CHAPTER 4

JUNG: ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After studying Chapter 4, students should be able to:

1.      Describe how Jung’s own life experiences may have influenced his concept of human personality.

2.      Describe the Jungian levels of the psyche.

3.      List and describe eight major archetypes.

4.      Discuss Jung’s typology with the major attitudes and functions.

5.      Identify and describe Jung’s stages of personality development.

6.      Describe Jung’s concept of self-realization.

7.      Explain Jung’s idea of word association.

8.      Discuss Jung’s concept of dreams and how they relate to the unconscious.

9.      Summarize research of Jungian types and both physical attraction and
academic performance.

 

LECTURE OUTLINE

I.       Overview of Jung’s Analytical Psychology

         Carl Jung believed that people are extremely complex beings who are partially motivated by forces beyond their personal experience—that is, the repeated experiences of their ancestors that make up the collective unconscious. Humans possess a variety of opposing qualities, such as introversion and extraversion, masculinity and femininity, and rational and irrational drives.

 

II.     Biography of Carl Jung

         Carl Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875, the oldest surviving child of an idealistic Protestant minister and his practical but clairvoyant wife. Jung’s early experience with parents who were quite opposite of each other probably influenced his own theory of personality. Jung decided to become a physician after dreaming of making scientific discoveries. Soon after receiving his medical degree, he became acquainted with Freud’s writings and eventually with Freud himself. Not long after he traveled with Freud to the United States, Jung became disenchanted with Freud’s pansexual theories, broke with the International Psychoanalytic Association, and began his own approach to theory and therapy, which he called analytical psychology. From a critical midlife crisis during which he nearly lost contact with reality, Jung emerged to become one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. He died in 1961 at age 85.

 

III.    Levels of the Psyche

         Jung saw the human psyche as being divided into a conscious and an unconscious level, with the latter subdivided into a personal and a collective unconscious.

         A.       Conscious

         Images sensed by the ego are said to be conscious. The ego thus represents the conscious side of personality, and in the psychologically mature individual, the ego is secondary to the self.

         B.       Personal Unconscious

         The unconscious refers to those psychic images not sensed by the ego. Some unconscious processes flow from our personal experience and are repressed, forgotten, or subliminally perceived. These experiences make up the personal unconscious, a concept analogous to Freud’s notion of an unconscious. Contents of the personal unconscious are called complexes, which are emotionally toned groups of related ideas.

         C.       Collective Unconscious

         Ideas that are beyond our personal experiences and that originate from the repeated experiences of our ancestors become part of our collective unconscious. Collective unconscious images are not inherited ideas, but rather they refer to our innate tendency to react in a particular way whenever our personal experiences stimulate an inherited predisposition toward action.

         D.       Archetypes

         Contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung believed that archetypes originate through the repeated experiences of our ancestors and that they are expressed in certain types of dreams, fantasies, delusions, and hallucinations. Several archetypes acquire their own personality, and Jung identified these by name.

         1.       Persona

         The persona is the side of our personality that we show to others. People who confuse their persona with their self remain unaware of their individuality and are blocked from becoming self-realized.

         2.       Shadow

         The shadow is the dark side of our personality. To reach full psychological maturity, or self-realization, people must first realize or accept their shadow, and this acceptance is their first test of courage.

         3.       Anima

         A second hurdle in achieving maturity is for men to accept their anima, or feminine side. Men who fail to become acquainted with their anima run the risk of projecting their feminine traits on to the women in their life and thus never quite know these women.

         4.       Animus

         The second test of courage for women is to embrace their animus, or masculine disposition. Women who reject their masculine side tend to attribute their masculine dispositions to the men in their lives.


         5.       Great Mother

         The great mother is the archetype both of nourishment and destruction. It is found in fairy tales, legends, and myths as a witch, a fairy godmother, Mother Nature,
or rebirth.

         6.       Wise Old Man

         The wise old man is the archetype of wisdom and meaning, but his wisdom is shallow and superficial, such as the wizard in the Wizard of Oz.

         7.       Hero

         The hero archetype is the image we have of a conqueror who vanquishes evil, but who has a single fatal flaw. Achilles and his vulnerable heel is an example of the Hero archetype.

         8.       Self

         The most comprehensive archetype is the self; that is, the image we have of fulfillment, completion, or perfection. The ultimate in psychological maturity
is self-realization, which is symbolized by the mandala, or perfect
geometric figure.

 

IV.    Dynamics of Personality

         Jung saw the dynamics of personality as depending on complex energy systems.

         A.       Causality and Teleology

         Jung accepted a middle position between the philosophical issues of causality and teleology. A causal position holds that present events originate from earlier experiences, whereas a teleological stance suggests that present events are motivated by goals and aspirations for the future.

         B.       Progression and Regression

         To achieve self-realization, people must adapt to both their external and internal worlds. Progression involves adaptation to the outside world and the forward flow of psychic energy, whereas regression refers to adaptation to the inner world and the backward flow of psychic energy.

 

V.      Psychological Types

         Eight basic psychological types emerge from the union of two attitudes and
four functions.

         A.       Attitudes

         Attitudes (which include introversion and extraversion) are predispositions to act or react in a characteristic manner.

         1.       Introversion

         Introversion is the turning of psychic energy inward and an orientation toward subjectivity. In Jungian psychology, introversion does not mean shy or withdrawn, but rather it refers to people with subjective perceptions tuned to their inner world.

         2.       Extraversion

         A turning outward of psychic energy, with an orientation toward the objective world, is called extraversion. Extraverts are influenced more by the real world than by their subjective perception of that world. Introverts and extraverts often mistrust and misunderstand one another, but each orientation has strengths
and weaknesses, and psychologically healthy people have a balance of these
two attitudes.

         B.       Functions

         Four possible functions can combine with introversion and extraversion to form eight general personality types. The four functions are thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting.

         1.       Thinking

         Thinking enables us to recognize the meaning of stimuli. Extraverted thinking people rely on concrete thoughts that are usually similar to those of other extraverted thinking people, whereas introverted thinking people give their own interpretation to external stimuli.

         2.       Feeling

         Jung used the term feeling to mean placing a value on something. Extraverted feeling people make evaluations that agree with widely accepted standards of judgment, whereas introverted feeling people base their judgments on subjective perceptions.

         3.       Sensation

         Sensation is the perceptions of sensory stimuli. Extraverted sensing people perceive external sensory stimuli (sights, sounds, etc.) in much the same way that others do, whereas introverted sensing people have their own individualized view of these stimuli.

         4.       Intuition

         Intuition is the perception of elementary data that are beyond our awareness. Extraverted intuitive people are guided by their hunches, and they may make practical decisions without awareness of sensory data. Introverted intuitive people also perceive stimuli on an unconscious level, but they color those stimuli according to their own subjective attitudes. Jung referred to thinking and feeling as rational functions and to sensation and intuition as irrational functions.

 

VI.    Development of Personality

         Jung was unique among personality theorists with his emphasis on the second half of life. He saw middle and old age as times when people may acquire the ability to attain self-realization.

         A.       Stages of Development

         Jung divided development into four broad stages.


         1.       Childhood

         Childhood has three substages: (1) the anarchic, when an infant has little awareness of self; (2) the monarchic, when the young child begins to form an ego and to develop verbal communication; and (3) the dualistic, when children begin to identify themselves as separate individuals.

         2.       Youth

         Youth, the period from puberty until middle life, is a time for extraverted development and for being in touch with the real world of schooling, occupation, courtship, marriage, and family.

         3.       Middle Life

         If people have courageously solved the problems of childhood and youth, they will probably have a successful middle life—that period from about 35 or 40 until old age. Jung believed that people should adopt a more introverted attitude during this time and prepare themselves for old age.

         4.       Old Age

         Jung saw old age not as a time for despair but as an opportunity for psychological rebirth, self-realization, and preparation for death.

         B.       Self-Realization

         Self-realization, or individuation, involves a psychological rebirth and an integration of various parts of the psyche into a unified or whole individual. Self-realization represents the highest level of human development and is probably an even more difficult process to attain than self-actualization, as described by Maslow (see Chapter 17).

 

VII.   Jung’s Methods of Investigation

         Jung used the word association test, dream analysis, and active imagination during the process of psychotherapy, and all these methods contributed to his theory
of personality.

         A.       Word Association Test

         Jung used the word association test early in his career to uncover complexes embedded in the personal unconscious. The technique requires a patient to utter
the first word that comes to mind after the examiner reads a stimulus word.

         B.       Dream Analysis

         According to Jung, dreams have both a cause and a purpose and thus can be useful in explaining past events and in making decisions about the future. Big dreams and typical dreams, both of which come from the collective unconscious, have meanings that lie beyond the experiences of a single individual.

         C.       Active Imagination

         Jung also used active imagination to arrive at collective images. This technique requires the patient to concentrate on a single image until that image begins to appear in a different form. Eventually, the patient should see figures that represent archetypes and other collective unconscious images.

         D.       Psychotherapy

         The goal of Jungian therapy is to help neurotic patients become healthy and to move healthy people in the direction of self-realization. Jung was eclectic
in his choice of therapeutic techniques and treated old people differently than
young people.

 

VIII.           Related Research

         Most research related to Jungian theory has revolved around the notion of psychological types and has used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, an instrument that uses slightly different terminology than Jung’s.

         A.       Types and Attraction

         Some research suggests that extraverts and introverts have different preferences in their choice of partners. For example, Hester (1996) found that extraverts, in contrast to introverts, prefer partners with high self-confidence and that intuitive types are more attracted to creative people. Other research has found that people with similar types tend to stay together longer than do people of opposite types.

         B.       Types and Academic Performance and Success

         Research by Schurr and colleagues (1997) indicated that college freshmen who were most likely to eventually graduate were those who scored high on Judging and Sensing. That is, students who are mostly likely to graduate are those who are most tolerant of routine and who are conscientious and structured.

 

IX.    Critique of Jung

         Although Jung considered himself a scientist, many of his writings have more of a philosophical than a psychological flavor. As a scientific theory, the authors give it a moderate rating on its ability to generate research but a very low rating on its ability to withstand falsification. Jungian theory is about average on its ability to organize knowledge but low on its ability to guide action. The authors also rated it low on internal consistency and parsimony.

 

X.      Concept of Humanity

         Jung saw people as extremely complex beings who are a product of both conscious and unconscious personal experiences. More importantly, people are also motivated by inherited remnants that spring from the collective experiences of their early ancestors. Because Jungian theory is a psychology of opposites, it receives a moderate rating on the issues of free will, optimism/pessimism, and causality/teleology. It rates very high on unconscious influences and low on uniqueness and social influences.

 

TEACHING SUGGESTIONS

1.      The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular personality inventory that yields scores on four bipolar factors: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceptive. Your students may enjoy taking and scoring the MBTI. They can fill out their own profile and receive an interpretation of the results. If the MBTI is not available at your counseling or testing center, it can be purchased through

                        Consulting Psychologists Press

                        3803 E. Bayshore Road

                        Palo Alto, CA 94303

                        (414) 969-8901

                        FAX (415) 969-8608

 

2.      A few years before his death, Carl Jung was interviewed on film by Richard Evans of the University of Houston. (Evans has filmed interviews with several personality theorists as well as other famous psychologists.) The original Jung/Evans dialogue lasted about 3 hours, but in 1967, Evans edited the interview into a 36-minute film, which is available from

                        Audio-Visual Services

                        University Division of Media and Learning Resources

                        The Pennsylvania State University

                        University Park, PA 16802

                        (814) 865-6314 or 1-800-826-0132

 

REFERENCES

Hester, C. (1996). The relationship of personality, gender, and age to Adjective Check List profiles of the ideal romantic partner. Journal of Psychological Type, 36, 28–35.

Schurr, K. T., Ruble, V., Palomba, C., Pickerill, B., & Moore, D. (1997). Relationships between the MBTI and selected aspects of Tinto’s model for college attrition. Journal of Psychological Type, 40, 31–42.