Groddeck's and Jung's Analytic Methods as Alternatives to Freud's Technique

What is it about?

This paper shows that the psychoanalysts Georg Groddeck and Carl Gustav Jung shared a common cultural background, in which German physician and philosopher Carl Gustav Carus’s theory of the psyche was preeminent. Accordingly, they emphasized symbolization and unconscious creativity. These aspects affected their clinical work, aimed at pioneering therapies: Jung with schizophrenics, Groddeck treating physical diseases. They overcame the limits of the psychoanalysis of their time and, going beyond neurosis, discovered the pre-Oedipal period and the fundamental role of mother-child relationship.While Freud’s technique was based on a one-person paradigm, both Jung and Groddeck considered analytic therapy as a dialectical process, ushering in a two-person paradigm. Consequently, they did not use the couch; a setting that is assessed in the light of recent research on mirror neurons. Over the years, Jung’s and Groddeck's relational approach has proved to be a better therapeutic conception than Freud's. Only recently, has Groddeck’s relevance begun to be recognized for both theoretical and therapeutic developments in psychoanalysis. Therefore, a name to the current of thought which has resulted from the collaboration of German Georg Groddeck and Hungarian Sándor Ferenczi is proposed: Baden-Baden–Budapest branch of psychoanalysis. These findings may induce further studies on the history of depth psychology.

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Why is it important?

This paper proposes the history of analytic treatment from a new perspective in which there are two strands: Jung's and Groddeck's relational methods as alternatives to Freud's technique.