Hesitation and Slowness: Gateway to Psyche's Depth

Absract

Stanton Marlan, “Hesitation and Slowness: Gateway to Psyche's Depth,” San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2005, 24:1, 17-27. This paper focuses on hesitation and slowness in the work of Jungian analysis. It emphasizes the importance of patience as a way of achieving depth and of avoiding facile and abstract formulations that lack respect for the true otherness of the analysand and for the fundamental enigmas of analytic work. Alongside the techniques of Freud and Jung, and drawing on Alchemy and on Renaissance and Eastern wisdom traditions, the author articulates a complex notion of hesitation. The paper deconstructs simple binary pairings of fast and slow and suggests an attitude of purposeless wandering as an important compensation to the overly technologically-oriented attitudes and fast-paced culture that have invaded our therapeutic sensibilities and consulting rooms.

• Jungian analysis
• analytic technique
• alchemy
• hesitation
• slowness
• deconstruction
• enigma of otherness
• festine lente
• wei wu wei