Carl Jung's Theoretical Position
Carl Jung, born July 26
1875 in Switzerland was the son of a philologist and pastor who was concerned
about his father’s inadequate belief in religion and tried several attempts to
communicate with him about his own experience with God. The two never had much success in
understanding each other which led Jung to become a minister and discover
philosophy from reading and go on to study medicine and become a psychiatrist
because he so desperately wanted to understand the behaviors of people around
him (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013).
Jung founded analytic
psychology, in some aspects a response to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Jung proposed and developed concepts of the
extraverted and the introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective
unconscious (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013). Analytical psychology explores the
unconscious of an individual and joins the conscious through a range of
disciplines and psychological methods. Jung
described psychological types; identified and described unconscious with the
archetypes pervading it; and regarded the psyche as a self-regulating system
seeking individuation. The treatment
method Jung developed was a therapy requiring intermittent relationships
between clinician and patient for a short time period. Jung put much emphasis on the importance of
the analyst bringing only analytical attention into the relationship. The analyst was to be divested of self and
limited to prompting continuation of the patient’s monologue. All ideas, images, verbal constructs, and so
on, were to originate with the patient to avoid contamination by the analyst
("Carl Jung," 2006). His goal
was to understand the life of an individual with the world of the supra-personal
archetypes.
Sigmund Freud, Carl
Jung and Alfred Alder all developed methods that were similar but their
resulting concepts of the structure of the psyche and its motivations were
different. Freud’s psychoanalysis
concentrated on sexuality, whereas Jung’s analytical psychology put emphasis on
religion and Adler called his theory “individual psychology” and focused on
power ("Carl Jung," 2006).
Jung and Freud had influence on each other during Jung’s academic
development. The idea of the unconscious
in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams
is what interested Jung to collaborate with Freud. However, Jung did not place emphasis on the
importance of sexual development; he focused on the collective unconscious: the
part of the unconscious that contains memories and idea inherited from our ancestors. While Jung did believe that libido was an
important source for personal growth, he did not agree with Freud that libido
alone was responsible for the formation of the core personality (Carlson,
2010).
Carl Jung believed that
the human mind has three parts: the ego which is the conscious mind, the
personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. He believed that the collective unconscious
was a place where all the experiences and knowledge of the human species exist
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013). He also believed that the process of
individuation was essential in order for a person to become whole and fully
developed as a human being. Individuation
refers to the emergence of a person’s differentiated identity in relation to a
larger group of individuals with whom he or she is situated (Sleasman, 2010).
Carl Jung’s concepts of
introversion and extraversion have contributed to personality psychology and
also had influence on psychotherapy. As
a psychiatrist he gave advice to patients suffering from alcoholism which
eventually led to Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a nationwide program that
helps millions of people who are suffering from this addiction.
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