subjective element when engaging with a particular political problem of theme. We need to pay attention, to the countertransference communications given off by any particular political problem or theme for, as with individual clients, the communications given off will vary Depth psychology can contribute towards a politics that has new ideas about managing the irrational creatively and, in so doing, depth psychology is true to its own roots and its knowledge that there are differing modes of consciousness. Russell Jacoby points out that the potential of depth psychology to frighten the institutions of an oppressive society has leached away: 'Over the years the ghost has become a ghost of itself' (1983, p-32).

I will end the paper by completely reversing its poles. Instead of merely suggesting that depth psychology offer its work on countertransference to the political world, let us also explicitly entertain the possibility that it is joint membership of, and participation in, a political order that makes the psychological experience of a countertransference reaction to the client possible in the first place. This is a political analysis that is intended to illumine the clinical process. Analyst and client are subject to the same repressive forces. There is no personal outside of the political; the political is itself a precondition for subjectivity. That is perhaps why there is so much politics in depth psychology, the profession of the subjective.

The work I have done on a pluralistic approach to depth psychology (1989) has convinced me that there is a benign form of the politics and practices of the profession. So often, the opponent contains or represents the missing bit of oneself or what is needed to round out one's own idea But what of possibly malign aspects of the politics and practices of depth psychology? If it is felt that the institutions and practices of depth psychology are technocratic and apolitical, how can they promote and contribute to a libertarian and progressive politics? I am not sure.

References

Armstrong, D. (1962) Bodily Sensations. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bion, W. (1970) 'Attention and interpretation', in Seven Servants. (1977) New York: Jason Aronson.
Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis and the Unthougbt Known: London: Free Association Books.
Buber, M. (193 I) Jewisb Mysticism. London: Dent.
Casement, P. (1986) 'Countertransference and interpretation', Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 22,4.
Chodorow, J. (1991) Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology: The Moving Imagination. London: Routledge.
Clarkson, P. (1995) The Therapeutic Relationship: In Psychoanalysis, Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy. London: Whurr.
Corbin, H. (1972) 'mundus imaginalis, or the imaginary and the imaginal', Spring.
Corbin, H. (1978) Preface to D. Miller, The New Polytheism. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.
Corbin, H. (1983) 'Theophanies and mirrors: idols or icons?' Spring.
Davis, M. and Wallbridge, D. (1981) Boundary and Space: An Introduction to the Work of D. W. Winnicott. London: Karnac.
Dieckmann, H. (1974) 'The constellation of the countertransference', in G. Adler (ed.), Success and Failure in Analysis. NewYork: Putnam.
Figlio K (1988) 'Oral history and the unconscious'. History Workshop 26.
Fordham, M. (1957) New Developments in Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Fordham, M. (1970) 'A reply to Plaut's "Comment", in M. Fordham et al. (eds), Technique in Jungian Analysis. London: Heinemann (1974).
Forrester, John (1990) The Seductions of Psycboanalysis. Freud, Lacan and Derrida. Cambridge, Cambs.: Cambridge University Press.
Freud, S. (1913 a) The claims of psychoanalysis to the interest of the non-psychological sciences. Standard Edition, Volume 13, London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1913b) The Unconscious. Standard Edition, Volume 12. London: Hogarth Press.
Gordon, R. (1965) 'The concept of projective identification: an evaluation', Journal of Analytical Psychology, 10, 2.
Gorkin, M. (1987) The Uses of Countertransference. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Hamilton, V. (1982) Narcissus and Oedipus: the Children of Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Happold F.C. (1963) Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology. HarmondsWorth: Penguin.
Heimann, P. (1950) 'On counter-transference', International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 31.
Hillman,J. (1975) Loose Ends. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.
Hillman, J. (1980) 'On the necessity of abnormal psychology: Ananke and Athene', in J. Hillman (ed.), Facing the Gods. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.
Hillman, J. and-Ventura, M. (1992) We've bad a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse. San Francisco: Harper.
Jacoby, R. (1983) The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians. New York: Basic Books.
Jaffe A. (1979) C. G. Jung: Word and Image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jordanova, L. (1985) 'Fantasy and history in the study of childhood', Free Associations, 2.
Jung, C. G. (1963) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Collins; Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. References are to the Collected Works (CW) and by volume and paragraph number. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Kohut, H. (1982) 'Introspection, empathy and the semi-circle of mental health', International journal of Psycho-Analysis, 63,4.
Koss, J. (1986) 'Symbolic transformations in traditional healing: perspectives from analytical psychology', Journal of Analytical Psychology, 31, 4.
Kugler, P. (1982) The Alchemy of Discourse: An Arcbetypal Approach to Language. Lewisburg, DE: Bucknell University Press.
Kuhns, R. (1983) Psychoanalytic Theory of Art. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lacan, Jacques, in Forrester, J. (ed. and trans.) (1988) The Seminar, Book 1, Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langs, Robert (1978) The Listening Process. New York: Jason Aronson.
Masson, J. (1989) Against Therapy. London: Collins.
Mattinson, J. (1975) The Reflection Process in Casework Supervision. London: Institute of Marital Studies.
Meltzer, D. (1978) The Clinical Significance of the Work of Bion, part 3 of The Kleinian Development. Strathtay, Perthshire: Clunie Press.
Mitchell,J. (1994) Women: The Longest Revolution. London: Virago.
Musil, R. (1926) 'Helpless Europe', in: Pike, B. and Lufts, D. (eds and trans), Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Newton, K. (1965) 'Mediation of the image of infant-mother togetherness', in M. Fordham et al. (eds), Analytical Psychology: A Modem Science. London: Heinemann.
Nietzsche, F. (1972) The Anti-Christ (trans. Frederick Hollingdale). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Papadopoulos, R. (1991) 'Jung and the concept of the other', in Papadopoulos, R. and Saayman, G. (eds), Jung in Modern Perspective: The Master and His Legacy. Bridport, Dorset: Prism.
Plaut, A. (1956) The transference in analytical psychology. In M. Fordham et al. Techniques inj Jngian Analysis (1974). London: Heinemann.
Plaut, A. (1970) Comment: on not incarnating the archetype, in M. Fordham et al. (eds), Techniques in Jungian Analysis. (1974) London: Heinemann.
Popper, K. (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Powell, S. (1985) 'A bridge to understanding: the transcendent function in the analyst', Journal ofAnalytical Psychology, 30, 1.
Racker, H. (1968) Transference and Countertransference. London: Hogarth Press.
Rayner, E. (199 1) The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. London: Free Association Books.
Samuels, A. (1985) Jung and the Post-jungians. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Samuels, A. (1989) The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father. London: Routledge.
Samuels, A. (1993) The Political Psyche. London: Routledge.
Slatker, E. (ed.) (1987) Countertransference: A Comprehensive View of those Reactions of the Therapist to the Patient that may Help or Hinder the Treatment. Northdale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Spitz, E. (1985) Art and Psyche. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Stanton, K. (1991)' Dance movement therapy: an introduction', British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 54, 3.
Stanton, M. (1997) Out of Order. Clinical Work and Unconscious Process. London: Rebus Press.
Stein, R. (1987) 'Reflections on professional deformation', in M. Spiegelman (ed.), Jungian Analysts: Their Visions and Vulnerabilities. Phoenix, AZ: Falcon Press.
Williams, M. (1963) (The indivisibility of the personal and collective unconscious) in M. Fordham et al. (eds), Analytical Psychology: A Modern Science. London: Heinemann (1973)
Winnicott, D. W. (1949) 'Hate in the countertransference', in Collected Papers: From Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis. London: Tavistock (1958).
Winnicott, D. W. (1963) 'Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites', in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth (1965)
Winnicott, D. W. (1974) Playing and Reality. Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Zaehner, R. (1957) Mysticism: Sacred and Profane. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

{/viewonly}