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 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)

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Economist, The, ?Carl Gustav Jung: BK. Rev. The Economist, Vol. 340

September 14, 1996 Ellenberger, Henri, Unconscious, Vol. 22, WebPost