Reductive

1. Etymology

Reductive (literally “leading back”) describes interpretations of dreams and neurosis in terms of outer-life events, especially childhood. Compare constructive and final. Related: mechanistic; causal; synthetic method.

2. Plain summary

Reductive looks backward: to infantile wish, physiological drive, historical antecedents. Sharp notes Freud and Adler as reductive in that sense—and that reduction can disintegrate the living significance of an unconscious product by dissolving it into its past. In dreams, reductive/mechanistic reading treats images as concrete outer facts; constructive/final reading stays with symbolic content.

Jung preferred constructive work yet kept reductive analysis as an important first step—especially early-life neuroses colliding with infantile attitude (CW 7 ¶88). Samuels’s reductive and synthetic methods head stresses the same: Jung never wholly abandoned childhood analysis; the methods can co-exist; and Jung can be less than fair when he caricatures reduction as mere archiving. Descent Press engages Freud and Adler at their best here—not as straw men.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common reductive motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
leading back / backwards orientation; childhood / outer events; Freud–Adler kinship (wish / striving); disintegrative risk to unconscious product; dream images as concrete reality; vs constructive / final / synthetic; first-half-of-life usefulness; co-existence with synthetic; teleological critique without dismissing infancy work.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology reductive is the backward, causal-interpretive pole, complementary (not simply inferior) to constructive/synthetic/final methods. Lexica (Sharp; Samuels pp. 126–127) supply paraphrase Do not invent loci. Do not caricature interlocutors.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Reductive. Literally, “leading back,” descriptive of interpretations of dreams and neurosis in terms of events in outer life, particularly those in childhood. (Compare constructive and final.) … The interpretive methods of both Freud and Adler are reductive… Although Jung himself concentrated on the constructive approach, he regarded reductive analysis as an important first step… particularly in the first half of life.

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 6 ¶788; CW 7 ¶88.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — reductive and synthetic methods pp. 126–127

reductive and synthetic methods … Jung used the word 'reductive' to describe the central feature of Freud's method… By connecting an unconscious product to the past, its present value to the individual may be lost… Reductive and synthetic approaches can also co-exist…

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986/2013, pp. 126–127)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

REDUCTIVE means "leading back." I use this term to denote a method of psychological interpretation which regards the unconscious product not as a symbol but semiotically, as a sign or symptom of an underlying process. Accordingly, the reductive method traces the unconscious product back to its elements… The interpretive methods of both Freud and Adler are reductive…
(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, p. 635, ¶788)

The neuroses of the young generally come from a collision between the forces of reality and an inadequate, infantile attitude… Here the reductive methods of Freud and Adler are entirely in place.
(Jung, 1917/1966, CW 7, p. 93, ¶88)

See also: constructive; mechanistic; causal; final; energic; rebirth; reflection; neurosis.

References

Jung, C. G. (1966). On the psychology of the unconscious. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 7, p. 93, ¶88). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1917)

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types [Definitions]. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 6, p. 635, ¶788). 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.