Relating to the Loser Complexity

ABSTRACT

This article identifies a disorder of the self that is common to a number of clinical presentations, which all share the idea that the patient presenting him- or herself for psychological help is a “loser” who may not be able to be helped by psychotherapy. Resisting the reduction of this idea to a single complex bedeviling the patient, the author suggests instead that this idea is the consciousness that emerges, pathologically, from a complexity, a nest of linked complexes, which has the power to color all individual efforts to work on any of the patient’s issues. The author, a Jungian analyst, gives cultural examples of how this complexity can also be seen in films, in artists, and in political life. He shows how in psychotherapy the loser complexity can be resolved or at least reduced through a collaborative approach that takes therapist and patient through a series of stages that are described and explained.

KEY WORDS:

• Auseinandersetzung
• complex
• complexity theory
• engaging
• joining
• Jungian analysis and psychotherapy
• loser complexity
• loser
• marking

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Notes

1. For instance, the case of the school-shooter Kipland Kinkel, which is discussed by Charles Stewart in Dire Emotions and Lethal Behaviors (2007, 118–119).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael E. Reding

MICHAEL E. REDING, MD, is a Jungian analyst and a past president of the C. G Institute of San Francisco. He first presented a weeklong workshop on loser psychopathology and on the contrasting effect of wounding and healing attitudes on the psychology of a person in Shanghai, China. Dr. Reding holds a BA in psychology from Stanford University and an MD from Stanford University School of Medicine. At the University of California, Davis, he completed a residency in Adult Psychiatry and a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is board-certified in both specialties. Dr. Reding maintains a private practice of psychotherapy in San Francisco. Correspondence: [email protected]. Website: www.michaelredingmd.com.