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Journal of Analytical Psychology,
2005,
50,
571–594
Fordham, Jung and the self: a
re-examination of Fordham’s contribution
to Jung’s conceptualization of the self
Elizabeth Urban,
London
Abstract:
This paper is about Fordham’s contribution to Jung’s studies on the self. It
opens with the epistemological dilemmas inherent in the subject, before moving on to
an account of Fordham’s research into the incompatible ways Jung used the term ‘self’.
There is a description of Fordham’s model, which covers his concepts of the primary
self, deintegration, reintegration, self objects, self representations, and individuation in
infancy. There is a section which discusses areas in which Fordham apparently diverged
from Jung, including how these were reconciled by Fordham’s developmental
approach. These areas include the definition of the self as totality or archetype, the
mind-body relationship, the ‘ultimate’, the origins of the archetypes, and the primary
self, the self and the sense of self. It concludes with an extension to Fordham’s outline
of a resolution to Jung’s incompatible definitions. This draws upon the concept of the
central archetype of order and how its unfolding is evidenced towards the end of the
first year of infancy.
Key words:
archetypes, central archetype of order, deintegration, infant development,
Michael Fordham, primary self, reintegration, self representations.
This paper is about Fordham’s contribution to Jung’s studies on the self. He
was well aware that the self is a ‘special case’ because the subject studying is
also the object studied and, moreover, that the observing ego is only a part of
the total subject of investigation: ‘ . . . a concept of the totality is particularly
difficult to construct’, he noted; ‘Indeed it is impossible’ (Fordham
1985,
p.
21).
Any study of the self presents fundamental dilemmas. In philosophy the self
is included under the ‘complementarity principle’. Here Heisenberg’s uncer-
tainty principle is extended beyond quantum physics to encompass philosoph-
ical situations involving properties that appear as particular pairs of opposites,
termed canonical conjugates. ‘Heisenberg deduced that when this relationship
[of canonical conjugates] holds, . . . the more determinate or ‘sharp’ the value
of one of the quantities, the
less
determinate (or more ‘unsharp’) its value for
the other quantity’ (Bullock & Trombley
2000,
p.
893).
In Michael Frayn’s
0021–8774/2005/5005/571
©
2005,
The Society of Analytical Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600
Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ,
UK and
350
Main Street, Malden, MA
02148,
USA.
572
Elizabeth Urban
play
Copenhagen,
the character Heisenberg discusses the ‘application of com-
plementarity’ to the self (Frayn
1998,
p.
69):
Heisenberg
[to Bohr] . . . Exactly where you go as you ramble around is of course
completely determined by your genes and the various physical forces acting upon
you. But it’s also completely determined by your own entirely inscrutable whims
from one moment to the next. So we can’t completely understand your behaviour
without seeing it both ways at once, and that’s impossible. Which means that your
extraordinary peregrinations are not fully objective aspects of the universe. They
exist only partially . . . as our minds shift endlessly back and forth between the two
approaches.
(ibid., pp.
69–70)
The
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
defines the self as ‘the elusive “I” that
shows an alarming tendency to disappear when we try to introspect it’ (Black-
man
1996,
p.
344).
Warren Colman referred to the elusiveness and endless
shift he encountered in the course of his own study on the self.
Trying to think about the self was like trying to grasp a jelly that keeps slipping out
of your hand. Someone pointed out to me that
mercury
would be an apt image of
this and I suddenly understood why Mercurius holds such a central position in
Jung’s thinking.
(Colman
1999)
Another expression of the elusiveness is the way the concept—an abstrac-
tion—shifts easily into reification, and the self becomes a ‘thing’ rather than an
idea. Jung had resisted this in his work on religion,
by claiming that all he could know is that psychology could explain much of religion
and denying that psychology could be used as an instrument to tell whether God
really existed apart from man. This is not a psychological issue at all and could only
be tackled by philosophy.
(Fordham
1985,
p.
179)
Fordham had tried to be clear that his and Jung’s researches pertained to psy-
chological theory and phenomenology, not ontology. However, as the reader
may find, this distinction can easily be lost when studying the self.
Fordham’s studies of the self
Fordham regarded himself as a scientist. Late in life he reflected, ‘I never really
wanted to become a doctor, but rather, after studying natural sciences at
Cambridge, was interested in the application of science to medicine’ (Fordham
1988,
p.
7).
Fordham entered child psychiatry in
1933,
just as he was
beginning to become involved in Jungian psychotherapy. His earliest papers
(1937–1943) reflected his conviction that children are individuals rather than
products of parenting, and identified archetypal phenomena in the play,
Fordham, Jung and the self
573
dreams and drawings of the children he treated. By
1947
he had observed
clinically how alternating states of integration and disruption produced ego
development in small children and, within ten further years, he had established
a model of development based on a deintegrating and reintegrating primary
self (Fordham
1957).
Fordham’s work on the self culminated in
Explorations
into the Self,
published in
1985.
The volume is a
tour de force
of comprehen-
sion, intellect and Fordham’s particular kind of vision, and it is disappointing
that the editing of this volume did not match the quality of the author’s work.
Following
Explorations
there were numerous papers and two other volumes;
however these were refinements to rather than major revisions of his model.
The first chapter of
Explorations,
titled ‘The self in Jung’s works’, is prob-
ably Fordham’s most condensed and complex paper. The chapter opens with a
notable understatement: ‘This first chapter is lengthy and somewhat heavy
going . . . ’ (ibid., p.
5).
Essentially it is a research project attempting to clarify
what Jung meant by the self. It originally appeared in
1963,
not long after
Robert Hobson had published his brief study of how Jung used the term
‘archetype’ (Hobson
1961).
Fordham’s study revealed inconsistencies in the
way Jung used the ‘self’, and he sets out to explain how they arose and how
they can be resolved.
In the introductory summary, Fordham contends that these incompatible
definitions ‘ . . . stem from the interlacing of primitive experience and the
abstractions from them’ (ibid., p.
8).
Jung’s data were subjective affective
experiences, symbols and myths derived from clinical experience and compara-
tive studies. When making hypotheses from this data, ‘Jung kept his abstract
formulations related to empirical affective experiences’ (ibid., p.
25)
in order
for his theory to convey the wholeness for which it was supposed to account.
To achieve this, Jung used metaphors. Hence his conceptualization combined
directed thinking (the logical form underlying theoretical thought) and undi-
rected thinking (thought, like metaphors, influenced by archetypal processes).
Added to this, over time Jung ‘ran up against the lack of adequate [scientific]
language’ for expressing the wholeness of the self, so that later on in his writ-
ing he ‘relied more and more on paradox’ (ibid., pp.
8–9).
Fordham criticizes
Jung’s mixing myth with abstract statement because it devalues the role of the-
ory, when ‘theories have advantages over myths in scientific studies . . . ’ (ibid.,
p.
2).
Fordham then reviews Jung’s data and points out that the clinical popula-
tion from which Jung had drawn was not representative. Rather, those
involved tended to include exceptional individuals who were introverted,
schizoid and some apparently mildly depressed. Jung’s data also excluded ref-
erences to relationships with the external world and internal objects. Lastly,
‘there is a signal lack of attempt’ to bring in ‘material related to childhood let
alone infancy’ (ibid., p.
17).
Fordham next considers Jung’s theories of the self, first as it is defined as the
totality of the personality, and then as an archetype. The totality definition
574
Elizabeth Urban
derived from references in Eastern mysticism to states of at-one-ness. However
using this as the datum for defining a concept of totality comes up against the
epistemological dilemma to which I referred earlier. ‘If the self is the whole
psyche, then it cannot be observed intrapsychically’ because the observing ego
is only a part in the whole (ibid., p.
21).
Furthermore, as much as Jung needed
to base his theories on experiences, ‘The difficulties in taking the primordial
experience to represent the totality of the psyche are many, but the greatest so
far considered is that experiences in solitude, however important in them-
selves, leave out the organism’s adaptation to external objects whether per-
sonal or otherwise’ (ibid., p.
22).
As for the archetype definition, Fordham notes that it accounts for a range
of phenomena related to wholeness (archetypal images) and, in fact, is closer
to the data than the totality definition. However this data ‘cannot also be the
totality’ because it excludes the ego, which Jung differentiated from the arche-
types. For instance, in
Answer to Job,
Jung (1954) used God to refer to the
unconscious (a totality) yet God needs man (the ego, which is not an arche-
type) to become conscious. Fordham concludes that although ‘ . . . this defini-
tion [self as archetype] is nearer the phenomena described, . . . the experience
of wholeness is not a reliable basis on which to construct a definition of the
self’ (Fordham
1985,
p.
23).
He then turns to others who have studied the same phenomena. He cites
Perry, who observed self images in schizophrenia and considered them in rela-
tion to a ‘central archetype’ (ibid., p.
24).
Fordham comments that all the
images associated with the central archetype suggest a ‘powerful integrative
influence’, whether in schizophrenia or a well-developed individual (ibid.,
p.
26).
Fordham’s conceptual analysis concludes by returning, full circle, to the
introductory comments about Jung’s methodology. He asks whether it is
acceptable to run two incompatible theories alongside one another: ‘Is it
enough to say that it is effective [sic: affective], pre-logical experience that
counts and then play down theory?’ (ibid., p.
29).
Fordham thinks not. While
he appreciates Jung’s efforts to maintain the links between the concept and the
data it was intended to describe, Jung’s ‘often graphic word-pictures . . . are
theoretically confusing’ (ibid., p.
25).
In a highly condensed paragraph at the end of the section on ‘General Psy-
chology’ (p.
30),
Fordham disentangles Jung’s ‘interlacing of myth and model’
(ibid., p.
7).
To summarize it, I shall draw upon the distinction in logic
between contradiction and paradox. A contradiction can be stated: A is B and
A is not B. It is unresolvable, inasmuch as ‘ . . . true contradictions indicate
some conceptual (theoretical) error’
1
. In contrast, a paradox is an apparent
contradiction, the resolution to which can be worked out. When Jung used
1
I am grateful to John Adkins of Jesus College for this concise statement.
Fordham, Jung and the self
575
paradoxes to capture the nature of experiences of the self, he was referring to
contents within a whole, which includes opposites. From this position one can
make paradoxical statements such as ‘the whole (images and experiences of
totality) is in the part (the ego, the observer)’ and ‘the part (the ego) is in the
whole’. However Jung seemed to regard experiences of wholeness
as if
they
were actually
of
the totality, ignoring that the whole is beyond experience.
Fordham’s point is that the ‘as if’ metaphor (undirected thinking) blurs logical
distinctions (directed thinking) that are necessary when defining concepts used
in a theoretical model of the self. Theoretical models require clear definitions
and logical consistency. In effect Jung was saying that the self is the totality
and the self is not the totality (it is a part, an archetype). This, Fordham points
out, is a logical contradiction within a theoretical scheme, not a paradox.
Having identified Jung’s incompatible concepts of the self, Fordham asks,
‘Can a hypothesis be formulated closer to the experiences accumulated and
capable of being tested by or used to organize them?’ (ibid., p.
31).
Here lies
Fordham’s resolution to the dilemma. I shall develop this later on.
The model
The model as it stood in its most mature form drew upon several concepts: the
primary self, deintegration, reintegration, self objects, self representations, and
individuation.
Jung had conceived of the self as a way of accounting for certain, particularly
mystical, phenomena in adulthood. Fordham shifts the function of the self
within the theoretical model so that it accounts for development, postulating a
primary self as the starting point. Certain processes are defined as integral to
the central postulate, which account for how development proceeds and
contents and structures are formed. These processes, structures and the rela-
tionships between them are then used to account for subjective phenomena,
including the states of integration for which Jung sought an explanation.
Implied in what Fordham writes is that the primary self is also a period of
development.
Fordham’s starting point is before and beyond all phenomena, and hence
refers to a phenomenon-less state. As a postulate, the primary self is a psycho-
somatic integrate, that is ‘empty’ of phenomena, so that it is ‘nothing but’
potential. Rosemary Gordon has described the primary self as ‘a simple
totality . . . a matrix of all those potential faculties of the organism which await
the process of “deintegration” and “reintegration” in order to become opera-
tive and so actualize themselves’ (Gordon
1985,
p.
267).
Mario Jacoby also
associates the primary self with potential, describing ‘the primary self as the
original potential’ (Jacoby
2003).
Elsewhere I have commented that the prim-
ary self might be seen as analogous to the egg at the instant (if there is one) of
fertilization, at a moment conceptually held in time (Urban
1992).
Astor
describes it as ‘somewhat analogous to the potential in DNA but probably

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