Rapport

1. Etymology

Rapport names a feeling of agreement between oneself and others. Related: projection; transference; participation; rational / irrational standpoints.

2. Plain summary

Sharp’s clinical caution: rapport often arrives despite absolute difference of standpoint. One party, by unspoken projection, assumes the other shares their opinion; the other senses an objective community of interest the first would deny. That mutual-projection rapport is the most frequent—and later the source of many misunderstandings.

So “good rapport” is not automatically conscious alignment. It can be a tacit bargain of projections that feels like agreement until conflict surfaces. Analytic work watches rapport carefully (Sharp elsewhere notes watching rapport with the patient). Related to participation mystique when boundaries blur.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common rapport motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
feeling of agreement; despite difference of standpoint; unspoken projection of shared opinion; sensed objective community of interest; mutual projection; later misunderstandings; clinical watchfulness; kinship with projection / participation mystique; not identical with conscious consensus.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology rapport is a relational tone—often projection-mediated—rather than verified shared viewpoint. Sharp carries the dedicated head (CW 6 ¶618); Samuels has no separate rapport lemma this vessel pass. Do not invent loci.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Rapport. A feeling of agreement between oneself and others. … It frequently happens that despite an absolute difference of standpoint a rapport nevertheless comes about… one party, by unspoken projection, assumes that the other is, in all essentials, of the same opinion as himself… A rapport of this kind is by far the most frequent; it rests on mutual projection, which later becomes the source of many misunderstandings.

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 6 ¶618.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — no dedicated rapport head

(None.) Incidental clinical uses only.

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

This brings me to the problem of the psychic relationship between the two types. Following the terminology of the French school of hypnotists, psychic relationship is known in modern psychiatry as "rapport." Rapport consists essentially in a feeling of agreement in spite of acknowledged differences. Indeed, the recognition of existing differences, if it be mutual, is itself a rapport, a feeling of agreement. … This rational presentation is valid only for the rational types, but not for the irrational, whose rapport is based not on judgment but on the parallelism of living events.
(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, pp. 521–522, ¶618)

See also: projection; participation mystique; quaternity; rational; irrational; typology.

References

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 6, pp. 521–522, ¶618). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.