A DISCUSSION AS TO HOW CARL JUNG CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THERE EXISTED A COLLECTIVE Essay, Research Paper

A DISCUSSION AS TO HOW CARL JUNG CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THERE EXISTED A COLLECTIVE

UNCONSCIOUS, AS WELL AS HIS INFLUENCES

4 pages

FOR REFERENCE USE ONLY

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)

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

September 14, 1996

Ellenberger, Henri, Unconscious, Vol. 22, WebPost