[SOME PORTIONS OF THIS POST ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN]
Carl Jung is referred to CG Jung in the vast number of works he is known for writing. He was born July 26, 1875 in Switzerland, Canton of Thurgau next to a small town out in the country, he was the second child but only surviving child to parents Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. Jung's grandfather was a wealthy professor who taught his father Paul as professor of the Hebrew language. Jung's father Paul was a poor rural pastor in the Swiss reform Church. Carl Jung had wealth on his mothers side of the family as well, his mother grew up in a somewhat luxurious family. When Jung was six years old his father was appointed to a prosperous parish in Laufen, Switzerland and there was tension between his parents that was growing.
His mother Emilie Jung was quite an eccentric and depressed person who spent considerable time in her bedroom, where she said that spirits would visit her at night. Although Jung stated that his mother was normal during the day he had a better relationship with his father. Jung went on to say that his mother became downright strange and mysterious at night. Jung also claimed that he did indeed see coming from his mothers room a faint luminous but indefinite figure with a detached head in the air in front of the figures body. Jung's mother left Laufen for several months to be hospitalized for an indispensably unknown physical condition. His father took his to be cared for by Emilie's unmarried sister but was later brought back to his father. Emilie Jung's continuing periods of absence and depressed mood influenced Carl's attitude towards women - One of Innate unreliability.
Jung had a view that he later called the handicap I started off with. He believed that was a contributing factor to his sometimes patriarchal views of women, but that was much more common in the society of the time. Three years after moving to Laufen Paul Jung requested a transfer. In 1879 Paul was called to Kleinhuningen which is a town not to far from Basel. The relocation brought Emilie closer in contact with her family and lifted her melancholy. Carl was a solitary and introverted child. From childhood he believed that, like his mother, had two personalities One of modern Swiss people yet his personality would be suited to the 18th century, the time in which he was living. His description of the first personality that inhabited him was a typical school boy living in the era of his time. His 2nd personality he described as dignified, authoritative and influential man from the past. Although Jung was close to both of his parents he was disappointed by his fathers intellectual and academic approach to the christian faith.
A number of childhood memories had a lifelong impression on Carl. As a boy he would carve and once he carved a tiny mannequin from the end of a wooden ruler. He placed it inside his pencil case, he soon added a stone which he painted into two halves. After he created the mannequin he put it in his pencil case and hid the case in the attic. Periodically he would return to the mannequin, often bringing tiny sheets of paper with messages inscribed on them in his own secret language. He later reflected on this and said this ceremonious act brought him a feeling of inner peace and security. Years after the fact Jung discovered similarities between his personal experience and the practice associated with totems in indigenous cultures, such as the collection of soul-stones near Arlesheim or the tjuru of Australia. Carl concluded that his intuitive ceremonial act was an unconscious ritual, which he had practiced in a way that was strikingly similar to in distant location which he at the time and just a boy wasn't aware. Jung's later concepts on symbols, psychological archetypes, and the collective unconscious were linked to these very experiences.
When Jung was 12 before the end of the first year of humanistic Gym another boy pushed him to the ground so hard that he lost consciousness for a moment. (Jung later recognized that incident was indirectly his fault.) A thought then came to mind "now you won't have to go to school anymore" he said. He remained home for the next 6 months until he overheard his father speaking to a visitor about him and his future ability to support himself. The medical doctor Jung seen at the time suspected that he may have a seizure disorder called Epilepsy. Young Carl was challenged with a possible reality of his family going into poverty, its then he realized the need for his intellect he set himself apart for mastery academically. Jung then went into his fathers library and began reading as much as he could, even learning latin. Jung was never treated for theorized epilepsy he only fainted three more times but overcame the condition.
Jung - In University studying didn't have plans to study psychiatry it wasn't considered prestigious at that time. After starting to study the psychiatric textbooks, he was loving the depth and magnitude of learning the mixture of biology, philosophy, and the spiritual aspect of psychology. He became very excited when he learned that psychosis is a personality disorder. Jung found exactly what it was he was looking for and didn't realize it until he started reading on the subject. Jung went on to get his undergraduate and began studying medicine at the University of Basel.
In late 1888 Jung received his degree in medicine and went on to get licensed and in 1900 he began working at Burgholzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich. It was there he met Eugen Bleuler, who was already talking with an Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Jung published his doctoral dissertation titled On the psychology and Pathology of the so-called occult phenomena. In 1906 after publishing 2 more of his written essays and a book he sent a copy of the book to Freud.
In 1903 Carl married Emma Rauschenbach, the daughter of a wealthy family in Switzerland. Together they had five children: Agathe, Gret, Franz, Marianne, and Helene. Carl and Emma went through difficult times due only in part to Carl's extramarital affairs with several women, most notably and widely known Sabrina Spielrein and Toni Wolff. Carl and Emma stayed together and worked on their relationship and made it through the difficult period in their life together. Jung and his wife were married until her death in 1955 they were married 52 years.
A friendship and professional coalition developed and they would write each other often. Jung and Freud shared an interest that was equally fascinating to both psychologist - the unconscious mind. They worked with each other and had a fraternal professional relationship for 6 years. In 1912, Jung published his 6th publication Psychology of the Unconscious which revealed vast theoretical divergences in thought.
In 1912 Jung was on a lecture tour in America where he publicly criticized Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex as well as Freud's continued emphasis known as the complex of infantile sexual development. Freud was also criticizing Jung publicly the two men criticizing each other led to the differences in their psychological theories leading to a split between them. Jung went on to come up with his own unique variant of psychoanalytic theory. Many of Jung's thoughts in analytical psychology echo the theoretical differences between him and Freud. With their personal and professional relationships now fractured and each would say about the others inability to admit they could possibly be wrong. In 1913, Jung went through a very difficult psychological metamorphosis of sorts, that was worsened by the worry of his potential to be drafted after the outbreak of the first World War. Henri Ellenberger said of Jung's difficult experience a "creative madness" comparing it favorably to Freud's period of what Ellenberger called "neurasthenia" (old psychology term: Nervous breakdown) and "hysteria."
Jung was drafted into the war and worked as he would in Switzerland as a doctor. Because Jung was a hard worker and did so to improve the health conditions of soldiers that by accident or luck happened to be in neutral territory so if the soldiers who happened to be "dug in" or had to "fall back". After tending to the health of the soldiers Jung encouraged them to attend university courses and he was their professor.
Jung became an extremely successful author, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist as well as founder of Analytical psychology (aka) Jungian Analytics. Jung's was influenced by his psychology/psychiatry field but his knowledge of philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, as well as religious thought were factors in his writing that's not to be overlooked. Jung's psychological intuition and intellectual prestige impossible to embellish, he was a prolific writer of thousands of pages of published material, but many of his works weren't published until after his death. Jung's work is definitely Ideas, opinions, and irrevocable conclusions of genius with inspirational psychological intelligence irrevocably unseen yet undeniable.
Jung's main or central concept as part and parcel of analytical psychology was Individuation: The psychological process of integrating the opposites.. This included the realm of the conscious, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. A big part of integration of the collective unconscious is called shadow work or integrating the shadow, which includes the Anima/Animus (latin: soul) which is part of the Shadow. According to Jung Individuation is considered to be the central process of human development.
Carl Jung created some the best known psychological concepts in the field of psychology, some included the Archetype, the collective unconscious, his theory of complexes, also extroversion and introversion.
In Jung's book Psychology of the Unconscious there are letters that Jung and Freud exchanged and Freud refused to even consider Jung's theories. This was a hurtful rejection that Jung wrote about in his autobiography and this book he described Memories, Dreams, Reflections, as a "resounding censure." Jung says: "Its as if everyone dropped away but two psychiatric colleagues." Jung goes on further describing: "It's was my attempt, only partially successful, to create a wider setting for medical psychology (psychiatry) to bring the whole of psychic phenomena within purview." This particular published work was revised and re-titled and again republished in 1922 titled: The Symbols of Transformation.
Jung spoke at meetings of the Psycho-Medical Society in London in 1913 and 1914. His travels were soon interrupted by the war, but his ideas continued to receive attention in England primarily through the efforts of Constance Long who translated and published the first English volume of his collected writings.
In 1913, at the age of thirty-eight, Jung experienced a horrible "confrontation with the unconscious". He saw visions and heard voices. He worried at times that he was "menaced by a psychosis" or was "doing a schizophrenia". He decided that it was valuable experience and, in private, he induced hallucinations or, in his words, "active imaginations". He recorded everything he felt in small journals. Jung began to transcribe his notes into a large leather-bound book, on which he worked intermittently for sixteen years.
Jung left no posthumous instructions about the final disposition of what he called the Liber Novus or whats known as the Red book. Sonu Shamdasani, a historian of psychology tried for three years to persuade Jung's resistant heirs to have it published. Up to September 2008, fewer than two dozen people had seen it. Ulrich Hoerni, Jung's grandson who manages the Jung archives, decided to publish it to raise the additional funds needed when the Philemon Foundation was founded.
In 2007, two technicians for Digital Fusion, working with New York publishers, Nortan and Company scanned the manuscript with a 10,200-pixel scanner. It was published October 2009, in German with a "separate English translation along with Shamdasani's introduction and footnotes" at the back of the book, according to Sara Corbett for The New York Times Newspaper. She wrote, "The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synced with an antediluvian somewhat mystical reality."
The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City displayed the original Red Book journal, as well as some of Jung's original small journals, from October 7, 2009 - February 15, 2010. According to them, "During the period in which he worked on this book Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation." Two-thirds of the pages bear Jung's illumination of the text.
Jung's Travels
Jung emerged from his period of isolation in the late nineteen-teens with the publication of several journal articles, followed in 1921 with Psychological Types, one of his most influential books. There followed a decade of active publication, interspersed with overseas travels.
Jung's trip to the United States:
Jung visited the western world with a more monumental visit in the winter of 1924–25, which was financed and organized by Fowler McCormick and George Porter. Of particular value to Jung was a visit with Cheif Mountain Lake of the Taos Pueblo near Taos, New Mexico. Jung once again took the flight over the Atlantic to visit America in 1936, gave lectures in New York and New England for his growing number of American followers. He returned in1937 to deliver the Terry Lectures at Yale University later published as Psychology and Religion.
Final publications and death
Jung continued to publish books until the end of his life, including Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959), which analyzed the archetypal meaning and possible psychological significance of the reported observations of UFOs. He also enjoyed a friendship with an English Roman Catholic priest, Father Victor White, who corresponded with Jung after he had published his controversial.
Jung died on June 6, 1961 in Kusnacht after a short illness. He had been beset by heart problems and a bad circulatory disease or disorder.
Jung's Formation
Jung's thought was formed by early family influences, which on the maternal side were a blend of interest in the occult and in solid reformed academic theology. On his father's side were two important figures, his grandfather the physician and academic scientist, Carl Gustav Jung and the family's actual connection with Lotte Kestner, the niece of the German polymath, Johann Wolfgang Goethe's. Although he was a practicing clinician and writer and as such founded Analytic Psychology, much of his life's work was spent exploring related areas such as physics, vitality, Eastern and Western Philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as a favorite of Jung Literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his preference was to be seen as a man of science.
Extroversion and Introversion
Jung was one of the first people to define introversion and extroversion in a psychological context. In Jung’s Psychological Types, he theorizes that each person falls into one of two categories, the introvert and the extrovert. These two psychological types Jung compares to ancient archetypes, Apollo and Dionysus. The introvert is likened with Apollo, who shines light on understanding. The introvert is focused on the internal world of reflection, dreaming and vision. Thoughtful and insightful, the introvert can sometimes be uninterested in joining the activities of others. The extrovert is associated with Dionysus, interested in joining the activities of the world. The extrovert is focused on the outside world of objects, sensory perception and action. Energetic and lively, the extrovert may lose their sense of self in the intoxication of Dionysian pursuits. Jungian introversion and extroversion is quite different from the modern idea of introversion and extroversion. Modern theories often stay true to behaviorist means of describing such a trait (sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness etc.) whereas Jungian introversion and extroversion is expressed as a perspective: introverts interpret the world subjectively, whereas extroverts interpret the world objectively.
Persona
In his psychological theory one that is not necessarily linked to a particular theory of social structure the persona appears as a consciously created personality or identity, fashioned out of the collective unconscious through socialization, acculturation, and experience. Jung applied the term persona more explicitly because, it's a Latin term, that means first mask and later also personality.. Jung thought it better defined that part of the psyche. Much like the masks worn by Roman actors of the Classical period, expressed the individual roles played.
The persona, he argues, is a mask for the "collective psyche", a mask that 'pretends' individuality, so that both self and others believe in that identity, even if it is really no more than a well-played role through which the collective psyche is expressed. Jung regarded the "persona-mask" as a complicated system which mediates between individual consciousness and the social community: it is "a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be". But he also makes it quite explicit that it is, in substance, a character mask in the classical sense known to theater, with its double function: both intended to make a certain impression on others, and to hide at least in part the true nature of the individual. The therapist then aims to assist the Individuation process through which the client (re)gains their "own self" - by liberating the self, both from the deceptive cover of the persona, and from the power of unconscious impulses.
Jung's theory has become enormously influential in management theory; not just because managers and executives have to create an appropriate "management persona" (a corporate mask) and a persuasive identity, but also because they have to evaluate what sort of people the workers are, in order to manage them (for example, using personality tests and peer reviews that can't be cheated).
Spirituality
Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals. Our main task, he believed, is to discover and fulfill our deep, innate potential. Based on his study of the world religious traditions particularly Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Gnosticism, and other traditions, Jung believed that this journey of transformation, which he called Individuation, is at the mystical heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the real self and at the same time to meet the Divine unlike Freud's objective worldview, Jung's pantheism may have led him to believe that spiritual experience was essential to our well-being, as he specifically identifies individual human life with the universe. Jung's ideas on religion counterbalance Freudian skepticism. Jung's idea of religion as a practical road to individuation is still treated in modern textbooks on psychology of religion, some psychological intellectuals have criticized the ideas.
Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism, and he is considered to have had an indirect role in establishing Alcoholics Anonymous Jung once treated an American patient, suffering from chronic alcoholism. After working with the patient for some time and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual experience. Jung noted that, occasionally, such experiences had been known to reform alcoholics when all other options had failed.
The man Mr. Hazard took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal, spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a First-Century Christian evangelical movement also known as the Oxford Group. He also told other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of the alcoholics he brought into the Oxford Group was Ebby Thacher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson the co-founder of (AA). Thacher told Wilson about the Oxford Group and, through them, Wilson became aware of Mr. Hazard's experience with Jung. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original 12 step program.
The above claims are documented in the letters of Jung and Bill Wilson, excerpts of which can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous. Although the detail of this story is disputed by some historians, Jung himself discussed an Oxford Group member, who may have been the same person, in talks given around 1940. The remarks were distributed privately in transcript form, from shorthand taken by an attender (Jung reportedly approved the transcript), and later recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life, For instance, when a member of the Oxford Group comes to me in order to get treatment, I say, 'You are in the Oxford Group; so long as you are there, you settle your affair with the Oxford Group. I can't do it better than Jesus. Jung goes on to state that he has seen similar cures among Roman Catholics.
Paranormal beliefs
Jung had an apparent interest in the paranormal and occult. For decades he attended seances and claimed to have witnessed "para-psychic phenomena". Initially he attributed these to psychological causes, even delivering 1919 lecture in England for the Society for Psychical Research on the "The Psychological Foundations for the belief in spirits. However, he began to "doubt whether an exclusively psychological approach can do justice to the phenomena in question" and stated that "the spirit hypothesis yields better results".
Jung's ideas about the paranormal culminated in "synchronicity"; his idea that meaningful connections in the world manifest through coincidence with no apparent causal link. What he referred to as “a causal connecting principle”. Despite his own experiments failing to confirm the phenomenon he held on to the idea as an explanation for apparent. As well as proposing it as a functional explanation for how the I- Ching worked, although he was never clear about how synchronicity worked.
Quantum Mechanics
Jung influenced one philosophical interpretation (not the science) of quantum physics with the concept of synchronicity regarding some events as non causal. That idea influenced the physicist Wolfgang Pauli (with whom, via a letter correspondence, he developed the notion of unus mundus in connection with the notion of non locality) along with another physicist.
Alchemy
In 1944 Jung published Psychology & Alchemy, Jung's writings from the 1940s onward were mainly focused on alchemy in Psychology & Alchemy he analyzed the alchemist symbols and came to the conclusion that there is a direct relationship between them and the psychoanalytical process. He argued that the alchemist process was the transformation of the impure soul (lead) to perfected soul (gold), and a metaphor for the individuation process. In 1963 first Mysterium Coninuctionis appeared in English as part of The Collected Works Of Collective Unconscious C.G. Jung which was Jung's last book and focused on the "Mysterium Coniunctionis" archetype, known as the Sacred Marriage between sun and moon. Jung argued that the stages of the alchemists, the blackening, the whitening, the reddening and the yellowing, could be taken as symbolic of individuation — his favorite term for personal growth.
Political Views
Jung stressed the importance of individual rights in a person's relation to the state and society. He saw that the state was treated as "a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected" but that this personality was "only camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it" and referred to the state as a form of slavery. He also thought that the state "swallowed up [people's] religious forces", and therefore that the state had "taken the place of God"—making it comparable to a religion in which "state slavery is a form of worship". Jung observed that "stage acts of [the] state" are comparable to religious displays: "Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fire to scare off demons". From Jung's perspective, this replacement of God with the state in a mass society leads to the dislocation of the religious drive and results in the same fanaticism of the church-states of the Dark Ages—wherein the more the state is 'worshiped', the more freedom and morality are suppressed; this ultimately leaves the individual psychically undeveloped with extreme feelings of marginalization.
Germany
Jung had many friends and respected colleagues who were Jewish and he maintained relations with them through the 1930s when anti-semitism in Germany and other European nations was on the rise. However, until 1939, he also maintained professional relations with psychotherapists in Germany who had declared their support for the Nazi regime and there were allegations that he himself was a Nazi sympathizer.
- In 1933, after the Nazis gained power in Germany, Jung took part in restructuring of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy a German-based professional body with an international membership. The society was reorganized into two distinct bodies:
- A strictly German Society, General Medical Society for Psychotherapy the, led by two psychotherapists and a cousin of the prominent Nazi Hermann Goring;
The General Medical Society for Psychotherapy led by Jung was to be affiliated to the international society, as new national societies being set up in Switzerland and elsewhere.
The International Society's constitution permitted individual doctors to join it directly, rather than through one of the national affiliated societies, a provision to which Jung drew attention in a circular in 1934. This implied that German Jewish doctors could maintain their professional status as individual members of the international body, even though they were excluded from the German affiliate, as well as from other German medical societies operating under the Nazis.
As leader of the international body, Jung assumed overall responsibility for its publication, the Publications for the Germans. In 1933, this journal published a statement endorsing Nazi positions and Hitler's book Mein Kampf. In 1934, Jung wrote in a Swiss publication, the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, that he experienced "great surprise and disappointment" when the Zentralblatt associated his name with the pro-Nazi statement.
Jung went on to say "the main point is to get a young and insecure science into a place of safety during an earthquake". He did not end his relationship with the Zentralblatt at this time, but he did arrange the appointment of a new managing editor, Carl Alfred Meier of Switzerland. For the next few years, the Zentralblatt under Jung and Meier maintained a position distinct from that of the Nazis, in that it continued to acknowledge contributions of Jewish doctors to psychotherapy.
In the face of energetic German attempts to Nazi fy - the international body, Jung resigned from its presidency in 1939, the year after World War II started. And now to the last portion of the blog post next.
Anti-Semitism and Nazism
Jung's interest in mythology in Europe and folk psychology led to accusations had sympathy for the Nazis since they shared the same interest. He became, however, aware of the negative impact of these similarities: Jung clearly identifies himself with the spirit of German Volkstums bewegung 'Folk movement' throughout this period and well into the 1920s and 1930s, until the horrors of Nazism finally compelled him to re frame these propagandist neo pagan metaphors in a negative light in his 1936 essay "Wotan".
There are writings showing that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazism. In this 1936 essay Jung described the influence of Hitler on Germany as "one man who is obviously 'possessed' has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition." Jung would later say that: Hitler seemed like the 'double' of a real person, as if Hitler the man might be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so concealed in order not to disturb the mechanism. You know you could never talk to this man; because there is nobody there. It is not an individual; it is an entire nation.
In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying: It must be clear to anyone who has read any of my books that I have never been a Nazi sympathizer and I never have been anti-Semitic, and no amount of misquotation, mistranslated, or rearrangement of what I have written can alter the record of my true point of view. Nearly every one of these passages has been tampered with, either by malice or by ignorance. Furthermore, my friendly relations with a large group of Jewish colleagues and patients over a period of many years in itself disproves the charge of anti-Semitism.
Evidence contrary to Jung’s denials has been adduced with reference to his writings, correspondence and public utterances of the 1930s.
Attention has been drawn to articles Jung published in the Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie stating: “The Aryan unconscious has a greater potential than the Jewish unconscious” and "The Jew, who is something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will". His remarks on the superiority of "the Aryan unconscious" and the “corrosive character” of Freud’s “Jewish gospel” have been cited as evidence of an anti-semitism “fundamental to the structure of Jung’s thought”.
Jung was in contact with the 'Office of Strategic Services', later becoming the CIA, he provided valuable intelligence on the psychological condition of Hitler. The head of the OSS Allen Dulles referred to Jung as "Agent 488" and offered the following description of his service: “Nobody will probably ever know how much Professor Jung contributed to the Allied Cause during the war, by seeing people who were connected somehow with the other side.” Jung's service to the USA and Allies cause through the OSS remains classified after the war.
Analytical psychology (commonly referred to as "Jungian" Psychology) originated in the work of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Offering a comprehensive model of the human psyche, Analytical Psychology includes a psychotherapuetic approach for improving mental health and facilitating maturation of the personality as well as a theoretical body of knowledge with wide applicability to social and cultural issues.
Sigmund Freud analogized the human psyche as an iceberg in that only a small portion of it is visible for the world to see, while the vast majority of its content is hidden out of site. According to Freud, the majority of that which drives a human being is derived from what lies underneath the surface in the unconscious mind, our repressed memories and emotions, our confusion and dreams and desires.
Carl Jung viewed not only the iceberg as representative of the visible and hidden aspects of the human psyche, but the ocean itself in which the iceberg is immersed: the collective unconscious, a term he coined to describe the non-personal, archetypal psychic material that influences human experience. As Jung wrote: “In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.” (CW9, p. 43)
This concept of the collective unconscious is the underpinning of Jungian psychology, along with that of archetypes, the shadow, the individuation process, the anima and animus, psychological types, and the vast personal unconscious. In addition, Jungian psychology emphasizes lifelong psychological development versus development only throughout childhood.
In exploring life itself, Jung wrote: “Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections p. 4)
Expounding on Jung’s use of the image of the rhizome, analyst June Singer wrote the following in her book Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology: “Students in universities today engage too much in the contemplation and dissection of the blossom. Psychology courses insist that all that counts in man’s behavior, which can be measured, predicted, conditioned and manipulated. I agree that behavior merits considerable concern. But I am with many thinking people today who are not altogether satisfied with studying what is, or to be more accurate, “what appears to be.” . . . Both [the blossom and the rhizome] are necessary to the existence if the plant and its growth. But in today’s hurried world, where the blossom is all to easily seen, enjoyed, and knocked off its stem when it begins to wither and decay, the rhizome is all too often overlooked. We forget that it carries the source of tomorrow’s blossom. I admit that Jungian psychology may lay too much emphasis on the rhizome, and not enough on the blossom. . . .But just because institutional psychology has dealt with the observable phenomenon, and dealt with it relatively adequately within the limitations of its methods, it has not been necessary for Jung or Jungians to dwell overlong upon grounds that have been competently tended by others. Therefore . . . Jung’s way. . . [stressed] the importance of the unconscious rather than of consciousness, the mysterious rather than the known, the mystical rather than the scientific, the creative rather than the productive, the religious rather than the profane, the meaning of love rather than the technique of sex. (1972, p. xv-xvi)”
Additional concepts of Jungian Psychology
“Thoughtful people are recognizing that Jung provides a bridge in our time between the scientific-intellectual aspects of life and the religious-nonrational aspects. Jung has faced the apparent dichotomy between abstraction and generalization on one side and the experience of immediate knowing on the other. Our culture, steeped in the principles of Aristotelian logic, finds it difficult to accept paradoxical thinking as valid. Too often it seems necessary to make a choice between the rationalistic-academic way of life or the anti-intellectual camp. Jung’s greatness is in that he saw both of these as aspects of the same reality, as polar opposites on a single axis.”
“Jung’s teachings have much to offer to the troubled world in this third of the twentieth century, and there are not nearly enough Jungian analysts to meet the need, the interest, the demand. . . Often when Jungian analysts have spoken out to the general public about the experience of the analytic way—the “way of individuation”—small groups of people have sprung up spontaneously to meet and discuss the words and work and the life of Jung, to try to understand all this in term of their own personal experience. . . . Jung [has] the capacity to touch something essential in the human soul which needs to be touched or needs to be healed, in order to be made whole.”
Jungian analysis is the psychotherapeutic process of re-establishing a healthy balance between the conscious and unconscious parts of our personality as we strive towards wholeness, not perfection. In the process, our ego is strengthened by integration of what we call the shadow, or the unconscious parts of our personality. We strive to establish a healthier relationship with our contra-sexual side and ultimately to develop a connection with the greater personality, the Self. This is accomplished through work with dreams, which reveal what is missing from our conscious perception, through discussion of everyday events and problems and through any other creative medium, ie. sandplay, art, movement, etc. The result of this work is a mitigation of unhealthy behavior patterns and greater consciousness, leading to a healthier, more filling life.
Some think that Jung was a misogynist and thus part of what oppresses women a patriarchal tyrant type some say he's not, he's describing things the masculine and feminine because that's how we conceptualize, and orient ourselves in the world. Some make the claim and were critical of him, after reading his work. One Jungian Psychologist said that he could not come to that conclusion by reading his books alone. Also it's necessary to point out that Jung was correct in his supposition that it's one of the fundamental ways conceptualize and orient ourselves in the world.
Contribution to Psychology
Carl Jung is recognized as one of the most influential psychiatrists of all time. As I mentioned he founded analytical psychology and was among the first experts in his field to explore the religious nature behind human psychology. He argued that empirical evidence was not the only way to arrive at psychological or scientific truths and that the soul plays a key role in the psyche.
Carl Jung is the 23rd most cited Intellectual in written work, not to mention the Jungian Professors and Analytical Psychologist that teach using his work everyday.
Unparalleled Contributions to Psychology:
The collective unconscious: A universal cultural repository of archetypes and human experiences.
Dream Analysis and the interpretation of symbols from the collective unconscious that show up in dreams.
Extroversion and Introversion Jung was the first to identify these two personality traits, and some of his work continues to be used in the theory of personality and in personality testing.
Psychological complexes: A cluster of behaviors, memories, and emotions grouped around a common theme. For example, a child who was deprived of food might grow into an adult smoker, nail biter, and compulsive eater, focusing on the theme of oral satiation. Also defined as repressed organizing of images and experiences that governs perception and behavior.
An emphasis on spirituality Jung argued that spirituality and a sense of the contentedness of life could play a profound role in emotional health.
Individuation: The integration and balancing of dual aspects of personality to achieve psychic wholeness, such as thinking and feeling, introversion and extroversion, or the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Jung argued that people who have individuated are happier, more ethical, and more responsible.
The persona and the shadow: The persona is the public version of the self that serves as a mask for the ego, and the shadow is a set of infantile, suppressed behaviors and attitudes.
Synchronicity: A phenomenon that occurs when two seemingly unrelated events occur close to one another, and the person experiencing. A causal principle as a basis for the apparently random simultaneous occurrence of phenomena.
Archetype: A concept "borrowed" from anthropology to denote supposedly universal and recurring mental images or themes. Jung's definitions of archetypes varied over time and have been the subject of debate as to their usefulness.
Archetypal Images: Universal symbols that can mediate opposites in the psyche, often found in religious art, mythology and fairy tales across cultures
Anima: The contra sexual aspect of a man's psyche, his inner personal feminine conceived both as a complex and an archetypal image
Animus: The contra sexual aspect of a woman's psyche, her inner personal masculine conceived both as a complex and an archetypal image
Self: The central overarching concept governing the individuation process, as symbolized by mandalas, the union of male and female, totality, unity. Jung viewed it as the psyche's central archetype.