Carl Jung
Sigmund Freud was Carl Jung’s greatest
influence. Although he came to part
company with Freud in later years, Freud
had a distinct and profound influence
on Carl Jung. Carl Jung is said to have
been a magnetic individual who drew many
others into his circle. Within the
scope of analytic psychology, there exists
two essential tenets. The first is
that the system in which sensations and
feelings are analyzed are listed by
type. The second has to do with a way to
analyze the psyche that follows
Jung’s concepts. It stresses a group
unconscious and a mystical factor in the
growth of the personal unconscious. It
is unlike the sytem of Sigmund Freud.
Analytic psychology does not stress the
importance of sexual factors on early
mental growth. In my view, the best
understanding of Carl Jung and his views
regarding the collective unconscious
are best understood in understanding the
man and his influences. In keeping with
the scope and related concepts of
Carl Jung, unconscious is the sum total of
those psychic activities that
elude an individual’s direct knowledge of
himself or herself. This term
should not be confused either with a state of
awareness, that is, a lack of
self knowledge arising from an individual’s
unwillingness to look into
himself or herself (introspection), nor with the
subconscious, which consists
of marginal representations that can be rather
easily brought to
consciousness. Properly, unconscious processes cannot be made
conscious at
will; their unraveling requires the use of specific techniques,
such as free
association, dream interpretation, various projective tests, and
hypnosis.
For many centuries, students of human nature considered the idea of
an
unconscious mind as self contradictory. However, it was noticed by
philosophers
such as St. Augustine, and others, as well as early
*PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH 1998
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED experimental
psychologists, including Gustav Sechner, and
Hermann Von Helmholtz, that
certain psychological operations could take place
without the knowledge of
the subject. Jean Sharcot demonstrated that the
symptoms of post-traumatic
neuroses did not result from lesions of the nervous
tissue but from
unconscious representations of the trauma. Pierre Janet extended
this concept
of "unconscious fixed ideas" to hysteria, wherein traumatic
representations,
though split off from the conscious mind, exert an action upon
the conscious
mind in the form of hysterical symptoms. Janet was an important
influence on
Carl Jung, and he reported that the cure of several hysterical
patients,
using hypnosis to discover the initial trauma and then having it
reenacted by
the patient, was successful. Josef Breuer also treated a hysterical
patient
by inducing the hypnotic state and then elucidating for her the
circumstances
which had accompanied the origin of her troubles. As the
traumatic
experiences were revealed, the symptoms disappeared. Freud
substituted the
specific techniques of free association and dream
interpretation for hypnosis.
He stated that the content of the
unconscious has not just been "split off,"
but has been "repressed," that is
forcibly expelled from consciousness.
Neurotic symptoms express a
conflict between the repressing forces and the
repressed material, and this
conflict causes the "resistance" met by the
analyst when trying to uncover
the repressed material. Aside from occasional
psychic traumas, the whole
period of early childhood, including the oedipus
situation or the unconscious
desire for the parent of the opposite sex and
hatred for the parent of the
same sex, has been repressed. In a normal
individual, unknown to himself or
herself, these early childhood situations
influence the individual’s
thoughts, feelings, and acts; in the neurotic they
determine a wide gamet of
symptoms which psychoanalysis endeavors to trace back
to their unconscious
sources. During psychoanalytic treatment, the patient’s
irrational attitudes
toward the analyst, referred to as the "transference,"
manifests a revival of
old forgotten attitudes towards parents. The task of the
psychoanalyst,
together with the patient, is to analyze his resistance and
transference, and
to bring unconscious motivations to the patient’s full
awareness. Carl Jung
considered the unconscious as an autonomous part of the
psyche, endowed with
its own dynamism and complementary to the conscious mind.
He
distinguished the personal from the collective unconscious; the later
he
considered to be the seat of "archetypes" - - universal symbols loaded
with
psychic energy. As new approaches to the unconscious came about, Jung
introduced
the word association test, that is, spontaneous drawing, and his
own technique
of dream interpretation. His therapeutic method aimed at the
unification of the
conscious and the unconscious through which he believed
man achieved his"individuation," the completion of his personality. Both Sigmund
Freud and
Carl Jungs’ concepts of the unconscious have provided a key to
numerous facts
in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology, and
for the
interpretation of artistic and literary works. (Ellenberger, p.1)
Hypnosis has
contributed largely to our understanding of psychoanalysis. Carl
Jung understood
this, and represented itself throughout his many experiments
and tests. In
recent times, our understanding of the unconscious has been
expanded due to
experimental hypnosis and, as well, projective psychological
tests. It has been
observed that Jung’s relations with the other significant
people in his life
appear to have been as unsatisfactory as his own. It has
been observed that Jung
despised his pastor father as a weakling and failure
and had mixed feelings
about his mother. After Jung broke with Freud, his
former collaborator and
mentor, Jung went on to develop his own psychological
system. This incorporated
a number of key concepts which included the
collective and conscious, the
repository of mankind’s psychic heritage, and
realm of the archetypes - -
inherited patterns in the mind that exist through
time and space. Then there
were anima/animus, the image of contrasexuality in
the unconscious of each
individual, and shadow, the repressed and wanted
aspect of a person. There is
also the theory of psychology types, i.e.
introverts, and extraverts, which
influenced William James’ dichotomy of
tough and tender minded individuals.
Jung also developed his theory of
individuation, which holds that each
individual’s goal in life is to achieve
his own potential. (Economist, The,
S
6)
Bibliography
Economist, The, "Carl Gustav Jung: BK.
Rev. The Economist, Vol. 340
September 14, 1996 Ellenberger, Henri,
Unconscious, Vol. 22, WebPost