THEORY | PSYCHOTHERAPY
CARL GUSTAV JUNG
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung was an accomplished Swiss psychotherapist as well as the psychiatrist who laid the foundation of analytic psychology. He formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personality traits and differentiated them. His works have played an influential role in psychiatry, religion and literature studies. Individuation is the underlying concept in analytical psychology which is related to the connection between the conscious and unconscious. According to Jung individuation plays a major role in human development. He was known to have founded some of the well known psychological concept which included collective unconscious, complex and synchronicity. One of the most popular and widely applicable personality test Myers-Briggs type indicator is designed and developed based on the theories of Jung. Born on 26th July 1875 Thurgau, Switzerland he spent a rather depressed childhood. He showed no interest in studying psychology until he read about psychoses as personality diseases in psychiatry textbook. Jung also came to know that biological and spiritual factors are combined together in psychoses. That triggered his interest and inspired him to acquire a degree in medicine from University of Basel. After which he started working for a psychiatric hospital in Zurich known as Burghölzli. He published his thesis in 1903 which was titled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So -Called Occult Phenomena”. His next publication “Studies in word-association” in 1906 started his friendship with Sigmund Freud which lasted till six years. This break up occurred in 1912 when Carl Gustav Jung published a book “Psychology of the Unconscious” which showed major differences with the theories of Sigmund Freud. According to the theories presented by him about the self, Carl Jung considered self realization to be one of the most significant goals of life. Self realization is a stage of life which makes a person selfless and brings him closer to nature and other people. Synchronicity is the linkage between two events that are meaningfully related to each other. The theory of synchronicity presented by Jung indicated that there is a connection between collective unconscious of human beings. He also coined the most famous terms of introversion and extroversion as personality types, introverts being the ones that are involved in themselves and enjoy solitude whereas extroverts to be more inclined to reach out people and activities in the outer world. It was also Jung who proposed the basic functions of dealing and interacting with the world whether a personality is introverted or extroverted; these functions are sensing, intuiting, thinking, feeling, judging and perceiving. He exercised an immense influence on popular psychology, spirituality and new age. He was also a great writer whose works consists of 19 volumes, most of which were translated into English after his death. He died on 6th June 1961. His works are collected in a book titled “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung”. He penned downed another book “Analytical Psychology: Its Theory & Practice” which consists of his lectures and theories. Differences between Jung and Freud
Theory of the Libido Jung (1948) disagreed with Freud regarding the role of sexuality. He believed the libido was not just sexual energy, but instead generalized psychic energy. For Jung for purpose of psychic energy was to motivate the individual in a number of important ways, including spiritually, intellectually, and creatively. It was also an individuals motivational source for seeking pleasure and reducing conflict Theory of the Unconscious Like Freud (and Erikson) Jung regarded the psyche as made up of a number of separate but interacting systems. The three main ones were the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind as it comprises the thoughts, memories, and emotions a person is aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. Like Freud, Jung (1921, 1933) emphasized the importance of the unconscious in relation to personality. However, he proposed that the unconscious consists of two layers. The first layer called the personal unconscious is essentially the same as Freud’s version of the unconscious. The personal unconscious contains temporality forgotten information and well as repressed memories. Jung (1933) outlined an important feature of the personal unconscious called complexes. A complex is a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and memories that focus on a single concept. The more elements attached to the complex, the greater its influence on the individual. Jung also believed that the personal unconscious was much nearer the surface than Freud suggested and Jungian therapy is less concerned with repressed childhood experiences. It is the present and the future, which in his view was the key to both the analysis of neurosis and its treatment. However by far the most important difference between Jung and Freud is Jung’s notion of the collective (or transpersonal) unconscious. This is his most original and controversial contribution to personality theory. This is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past. ‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’ (Jung, 1953, p. 188). According to Jung the human mind has innate characteristics “imprinted” on it as a result of evolution. These universal predispositions stem from our ancestral past. Fear of the dark, or of snakes and spiders might be examples and it is interesting that this idea has recently been revived in the theory of prepared conditioning. However more important than isolated tendencies are those aspects of the collective unconscious that have developed into separate sub-systems of the personality. Jung called these ancestral memories and images archetypes. Archetypes Archetypes (Jung, 1947) are images and thoughts which have universal meanings across cultures which may show up I dreams, literature, art or religion. Jung believes symbols from different cultures are often very similar because they have emerged from archetypes shared by the whole human race. For Jung, our primitive past becomes the basis of the human psyche, directing and influencing present behavior. Jung claimed to identify a large number of archetypes but paid special attention to four. The “persona” (or mask) is the outward face we present to the world. It conceals our real self and Jung describes it as the “conformity” archetype. This is the public face or role a person presents to others as someone different to who we really are (like an actor). Another archetype is the anima/animus. The “anima/animus” is the mirror image of our biological sex, that is, the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine tendencies in women. Each sex manifests attitudes and behavior of the other by virtue of centuries of living together. The psyche of a woman contains masculine aspects (the animus archetype) and the psyche of a man contains feminine aspects (the anima archetype). Next is the shadow. This is the animal side of our personality (like the id in Freud). It is the source of both our creative and destructive energies. In line with evolutionary theory it may be that Jung’s archetypes reflect predispositions that once had survival value. Finally there is the self which provides a sense of unity in experience. For Jung the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of selfhood (similar to self-actualisation) and in this respect Jung (like Erikson) is moving in the direction of a more humanist orientation. That was certainly Jung’s belief and in his book “The Undiscovered Self” he argued that many of the problems of modern life are caused by “man’s progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation”. One aspect of this is his views on the significance of the anima and the animus. Jung argues that these archetypes are products of the collective experience of men and women living together. However in modern Western civilization men are discouraged from living their feminine side and women from expressing masculine tendencies. For Jung the result was that the full psychological development both sexes was undermined. Together with the prevailing patriarchal culture of Western civilization this has led to the devaluation of feminine qualities altogether and the predominance of the persona (the mask) has elevated insincerity to a way of life which goes unquestioned by millions in their everyday life. Critical Evaluation Jung’s ideas have not been as popular as Freud’s. This might be because he did not write from the layman and as such his ideas were not a greatly disseminated as Freud’s. It may also be because his ideas were a little more mystical and obscure, and less clearly explained. On the whole modern psychology has not viewed Jung’s theory of archetypes kindly. Ernest Jones (Freud’s biographer) tells that Jung “descended into a pseudo-philosophy out of which he never emerged” and to many his ideas look more like New Age mystical speculation than a scientific contribution to psychology. However, whilst Jung’s research into ancient myths and legends, his interest in astrology and fascination with Eastern religion can be seen in that light it is also worth remembering that the images he was writing about have, as a matter of historical fact, exerted an enduring hold on the human mind. Furthermore Jung himself argues that the constant recurrence of symbols from mythology in personal therapy and in the fantasies of psychotics support the idea of an innate collective cultural residue. In line with evolutionary theory it may be that Jung’s archetypes reflect predispositions that once had survival value. However, Jung’s work has also contributed to mainstream psychology in at least one significant respect. He was the first to distinguish the two major attitudes or orientations of personality – extroversion and introversion. He also identified four basic functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting) which in a cross-classification yield eight pure personality types. Psychologists like Hans Eysenck and Raymond Cattell have subsequently built upon this. As well as being a cultural icon for generations of psychology undergraduates Jung therefore put forward ideas which were important to the development of modern personality theory. |
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