Carl Gustav Jung

Jung, Carl Gustav, 1875-1961, Swiss psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology. The son of a country pastor, he studied at Basel (1895-1900) and Zürich (M.D., 1902). After a stint at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Zürich, Jung worked (1902) under Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli Clinic. He wrote valuable papers, but more important was his book on the psychology of dementia praecox (1906), which led to a meeting (1907) with Sigmund Freud. Finding that their theoretical positions had much in common, the two formed a close relationship for a number of years: Jung edited the Jahrbuch für psychologische und psychopathologische Forschungen and was made (1911) president of the International Psychoanalytic Society. However, a formal break with Freud came with the publication of Jung's revolutionary work The Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), which disagreed with the Freudian emphasis on sexual trauma as the basis for all neurosis and with the literal interpretation of the Oedipus complex.

Prior to World War II, Jung became president of the Nazi-dominated International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. As the Nazis forced their Aryan ideology on the association, Jung became increasingly uncomfortable and resigned. In addition, in 1943 he aided the Office of Strategic Services by analyzing Nazi leaders for the United States. Questions have arisen, however, regarding his alleged racial theories of the unconscious. While Jung's work is of little importance in contemporary psychoanalytic practice, it remains widely influential in such fields as religious studies and literary criticism.

Jungian psychology is based on psychic totality and psychic energism. He postulated two dimensions in the unconscious—the personal (repressed or forgotten content of an individual's mental and material life) and the archetypes (images, patterns, and symbols that are often seen in dreams and fantasies and appear as themes in mythology and religion) of a collective unconscious (those acts and mental patterns shared by members of a culture or universally by all human beings). In Psychological Types (1921) Jung elucidated the concepts of extroversion and introversion for the study of personality types. He also developed the theory of synchronicity, the coincidence of causally unrelated events having identical or similar meaning. Additionally, he was the first person to introduce into the language such terms and concepts as "anima" and "New Age." For Jung the most important and lifelong task imposed upon any person is fulfillment through the process of individuation, the achievement of harmony of conscious and unconscious, which makes a person one and whole. Jung's many works are compiled in H. Read, M. Fordham, and G. Adler, ed., Collected Works of C. G. Jung (20 vol., 1953-79).

(born July 26, 1875, Kesswil, Switz.—died June 6, 1961, Küsnacht) Swiss psychiatrist. As a youth he read widely in philosophy and theology. After taking his medical degree (1902), he worked in Zürich with Eugen Bleuler on studies of mental illness. From this research emerged Jung's notion of the complex, or cluster of emotionally charged (and largely unconscious) associations. Between 1907 and 1912 he was Sigmund Freud's close collaborator and most likely successor, but he broke with Freud over the latter's insistence on the sexual basis of neuroses. In the succeeding years Jung founded the field of analytic psychology, a response to Freud's psychoanalysis. Jung advanced the concepts of the introvert and extravert personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious (the pool of human experience passed from generation to generation). He went on to formulate new psychotherapeutic techniques designed to reacquaint the person with his unique “myth” or place in the collective unconscious, as expressed in dream and imagination. Sometimes dismissed as disguised religion and criticized for its lack of verifiability, Jung's perspective nonetheless remains influential in religion and literature as well as psychiatry. His important works include The Psychology of the Unconscious (1912; revised as Symbols of Transformation), Psychological Types (1921), Psychology and Religion (1938), and Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962).

Learn more about Jung, Carl (Gustav) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Jung's theory of neurosis is based on the premise of a self-regulating psyche composed of tensions between opposing attitudes of the ego and the unconscious. A neurosis is a significant unresolved tension between these contending attitudes. Each neurosis is unique, and different things work in different cases, so no therapeutic method can be arbitrarily applied. Nevertheless, there is a set of cases that Jung especially addressed. Although adjusted well enough to everyday life, the individual has lost a fulfilling sense of meaning and purpose, and has no living religious belief to which to turn. There seems to be no readily apparent way to set matters right. In these cases, Jung turned to ongoing symbolic communication from the unconscious in the form of dreams and visions.

Resolution of the tension causing this type of neurosis involves a careful constructive study of the fantasies. The seriousness with which the individual (ego) must take the mythological aspects of the fantasies may compare with the regard that devoted believers have toward their religion. It is not merely an intellectual exercise, but requires the commitment of the whole person and realization that the unconscious has a connection to life-giving spiritual forces. Only a belief founded on direct experience with this process is sufficient to oppose, balance, and otherwise adjust the attitude of the ego.

When this process works, this type of neurosis may be considered a life-guiding gift from the unconscious, even though the personal journey forced upon the individual sometimes takes decades. This may seem absurd to someone looking at a neurosis from the attitude that it is always an illness that should not have to happen, expects the doctor to have a quick cure, and that fantasies are unreliable subjective experiences.

A significant aspect of Jung's theory of neurosis is how symptoms can vary by psychological type. The hierarchy of discriminating psychological functions gives each individual a dominant sensation, intuition, feeling, or thinking function preference with either an extroverted or introverted attitude. The dominant is quite under the control of the ego. But the inferior function remains a gateway for unconscious contents. This creates typical manifestations of inferior insight and behavior when extreme function one-sidedness accompanies the neurosis.

The attitude of the unconscious

Jung's theory of neurosis is based on a psyche that consists of tensions between various opposite attitudes in a self-regulating dynamic. The ego, being the center of consciousness, represents the coalescing attitude of consciousness. The ego's attitude is in tension with a complementary and balancing attitude in the unconscious.

In appropriate circumstances the unconscious attitude can directly oppose the ego's attitude and produce all manner of neuroses. These situations arise when the conscious attitude has been unable to recognize and effectively integrate issues important to the attitude of the unconscious.

It may perhaps seem odd that I should speak of an "attitude of the unconscious." As I have repeatedly indicated, I regard the attitude of the unconscious as compensatory to consciousness. According to this view, the unconscious has as good a claim to an "attitude" as the latter (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 568).

Freud, Alfred Adler, and psychological types

Jung started from Freud's and Adler's already developed and competing theories of neurosis. Both claimed universal applicability and rejected the other's. Jung saw both theories as valuable but limited in scope. As such, he used them at appropriate times. His attempt to reconcile his appreciation of each theory compelled Jung to investigate and incorporate psychological types into his theory. Jung considered Freud's "Eros" theory extroverted and Adler's power theory introverted.

The actual existence of far-reaching type-differences, of which I have described eight groups in [Psychological Types], has enabled me to conceive the two controversial theories of neurosis as manifestations of a type-antagonism. This discovery brought with it the need to rise above the opposition and to create a theory which would do justice not merely to one or the other side, but to both equally (Jung, 1966: pars. 65-66).

Despite their apparently irreconcilable differences, Jung found his "justice" perspective by identifying a fundamental limitation in common.

They are critical methods, having, like all criticism, the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved, or reduced, but capable only of harm when there is something to be built (Jung, 1966: par. 65).

Positive meaning of neurosis

For Jung, a neurosis is not completely negative, despite, and even because of, its debilitating aspects. Interpreted positively, it has fundamental purpose for some people.

The reader will doubtless ask: What in the world is the value and meaning of a neurosis, this most useless and pestilent curse of humanity? To be neurotic – what good can that do? ... I myself have known more than one person who owed his whole usefulness and reason for existence to a neurosis, which prevented all the worst follies in his life and forced him to a mode of living that developed his valuable potentialities. These might have been stifled had not the neurosis, with iron grip, held him to the place where he belonged (Jung, 1966: par. 68).

Collective mythological images

Jung distinguished between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. To find the positive therapeutic direction as impartially as he could, Jung identified and interpreted dream images generated by the collective unconscious in a constructive way rather than reducing them to personal indications. Since collective themes are common to all humanity, they find their counterpart in mythological motifs.

[Freud's and Adler's theories] rest on an exclusively causal and reductive procedure which resolves the dream (or fantasy) into its memory components and the underlying instinctual processes. I have indicated above the justification as well as the limitation of this procedure. It breaks down at the point where the dream symbols can no longer be reduced to personal reminiscences or aspirations, that is, when the images of the collective unconscious begin to appear (Jung, 1966: par. 122).

Normalcy of the divided psyche

Jung considered the divided psyche normal even though it manifests itself pathologically in neurosis and, more especially, in psychosis.

As a matter of history, is was the study of dreams that first enabled psychologists to investigate the unconscious aspect of conscious psychic events.

It is on such evidence that psychologists assume the existence of an unconscious psyche – though many scientists and philosophers deny its existence. They argue naively that such an assumption implies the existence of two "subjects," or (to put it in a common phrase) two personalities within the same individual. But that is exactly what it does imply – quite correctly. And it is one of the curses of modern man that many people suffer from this divided personality. It is by no means a pathological symptom; it is a normal fact that can be observed at any time and anywhere. It is not merely the neurotic whose right hand does not know what the left is doing. This predicament is a symptom of a general unconsciousness that is the undeniable common inheritance of all mankind (Jung, 1964:23).

He hears and does not hear; he sees, yet is blind; he knows and is ignorant (Jung, 1964:33).

Collective neuroses in politics

Jung saw the divided psyche in the normal individual reflected in the neurotic nature of global politics, and vice versa.

If, for a moment, we regard mankind as one individual, we see that the human race is like a person carried away by unconscious powers; and the human race also likes to keep certain problems tucked away in separate drawers . . . Our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic, with the Iron Curtain making a symbolic line of division. . . . It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron Curtain (Jung, 1964:85).

See also

• Analytical psychology
• Jungian psychology
• Neurosis

References

• Jung, C.G., et al. (1964). Man and his Symbols, New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-05221-9.
• Jung, C.G. (1966). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected Works, Volume 7, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01782-4.
• Jung, C.G. [1921] (1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01813-8.
• Jung, C.G. [1961] (1989). 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'', New York, N.Y.: Vantage Books. ISBN 0-679-72395-1.