Jung: Analytical Psychology
B Overview of Analytical Psychology B Biography of Carl Jung B Levels of the Psyche
Conscious
Personal Unconscious
Collective Unconscious
Archetypes
Persona
Shadow
Anima
Animus
Great Mother
Wise Old Man
Hero
Self
B Dynamics of Personality Causality and Teleology
Progression and Regression
B Psychological Types Attitudes
Introversion
Extraversion
Functions
Thinking
Feeling
Sensing
Intuiting
B Development of Personality Stages of Development
Childhood
Youth
Jung
Middle Life
Old Age
Self-Realization
B Jung’s Methods of Investigation Word Association Test
Dream Analysis
Active Imagination
Psychotherapy
B Related Research Personality Type and Investing Money
Personality Type and Interest in and Attrition From Engineering
B Critique of Jung B Concept of Humanity B Key Terms and Concepts
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C H A P T E R 4
The middle-aged doctor sat at his desk in deep contemplation and concern. A 6-year relationship with an older friend and mentor had recently ended on bitter terms, and the doctor felt frustrated and uncertain of his future. He no longer had confidence in his manner of treating patients and had begun to simply allow them to talk, not offering any specific advice or treatment.
For some months the doctor had been having bizarre, inexplicable dreams and seeing strange, mysterious visions. None of this seemed to make sense to him. He felt lost and disoriented—unsure whether or not the work he had been trained to do was indeed science.
A moderately gifted artist, he had begun to illustrate his dreams and visions with little or no comprehension of what the finished product might mean. He had also been writing down his fantasies without really trying to understand them.
On this particular day, he began to ponder: “What am I really doing?” He doubted if his work was science but was uncertain about what it was. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he heard a clear, distinct feminine voice from within him say, “It is art.” He recognized the voice as that of a gifted female patient who had strong, positive feelings for him. He protested to the voice that his work was not art, but no answer was immediately forthcoming. Then, returning to his writing, he again heard the voice say, “That is art.” When he tried to argue with the voice, no answer came. He reasoned that the “woman from within” had no speech center so he suggested that she use his. This she did, and a lengthy conversation followed.
The middle-aged doctor who talked to the “woman from within” was Carl Gus- tav Jung, and the time was the winter of 1913–1914. Jung had been an early admirer and friend of Sigmund Freud, but when theoretical differences arose, their personal relationship broke up, leaving Jung with bitter feelings and a deep sense of loss.
The above story is but one of many strange and bizarre occurrences experienced by Jung during his midlife “confrontation with the unconscious.” An interesting ac- count of his unusual journey into the recesses of his psyche is found in Jung’s auto- biography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 1961).
Overview of Analytical Psychology An early colleague of Freud, Carl Gustav Jung broke from orthodox psychoanalysis to establish a separate theory of personality called analytical psychology, which rests on the assumption that occult phenomena can and do influence the lives of everyone. Jung believed that each of us is motivated not only by repressed experi- ences but also by certain emotionally toned experiences inherited from our ances- tors. These inherited images make up what Jung called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious includes those elements that we have never experienced individually but which have come down to us from our ancestors.
Some elements of the collective unconscious become highly developed and are called archetypes. The most inclusive archetype is the notion of self-realization, which can be achieved only by attaining a balance between various opposing forces of personality. Thus, Jung’s theory is a compendium of opposites. People are both in- troverted and extraverted; rational and irrational; male and female; conscious and unconscious; and pushed by past events while being pulled by future expectations.
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This chapter looks with some detail into the long and colorful life of Carl Jung and uses fragments from his life history to illustrate his concepts and theories. Jung’s notion of a collective unconscious makes his theory one of the most intriguing of all conceptions of personality.
Biography of Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in Kesswil, a town on Lake Constance in Switzerland. His paternal grandfather, the elder Carl Gustav Jung, was a promi- nent physician in Basel and one of the best-known men of that city. A local rumor suggested that the elder Carl Jung was the illegitimate son of the great German poet Goethe. Although the elder Jung never acknowledged the rumor, the younger Jung, at least sometimes, believed himself to be the great-grandson of Goethe (Ellen- berger, 1970).
Both of Jung’s parents were the youngest of 13 children, a situation that may have contributed to some of the difficulties they had in their marriage. Jung’s father, Johann Paul Jung, was a minister in the Swiss Reformed Church, and his mother, Emilie Preiswerk Jung, was the daughter of a theologian. In fact, eight of Jung’s ma- ternal uncles and two of his paternal uncles were pastors, so both religion and med- icine were prevalent in his family. Jung’s mother’s family had a tradition of spiritu- alism and mysticism, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Preiswerk, was a believer in the occult and often talked to the dead. He kept an empty chair for the ghost of his first wife and had regular and intimate conversations with her. Quite understandably, these practices greatly annoyed his second wife.
Jung’s parents had three children, a son born before Carl but who lived only 3 days and a daughter 9 years younger than Carl. Thus, Jung’s early life was that of an only child.
Jung (1961) described his father as a sentimental idealist with strong doubts about his religious faith. He saw his mother as having two separate dispositions. On one hand, she was realistic, practical, and warmhearted, but on the other, she was un- stable, mystical, clairvoyant, archaic, and ruthless. An emotional and sensitive child, Jung identified more with this second side of his mother, which he called her No. 2 or night personality (Alexander, 1990). At age 3 years, Jung was separated from his mother, who had to be hospitalized for several months, and this separation deeply troubled young Carl. For a long time after, he felt distrustful whenever the word “love” was mentioned. Years later he still associated “woman” with unreliability, whereas the word “father” meant reliable—but powerless (Jung, 1961).
Before Jung’s fourth birthday, his family moved to a suburb of Basel. It is from this period that his earliest dream stems. This dream, which was to have a profound effect on his later life and on his concept of a collective unconscious, will be de- scribed later.
During his school years, Jung gradually became aware of two separate aspects of his self, and he called these his No. 1 and No. 2 personalities. At first he saw both personalities as parts of his own personal world, but during adolescence he became aware of the No. 2 personality as a reflection of something other than himself—an old man long since dead. At that time Jung did not fully comprehend these separate powers, but in later years he recognized that No. 2 personality had been in touch with
Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 99
feelings and intuitions that No. 1 personality did not perceive. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1961) wrote of his No. 2 personality:
I experienced him and his influence in a curiously unreflective manner; when he was present, No. 1 personality paled to the point of nonexistence, and when the ego that became increasingly identical with No. 1 personality dominated the scene, the old man, if remembered at all, seemed a remote and unreal dream. (p. 68)
Between his 16th and 19th years, Jung’s No. 1 personality emerged as more domi- nant and gradually “repressed the world of intuitive premonitions” (Jung, 1961, p. 68). As his conscious, everyday personality prevailed, he could concentrate on school and career. In Jung’s own theory of attitudes, his No. 1 personality was ex- traverted and in tune to the objective world, whereas his No. 2 personality was in- troverted and directed inward toward his subjective world. Thus, during his early school years, Jung was mostly introverted, but when the time came to prepare for a profession and meet other objective responsibilities, he became more extraverted, an attitude that prevailed until he experienced a midlife crisis and entered a period of extreme introversion.
Jung’s first choice of a profession was archeology, but he was also interested in philology, history, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Despite a somewhat aris- tocratic background, Jung had limited financial resources (Noll, 1994). Forced by lack of money to attend a school near home, he enrolled in Basel University, a school without an archeology teacher. Having to select another field of study, Jung chose natural science because he twice dreamed of making important discoveries in the natural world (Jung, 1961). His choice of a career eventually narrowed to medicine. That choice w