In this chapter I shall examine the ways in which recent developments in cognitive neuroscience and attachment theory can shed new light on certain key features of Jung’s model of the psyche. I will first give a brief summary of the central concepts of analytical psychology, highlighting the emergence of each key stage of the model as steps in the formation of an integrated theory.

Analytical psychology started to emerge as a separate discipline when Jung began to question the sexual nature of libido which remained the foundation stone of Freud’s model of the psyche and on which psychoanalysis has been constructed. For Jung, this seemed too narrow a basis for the richness and complexity of psychic life; his view of libido as a neutral form of psychic energy that can be drawn on for a variety of purposes marked the point at which he abandoned his attempts to reconcile his model with that of Freud. Jung stated his rejection of sexuality as the source of psychic life quite clearly when he wrote:“I cannot see the real aetiology of neurosis in the various manifestations of infantile sexual development and the fantasies to which they give rise”(Jung 1916: para. 574). Jung’s repudiation of the basic premise of psychoanalysis caused great distress to both men and finally brought about the permanent rupture of their relationship (Freud and Jung 1961: 534–540). It also opened up a fault line between the models of the mind they each constructed that persists to this day. For Freud, the unconscious was a “seething cauldron” of incestuous desires and wishes associated with the Oedipus complex, which are unacceptable to the conscious mind. Once Jung had rejected the sexual nature of libido it could really only be a matter of time before he developed a very different view of the nature of unconscious contents, which he was free to explore as both positive and negative. By 1930 he was able to describe his view of the unconscious as “the eternally living, creative, germinal layer in each of us” and to state that:“the unconscious contains not only the sources of instinct and the whole prehistoric nature of man right down to the animal level, but also, along with these, the creative seeds of the future and the roots of all constructive fantasies”(Jung 1961/1930: para. 760).