Psychoanalysis and analytical psychology: a paradoxical relationship

Abstract

Psychoanalysis and analytical psychology have a paradoxical relationship which suggests their complementarity. First, the hypothesis that Jung's first aspiration was to create a vast and inclusive psychology able to comprehend psychoanalysis as a specific case is made and explored through Jungian typological theory and complex theory. Then, under the feature of opposition, it is argued that analytical psychology developed a new idea of the relationship of the individual in relation to the culture as a complex process co-determining the imaginal life of the individual together with his personal infant vicissitudes. Thus, a complex and paradoxical image describes the relationship between analytical psychology and psychoanalysis, where each of them represents a containing horizon for the other and at the same time a germinal nucleus that is contained in each by the other.