Carl Jung Essay, Research Paper
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 try
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)
3b0
Economist, The, ?Carl Gustav Jung: BK. Rev. The Economist, Vol. 340
September 14, 1996 Ellenberger, Henri, Unconscious, Vol. 22, WebPost