1. Toni Wolff’s discussion of the scientific status of complex psychology

Toni Wolff’s discussion of the scientific status of complex psychology

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Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology The Dream of a Science

It is important then to grasp that Jung’s work on psychological types represented the summation of collective research. Jung’s pupil C. A. Meier gave the following account of the respective contributions of Jung’s colleagues.

He stated that Hans Schmid showed Jung that extraversion was not necessarily correlated with feeling; Toni Wolff was instrumental in introducing the functions of sensation and intuition; and finally intuition was dealt with critically by Emil Medtner.

According to Jung’s son, Franz Jung, Jung met on a regular basis with a sort of committee consisting of Emil Medtner, Toni Wolff, Adolf Keller, and some theologians, which worked together in the preparation of Psychological Types, particularly focusing on the issue of terminology.

In a circular letter to members of the Association for Analytical Psychology, Jung suggested that they should hold meetings “to establish unanimity in theoretical basic viewpoints, and especially in the definition and application of technical terms.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology, Page 68-69

Jung referred to Toni Wolff’s discussion of the scientific status of complex psychology in her 1935 paper, “Einf ¨uhrung in die Grundlagen der Komplexen Psychologie.”

Wolff drew from Rickert, and found in his work the methodological basis for a clarification of the principles of complex psychology.

She took up Rickert’s distinction between natural sciences and cultural sciences.

For Wolff, complex psychology had two sides: on the one hand it constituted a scientific theory, and on the other it was a psychological analysis of the individual.

When it dealt with general psychic elements or aspects of the individual and when it researched general structures and functions of the psyche such as typology, the collective unconscious and the concept of energy, it used a generalising method.

When it dealt with the concept and process of individuation, individualising experience comes into operation. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology, Page 94, fn 104