Hello Everyone,
Below you will find George Hogenson’s Bio., Abstract and chapter entitled “The Schreber Case and the Origins of the “Red Book” that appears in: Jung’s Red Book For Our Time: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions (2019).I will officially open George’s IAJS online seminar on May 15th. Until then, enjoy these materials.
Collectively sheltering,
Robin McCoy BrooksIAJS Online Seminar Chair
May 15-19, 2020 with George B. Hogenson
Bio: George B. Hogenson is a Jungian analyst practicing in Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University and his M.A. in clinical social work from the University of Chicago. He trained as an analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago. He served on the Executive Committee of the IAAP from 2010 to 2016 and as Vice President of the Association from 2016 to 2019. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and has published numerous articles on the history and theory of analytical psychology. He is the author of Jung’s Struggle with Freud.
Abstract: The Schreber Case and the Origins of the Red Book
Originally published in 1903, Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness has since seen its author referred to as the most studied psychiatric patient in history. Jung appears to have been familiar with the book shortly after its publication, but it was not until 1910 that Freud began to study the book, given to him by Jung following the Munich psychoanalytic congress. In 1911 Freud published his study of Schreber’s paranoia, arguing for the origins of paranoia in repressed homosexual desires. Freud’s reading of Schreber and his insistence that psychosis could be subsumed under his theories reignited a debate with Jung concerning psychosis that had existed from the beginning of their relationship. By this point, however, the strains in their relationship were such that they could no longer paper over these fundamental theoretical differences. Jung’s critique of Freud’s reading of Schreber settled on their differences regarding the nature of libido and the structure of the unconscious.
This seminar will examine the debate between Jung and Freud as it played out in 1912 and its aftermath in Jung’s 1914 paper, “On Psychological Understanding.” The suggestion is made that Jung’s debate with Freud was a contributing factor in Jung’s initiation of the process leading the Red Book, taking Jung’s own characterization of the process as an experiment seriously. A further argument that Schreber’s delusional system reflected the immediate circumstances of his institutionalization, and therefore left open aspects of the dynamics of psychosis that Jung would build on in later theorizing will be developed. Finally it will be argued that the debate over the Schreber case provided Jung with the final push needed to explicitly deviate from Freud’s model of the unconscious and establish the need for a deeper understanding of the unconscious that Jung would call the Collective Unconscious.