Jung’s psychoid concept: an hermeneutic understanding

Abstract

ABSTRACTJung’s psychoid concept is not one of his most widely published ideas but it is one of his most fundamental, and his thinking on the subject occupied him for most of his career. Theoretically, he grounded the concept in the history of vitalism, but his ideas also had hermeneutic origins, in his self-experimentation and active imagination, as described in The Red Book. This paper reviews such hermeneutic background, and its value for informing a clinically relevant understanding of the psychoid concept.