CHAPTER 4
JUNG: ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
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.
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.
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
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.