Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, along with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, was one of the founders of what is described today as depth psychology.
The work of Jung exceeds, in its dimension, the field of psychology. His understanding of human psychology stemmed from his individual experiences, dreams, and his introspective, self-analyzing abilities. He went beyond the demarcation line dividing psychology from philosophy and theology, investigating parapsychological and non-causal phenomena such as occultism, synchronicity, and intuition.
After his departure from Freud, Jung developed his own psychotherapeutic technique, which he called “analytical psychology” to distinguish it from Freud’s psychoanalysis.
Jung’s innovative, multi-dimensional therapeutic concepts are no less than a “Copernican” revolution and a foundation on which a new science of psychology could be built. Potentially, they are of comparable importance to quantum theory in physics.
The following series of articles on the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung conveys to the interested reader just a glimpse of his monumental work and the richness of his ideas.
Other articles about C.G. Jung
Carl Gustav Jung’s Background and Personality
Predestined to swim against the torrent, Jung’s intriguing personality demands acknowledgment in the context of his psychology.
Carl Gustav Jung was an excellently educated man and a productive writer. His interests went beyond his scholarly education, which was in medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. He had vast knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy, which he deepened throughout his long life. His native language was German, but he was also fluent in French, English, Latin, and ancient Greek.
Though a rational scientist, he embraced the irrational and esoteric, deeming a solely rational approach to psychology inadequate in a historical context. He had to adhere to the truth as he saw it.
Throughout his life, Jung remained deeply introverted, more interested in the inner world of dreams and images than the outer world of people and events. Since childhood, he possessed a genius for introspection, attentively observing experiences beneath the conscious threshold—experiences of which the great majority of us remain unaware. This gift was derived, at least in part, from the peculiar circumstances of his upbringing.
C.G. Jung’s Biographic Note
Carl Gustav Jung, born on July 26, 1875, in Switzerland’s Thurgau canton, was the son of a village pastor. Being a deeply introverted child and living isolated from his peers in a parish, he read books from his father’s library far beyond the “normal” interests of a boy of his age. He read works by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kant and literature by Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare.
In 1895, Jung began studying medicine in Basel, and in 1900, he took a position at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich under the leading Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler. During this time, he first encountered Sigmund Freud’s writings. Their friendship started when Jung visited Freud in Vienna in 1907. His research on the Word Association Experiment provided evidence-based support for Freud’s psychoanalytical theory. However, their friendship soured in 1912 with the publication of Jung’s Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, in which Jung expressed different views on the origin of libido.
Jung became renowned as the founder of analytical psychology. Until his death on June 6, 1961, he continued to be highly prolific, publishing numerous works on the psychology of the unconscious as well as on religious and cultural themes. His life’s journey, marked by introspection and exploration, left an indelible mark on the field of psychology.
C.G. Jung’s Early Writings
Before meeting Freud, Jung authored a few publications that laid the foundation of his own psychology, which only partially overlapped with Freud’s analytical theory.
On Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena
Jung completed his medical studies in 1900 and began specializing in psychiatry, working as an assistant at the University Hospital Burghölzli in Zurich. In 1902, Jung wrote his dissertation titled On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena. The dissertation was inspired by spiritualistic sessions in which he participated during his studies. The medium in the séance was his maternal cousin, Helene Preiswerk, aged 16.
In the dissertation, Jung documented Helene’s trances, observing astonishing changes in her psychological state. While in a trance, Helene displayed a mature personality and spoke in high German, which she was unable to use while conscious. Based on these observations, Jung concluded that the psyche has multiple dimensions, of which consciousness is only a small fraction. These phenomena catalyzed his concept of individuation, developed years later. According to this concept, individuation is a process of self-actualization achieved by uncovering and integrating the unconscious parts of the psyche.
Psychology of Dementia Praecox
Working at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital under Eugen Bleuler, Jung observed patients with schizophrenia and analyzed psychotic phenomena from an analytical perspective. In 1907, he published his observations in his second book, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, which enhanced his reputation as a research psychiatrist.
Jung’s burning question was: what actually takes place inside the mentally ill? Unlike most psychiatrists before or since, he gave serious attention to what his schizophrenic patients said and did. He demonstrated that their delusions and hallucinations were not simply “mad” but full of psychological meaning.
For instance, he observed an old schizophrenic patient who had spent fifty years in the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital. The patient made stitching movements as if sewing shoes. Later, Jung discovered that, before her illness, she had been jilted by a cobbler lover. Jung connected the dots and assumed correctly that the emotional shock triggered her illness, and the stitching movements symbolized her tragic romance.
As a scientist, Jung believed that psychotic phenomena were associated with biochemical neurotoxins circulating in the brain. However, he also understood schizophrenia in psychoanalytic terms as “an introversion of libido.” He considered the libido to be withdrawn from the outer world of reality and invested in the inner world of myth-creation, fantasy, and dreams. The schizophrenic, he maintained, was a dreamer in a waking world.
“I had not met with much sympathy for the ideas expressed in “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.” In fact, my colleagues laughed at me. But through this book I came to know Freud. He invited me to visit him, and our first meeting took place in Vienna in March 1907. We met at one o’clock in the afternoon and talked virtually without a pause for thirteen hours. Freud was the first man of real importance I had encountered; in my experience up to that time, no one else could compare with him. There was nothing the least trivial in his attitude. I found him extremely intelligent, shrewd, and altogether remarkable.”
C.G. Jung. “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”
Word Association Test
In 1903, Jung, together with his assistant Franz Riklin, started experiments with the word association test. The word association test was first used as a research instrument in 1879 by Francis Galton and later by Emil Kraepelin and Wilhelm Wundt. A standard association test involved timing quick responses to trigger words. Galton, Kraepelin, and Wundt used the test to measure a patient’s cognitive fitness.
All of the previous reserchers were primarily interested in the content and speed of the responses, without being able to identify the reasons for the delays. The concentrated on the positive results and not on the abberations.
Jung’s Unique Approach to Word Association Test
The test was initially developed to evaluate the neurocognitive abilities of patients, focusing on correct and/or quick responses. Jung, however, shifted the focus to the mistakes made during the test, such as prolonged responses or a lack of responses altogether. He discovered that words causing disturbances “touched” the patient’s emotional complexes. Following this logic, Jung correctly assumed that these emotionally charged complexes operated autonomously in the unconscious, blocking the patient’s self-expression, increasing reaction times, or “twisting” their answers.
Jung recognized the significance of this discovery and linked it to Freud’s analytical theory, particularly the mechanism of repression. He sent the test results to Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged them as experimental proof of his theory. In 1907, Jung met Freud in Vienna, marking the beginning of a period of close collaboration and friendship.
The research on the Word Association Test was also the reason for Jung’s invitation to the famous Clark University lecture in 1909.
Reading Jung’s Writings
The complexity of Jung’s ideas, as well as his writing style, is the major entry barrier for those interested in his psychology. His nonlinear writing style reflects his thinking, as he approaches the subject repeatedly, each time from a different angle. Jung never settles for a single formulation but continually redevelops concepts related to a particular context. This approach infuses his work with richness but demands the reader’s utmost mental flexibility.
Reading Jung’s work requires determination. Apart from the long and sometimes reciprocal sentences, the reader must follow Jung from the depths of psychiatric practice to the ivory tower of philosophy and religion. The concept of a collective unconscious and the notion of libido as a driving force for self-realization, expressed through the “circular” descriptions typical of Jung’s writings, make it difficult for many readers to grasp the fundamentals. Another difficulty in understanding his ideas is the vast material provided by Jung about world religions and mythologies.
However, in Jung’s collected works, the reader will find brilliantly formulated and straightforward ideas. The author of this article refers the interested reader to Jung’s early book mentioned earlier: The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, written in 1907, which remains the most sophisticated psychoanalytical interpretation of psychotic phenomena. Additionally, the transcripts of his lectures provide a good understanding of Jung’s psychology, particularly his lectures from 1936 held at Tavistock, UK: Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice (Tavistock Lectures).
Developement of C.G. Jung’s Psychology
Befor meeting Freud Jung developed the foundation of his own psychology which only partially overlaped with Freud’s analytical theory. In his autobiography “Memories, Dreams , Reflections” Jung concluded:
“In 1903 I once more took up (Freud’s) “The Interpretation of Dreams” and discovered how it all linked up with my own ideas. What chiefly interested me was the application to dreams of the concept of the repression mechanism… This was important to me because I had frequently encountered repressions in my experiments with word association; in response to certain stimulus words the patient either had no associative answer or was unduly slow in his reaction time. As was later discovered, such a disturbance occurred each time the stimulus word had touched upon a psychic lesion or conflict…
My reading of Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” showed me that the repression mechanism was at work here, and that the facts I had observed were consonant with his theory. Thus, I was able to corroborate Freud’s line of argument. The situation was different when it came to the content of the repression. Here I could not agree with Freud. He considered the cause of the repression to be a sexual trauma. From my practice, however, I was familiar with numerous cases of neurosis in which the question of sexuality played a subordinate part, other factors standing in the foreground for example, the problem of social adaptation, of oppression by tragic circumstances of life, prestige considerations, and so on. Later I presented such cases to Freud; but he would not grant that factors other than sexuality could be the cause. That was highly unsatisfactory to me.”
C.G. Jung. “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”
Collective Unconscious in C.G. Jung’s Psychology
Carl Gustav Jung disagreed with the idea that humans are born as a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate proposed by ancient philosophers like Aristotle and later, in the 17th century, by René Descartes and John Locke. Instead, Jung introduced the concept of the “collective unconscious.” He described the collective unconscious as an inherited layer of the human psyche, equipped with universal experiences common to all humans. This layer exists beneath the “personal unconscious” of repressed wishes and traumatic memories discovered by Freud.
Jung developed the concept of the collective unconscious based on his own experiences. Even as a child, possessing a remarkable gift for introspection, he realized that there were things in his dreams that came from somewhere beyond himself. During his research as a psychiatrist, he found symbols and images in the delusions and hallucinations of schizophrenic patients that also appeared in myths and fairy tales.
C.G. Jung’s Archetypes
Through numerous intercultural studies, travels, encounters with indigenous peoples, and the study of myths, and literature, as well as through observing his psychiatric patients, Jung identified common images and ideas that appear collectively throughout human history. He referred to these entities as “archetypes.”
Jung described archetypes as universal, innate patterns of behavior that represent inherited knowledge passed down from our ancestors. They function as behavioral templates, or modi operandi, that are activated in specific life circumstances. Jung compared archetypes to dry riverbeds that fill with water after rain, suggesting that archetypes similarly become filled with content when activated in particular life situations.
Archetypal Neurosis
Every living organism has an anatomical structure and a behavioral repertoire that is uniquely adapted to the environment in which it evolved. This is the “environment of evolutionary adaptation” in which individuals will live out their life cycle. Any change in the environment has consequences for the organism.
Human versatility, has led to dramatic transformations of the environments in which we live. In fact, the speed at which environments have changed in recent centuries has far outstripped the pace at which natural selection can progress in the traditional Darwinian manner. Today we live in overcrowded, polluted cities, being constantly exposed to stress. Such environment causes the frustration of the archetypal needs leading inevitably to mental health disorders appearing in the shape of “archetypal neuroses.”
The Archetypes of Anima and Animus
Just as gender is experienced as an affirmation of the archetypal principle appropriate to one’s sex, so relations with the other sex rest on archetypal foundation. Jung called this contra sexual archetype the animus in women and the anima in men. As feminine aspect of man and the masculine aspect of woman, they function as a pair of opposites in the unconscious, profoundly influencing the relations of all men and women.
The Persona
The Persona is a conformity archetype. It is our public face, or the “mask” we wear in different social situations. It is a product of adopting societal expectations, roles, commands, and prohibitions.
The Shadow
The shadow is the opposite to the persona. The shadow encloses our “hidden site”, repressed aggressive impulses, desires, and instincts. Common manifestations of the shadow include envy, greed, prejudice, hate, and aggression. However, the shadow contains not only the darker, unacknowledged aspects of our personality but also its untapped potentials. Its integration is crucial for personal growth and ethical living.
Jungian Dream Analysis
Sigmund Freud’s book “The Interpretation of Dreams” dominated the field of dream analysis. In Freud’s view the book was his biggest achievement and contribution to science. However, it was Carl Gustav Jung who found that dreams are not just “guardians of sleep” of vehicles for “wish fulfilments.”
In Jung’s view dreams are structured narratives fundamental for our survival and adaptation. They are “living fossils” preserving the knowledge of our species throughout time. They bridge the gap between our Palaeolithic ancestry and modern society interconnecting human consciousness with evolutionary heritage.
Synchronicity
Jung introduced the concept of synchronicity, he called also meaningful coincidence, into his psychology. He observed events occurring simultaneously that were not causally connected but were linked by their content. An example of such an acausal phenomenon might be thinking of an old friend we haven’t seen in years, only to receive a phone call from that very person at the same moment. Synchronistic phenomena are familiar to all of us, but they are often dismissed as “mere coincidence.”
If synchronistic events are acausal, they transcend the boundaries of linear cause-and-effect relationships and point to a non-material psychic existence beyond the time and space.
Individuation
According to Jung, individuation is the ultimate goal of human life, enabling the exploration and realization of the full potential of the unconscious. He believed that the purpose of analytical psychology is to support this process by integrating the Ego (the conscious mind) with the Self (the totality of the psyche).
Individuation should not be confused with ego-centeredness or individualism. To fully grasp the concept, it is essential to understand Jung’s organization of the psyche. In Jungian psychology, the Self represents the totality of personality, encompassing both the conscious and unconscious mind. The Self is superior to the Ego, as it connects to the collective unconscious and holds the shared knowledge of our species. Exploring the Self helps the Ego in achieving its most complete expression of individuality freeing it from superficial or false identities.
Jung’s Typology
In 1921 in his bestseller book, “Psychological Types” Jung proposed his concept of typology. Jung assumed that people share a common psychological foundation for perceiving and responding to the world, both externally and internally.
Jung’s theory of psychological types has its roots in his biography, as he grappled with typological duality from a young age. He labelled the concrete, outwardly-oriented, socially compatible side “Personality No. 1,” distinguishing it from “Personality No. 2,” the inwardly, unconscious and wise aspect of his personality.
In “Psychological Types” Jung proposed the concept of four functions of the psyche: two non-rational functions: Sensation and Intuition, and two rational functions: Thinking and Feeling. Those functions are interlinked with two main attitudes: Extraversion and Introversion. “Extraversion” implies outward-directed psychic energy, whereas “introversion” denotes energy drawn inward. Combining two attitudes and the four function Jung distinguished eight personality types.
Jungian versus Freudian Psychology
Understanding depth psychology isn’t possible without immersing oneself in Jung’s conflict with Freud.
Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, a model of the dynamics of the human psyche and the first effective treatment method of mental health disorders. Freud also originated the language used until today in analytical psychology.
From today’s perspective, Freud’s libido concept and his dream interpretation method proved to be wrong while Jung’s stood the test of time. However, it is Freud’s analytical theory which entered the “pantheon of science”, while Jung and his psychology are considered as non-scientific or even esoteric.
The Jungian psychologist James Hillman compared Freudian psychology to the catholic church consolidated by a dogma. He saw the “dogma-free” Jungian psychology on the opposite pole, comparing it to the protestant church splitting from the common trunk into dozens of branches. This explains the fragmentation of Jungian societies around the world.
Jung’s Contribution to Psychology
Freud saw the unconscious as a container of forgotten or displaced individual memories. He followed the concept of “tabula rasa,” seeing the newborn child as an empty slate starting to accumulate experiences and memories only after birth. In contrast to Freud, Jung discovered within the unconscious a deeper layer embracing the condensed knowledge of humanity developed throughout evolution. He termed this condensed inherited knowledge the “collective unconscious.”
He introduced to psychology terms such as “introversion”/ “extroversion,” “conflict,” the concepts of the collective unconscious, archetypes, personality typology, and synchronicity. However, his most unique contribution was the concept of the collective unconscious and archetypes.
Through studies of myths, art, and literature, as well as observations of his patients, Jung repeatedly encountered common images and ideas that exist collectively throughout human history. He called these entities “archetypes,” which are inherited patterns of behavior that help individuals adapt to their changing life circumstances.
Ge investigated archetypes seeing in them innate neuropsychic centres’ possessing the capacity to initiate, control, and mediate the human behavioural. Thus, on appropriate occasions, archetypes give rise to similar thoughts, images, myths, feelings, and ideas in people, irrespective of their class, creed, race, geographical location, or historical epoch.
An individual’s entire archetypal endowment makes up the collective unconscious, whose authority and power are vested in a central nucleus responsible for integrating the whole personality, which Jung termed the Self.
Jungian Psychology Today
Today, Jung and his psychology remain even more controversial and confusing than in the first part of the twentieth century, which was dominated by psychoanalysis and its various branches, called depth or psychodynamic psychology.
There are several obstacles to Jungian psychology entering the mainstream of science, particularly in psychiatry and psychology. In general, psychiatrists are seldom trained in depth psychology, and those familiar with Jungian psychology are extremely rare. Psychologists, on the other hand, especially those rooted in behaviorism and neurophysiology, rejected Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and his approach to the psyche.
The current scientific effort in psychiatry and psychology is to explain the psyche as a pure epiphenomenon of brain function. In contrast, Jung rejected the concept of “biologizing” the psyche. He treated the psyche as a creation of its own, independent of matter.
Another reason for the rejection of Jungian psychology by established science is the introduction of non-causal phenomena like intuition or synchronicity, which collide with the causality on which Western thought is built. As a result, Jungian psychology has an esoteric aura and is considered non-scientific.
Jung’s Multidimensional View on the Psyche
Jung’s psychology became also a cosmology, for he saw the journey of personal development towards fuller consciousness as occurring in the context of eternity.
The psyche, existing sui generis as objective part of nature, is subject to the same laws that govern the universe and is itself the supreme fulfilment of those laws. Through the miracle of consciousness, the human psyche provides the mirror in which nature sees herself reflected.
First 100 years later the quantum physisists confirm Jung’s view.
Quantum Information Explained | Federico Faggin
Jung on the Psyche
“The psyche deserves to be taken as a phenomenon in itself, for there are no grounds for regarding it as a mere epiphenomenon, even though it is associated with the function of the brain; just as little as one can conceive of life as an epiphenomenon of the chemistry of carbon.” Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 6. London: Kegan Paul, 1928.
Jung says further:
“We can very well determine with sufficient certainty that an individual consciousness with reference to ourselves has come to an end in death. Whether, however, the continuity of the psychic processes is thereby broken remains doubtful, for we can today assert with much less assurance than fifty years ago that the psyche is chained to the brain. On the contrary, it appears that the psyche is not bound to space and time. The unconscious manifests itself in such a way that it seems to stand outside of them; it is spaceless and timeless. ” Wirklichkeit der Seele, p. 212. Zürich: Rascher, 1934
Jung’s Reflections on His Life
Looking back on his life, Jung reflected:
“In my case, it must have been a passionate urge to understand that brought about my birth. For that is the strongest element in my nature” (MDR 297).
In old age, Jung had many premonitions of approaching death, and what pressed him was the lack of fuss the unconscious makes about it. Death for Jung seemed to be a goal in itself, something to be welcomed.
Jung’s needs to “understand and to know” kept him creatively alive well into his eighty-sixth year, when he suffered two strokes and died peacefully on 6 June 1961 at Küsnacht.
Face To Face with Carl Gustav Jung (1959)
Interview with C.G. Carl Jung 1957
“Matter of Heart” – Documentary on Carl Gustav Jung
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