Carl Jung

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Carl Gustav Jung: Analytic Psychological (1875-1961)

Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland. His father, Johannes Paul Achilles Jung (1842-1896), was a pastor – a profession that had traditions in the family. He married Emilie Preiswerk (1848-1923) in 1874; Carl Gustav remained a single child for a long time before the birth of his sister, Gertrud.

Jung's study on schizophrenia, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, led him into collaboration with Sigmund Freud; they first met in 1907 and talked about thirteen hours. "I found him extremely intelligent, shrewd, and altogether remarkable," Jung wrote on Freud. He opened a private practice and travelled with Freud in 1909 to the United States, lecturing and meeting amongst others the American philosopher and psychologist William James, whose thoughts deeply attracted Jung.
Jung's disagreement with Freud started over the latter's emphasis on sexuality alone as the dominant factor in unconscious motivation. "Every form of addiction is bad," Jung later said, "no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism." Freud fainted twice in Jung's presence but the ties were broken with the publication of Jung's Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912, Symbols of Transformation), full of mythological images and motifs, and with his acts as the president of the International Congress of Psycho-Analysis. In a letter to Freud he wrote: "If ever you should rid yourself entirely of your complexes and stop playing the father to your sons, and instead of aiming continually at their weak spots took a good look at your own for a change, then I will mend my ways and at one stroke uproot the vice of being in two minds about you." (Jung on December, 18, 1912). The end of his father-son relationship with Freud had a profoundly disturbing effect on Jung. He withdrew from the psychoanalytic movement and suffered a six-year-long breakdown during which he had fantasies of mighty floods sweeping over northern Europe – prophetic visions of World War I. His inner experiences Jung recorded in the "Red Book", illustrated with his own works in the art nouveau style.
Freud viewed jung as the “Crown Prince” of the Psychoanalytic movement. At the first meeting of the new International psychoanalytic Association, Freud suggested that Jung be the elected president, for he believed that all would accept a young non-Jewish person.

However, he was met with stiff opposition from Viennese, most of whom were Jews and also because of Jung’s known anti Semitism. Nevertheless, Freud overcame these objections & Jung was elected

Ironically, soon after, the relationship between Freud and Jung began to weaken. Jung was not performing his presidential duties as well as Freud had expected.

Jung i) de-emphasized sex in his lectures and in his therapeutic analyses; ii) changed the concept of libido; iii) deplored freud’s causality; iv) shunned the traditional methods of empirical science.

By the end of 1912, relations between Jung & Freud were strained and they decided to discontinue correspondence.

By 1914, Jung had withdrawn completely from the movement, never resumed his friendship with Freud, and he soon founded a new school which he called ‘Analytic Psychology’

Basic Attitudes and Methodology

In the etiology schizophrenia , unlike Freud , Jung laid emphases upon the contemporary factors rather than historical factors.

Freud at that time agreed with Jung about this particular point, but he did not agree in general with Jung’s emphases on the present rather than on the past in the study of neurosis.

According to Jung- Not only present is important, but one must understand the future, potentialities of man in order to make sense of him.

The goals and intentions were as important as his history in directing man’s behaviour.

Deplored Freud’s study of causality exclusively in terms of past & found Freud’s theorizing too reductive and mechanistic.

Jung later suggested a principle called synchronicity – for those events which occur together in time but which do not cause one another.

Position on scientific methodology
Changed his position on scientific methodology.
Though at first he was interested in making psychoanalysis more scientific via the association experiment. Later he lost interest in proving analysis more scientific via the association experiment.
He & his followers turned more to the study of mythology and art as more useful methods of revealing the form of unconscious.

Jung became the most negative of the leading analysts toward the empirical methods

Jung’s Therapy- In accordance with these basic views, Jung’s therapy put less stress upon the individual’s past and more upon his present situation & desires for the future.

He saw man as more creative and less a passive recipient of environmental influences than friend.

Jung held an optimistic view of man.

Freud saw Jung’s therapy as something that might be expected from a priest with moral exhortation, appeals to wills power, and an attempt to develop man’s yearning after the devine.

If the psychic energy were not recognized and used properly by ego (conscious part), it might distort man’s functioning so that he would become neurotic or psychotic.

Basic Energies & Instincts

Jung’s views about the basic energy of man were closer to commonsense than Freud’s.

Jung regarded libido as general biological life energy, not necessarily predominately life energy, not necessarily sexual.

Freud –saw sexual energy concentrated on different body zones at different stages (oral, anal etc.) Jung saw the life energy simply manifesting itself in the form, which was at the moment most important for the organism, e.g., in relation to eating, elimination &sex.

Unlike Freud
Early concentration of qualification upon the oral zone was seen as related to eating rather than to pleasurable sensations arising out of sexual feelings.

Jung reinterpreted analytic observations that had been previously assumed to represent sexual strivings:

Oedipal conflict – Nutritive functions are more important in the child’s attitude toward the mother. These later on combine sexual feelings as the child develops in his sexual functioning and also combine with certain punitive unconscious predisposition to react toward the mother. Thus the Oedipal relationship is not based exclusively on sexuality as Freud had suggested.

Concepts from Physics were almost directly transferred to psychic energy, e.g.:
= Psychic energy cannot be destroyed
= If the energy is used in some psychic function, then amount of energy for that function will decrease; but will reappear in the form of increased energy for some other function
= If the energy disappears from some psychic system, it will reappear in some other.
=All these concepts were similar to Freud’s ideas about psychic energy

Jung also believed that the sum of the available psychic energy does not remain constant, for energy can be exchanged with the external world through such things as muscular work & ingestion of food.

Energy flows from the point of high concentration to low concentration. The system tends to reach a state of balance, however, this tendency to attain balance is never fully realized, because of constant exchanges between psychic system and external world.

View on Psychic Structures: Hall and lindzey (1957) have given an excellent summary of Jung’s position:-

“The total personality or psyche, as it called by Jung, consists of a number of separate ut interacting systems. The principle ones are the Ego, the Personal Unconsicious and its Complexes, the Collective Unconscious and its Archetypes, the Persona, the Anima, or Animus, and the Shadow .In addition to these interdependent systems, there are the Attitudes of Introversion and Extraversion, and the function of Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and Intuiting Finally, there is the Self which is the fully developed and fully unified personality.

Ego – Layman’s conception of himself; Conscious mind in contact with reality Contains the conscious memories Centre of identity & personality Jung’s ego is not unlike Freud’s ego

Personal Unconscious- Region just “interior” to ego.
- Since not in contact with ego, materials may be repressed into it from the ego.
- It’s like blend of Freud’s unconscious & preconscious
- Contents of the personal unconscious are available to consciousness and contains only materials which have come into the unconscious as a result of personal experiences of the individual and the collective unconscious.

Collective Unconscious
- Dark & misty region
- Contains things that man has inherited phylogenetically (through species)
- Things that are inherited are Archetypes

Archetypes:
- Something bet’s symbols and predispositions to perceive or act in a certain way.
- They are formed in a result of the universal experiences of man in his evolution & hence are universal.
- This suggests that Jung accepted the doctrine of inheritance of acquired characteristics.
- Jung discovered Archetypes as a result of his study of the myths and art of different ages & cultures. He found certain symbols that were common to all.
- Commonality was found, despite the fact that no direct exchange between the cultures could ever have occurred.
- Examples of Archetypes are birth, death, the hero, the child, the god, child hero like Moses Christ & Lord Krishna
- Four archetypes are better developed than any of others: The persona, the Anima, the Animus & the shadow. They are so well developed that they have become separate personality system.

Persona: -
Mask presented by the individual to his society
Part of himself that he wants to publicize
It may/ may not serve the function of concealing the reel personality

Anima& Animus- Jung recognized the man’s bisexuality.
Anima- Represents the feminine part of man
Animus- Masculine part of woman

Shadow- Part of the unconscious which was inherited from man’s prehuman ancestors; - It’s the animal’s instincts - Immoral & passionate impulses emanate largely from the shadow - When these impulses appear in conscious, they may be expressed or repressed - In case of repression, some of the materials of the personal unconscious originate in the shadow i.e., shadow may lead to personal unconscious

Self
- Most important Archetype
- Jung found this Archetype in various cultures by a symbol which was called the mandala or magical circle.
- It represented man’s striving for unity, wholeness and integration of the personality.
- Jung changed his earlier conception of self as equivalent to psyche
- Self was seen as separate system that holds all other systems together
-The self can appear only as the other psychic systems become separate enough to require integration, which does not occur until middle age.
- Jung throught Freud might he correct about the importance of sexual motivation till the middle age, but he believed that Freud had ignored what happened after this point had passed, when the self had developed and when sex had become a subsidiary consideration

-Jung ‘s extraversion and introversion are better known than any other part of his system

- Extraversion & Introversion are attitudes toward the world - Extraversion is when most of the individual’s attention is directed toward the external world.

- Introversion – attention is directed toward self

- Ego & Personal Unconscious have opposite attitudes

- Usually both attitudes are present in the personality, the nondominant attitude, tends to be repressed

-Stronger the conscious expression of one attitude, the stronger the unconscious development of the other.

-Sometimes an upset allows the libido attached to the unconscious attitude to overwhelm the repression & it overcomes the dominant attitude.

-Thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting are the 4 functions do not differ from the common meanings & any one may be dominant.

- Typology- an individual is described in terms of function & attitude eg. Feeling - intuiting – introvert might be a prophet or a monk

- The whole individual has all the factors in harmony.

-Pure types imply psychopathology

Contribution & Evaluation
- Jung is difficult to comprehend (Jones, 1957).
-Jung himself accepted that his work was rushed & without regard to time or method.
-He disliked traditional scientific methodology
-Jung was not a systematist.
-Did not present any Postulates
- However, his importance has grown within last few years.
-His ideas are novel& provocative
-He was an optimist & consistent with the religious viewpoint. He was interested in myths and other eastern religious