Presentation Transcript

1. Carl Jung and his theory of the Unconscious

2. Jung’s Life • Born in Switzerland in 1875 – father a preacher • Weak, tormented youth •
Studied under Freud and was great friends • Well versed in mythology, religion, and world
cultures • ‘Lucid Dreamer’ who saw visions and images while awake – at points though he
was going insane. • Later worked to catalog, interpret, and actualize them as works of visual
art.
3. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThree Part PsycheThe Ego, The Personal Unconscious,
and the Collective Unconscious
4. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Ego • Jung's theory divides the psyche into three
parts. The first is the ego, which Jung identifies with the conscious mind.
5. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Personal Unconscious • The personal unconscious
is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that
are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason.
6. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Collective Unconscious • You could call collective
unconscious your "psychic inheritance." It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a
kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It
influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones, but we
only know about it indirectly, by looking at those influences.
7. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheContents of the Collective Unconscious • The contents
of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. An archetype is an unlearned tendency to
experience things in a certain way.
8. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheArchetypes – The Self • The Self is the archetype of
wholeness. The Self can be understood as the central organizing principle of the psyche, that
fundamental and essential aspect of human personality which gives cohesion, meaning,
direction, and purpose to the whole psyche. It is who you believe you are.
9. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheArchetypes – The Shadow • Sex and the life instincts in
general are, of course, represented somewhere in Jung's system. They are a part of an
archetype called the shadow. It derives from our pre-human, animal past, when our concerns
were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we weren't self-conscious.
10. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheArchetypes – The Persona • The persona represents
your public image. The word is, obviously, related to the word person and personality, and
comes from a Latin word for mask. So the persona is the mask you put on before you show
yourself to the outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time we are finished
realizing it, it is the part of us most distant from the collective unconscious.
11. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Complex • What happens when your entire self
differs from your persona? If you deny and suppress it, the energy will go towards the
development of a complex. A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts.
12. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Complex takes over… • Here's where the problem
comes: If you pretend all your life that you are only good, that you don't even have the
capacity to lie and cheat and steal and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other
side of you goes into a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to develop a life
of its own, and it will haunt you. • If it goes on long enough, the complex may take over, may
"possess" you, and you might wind up with a multiple personality.
 13. Jung’s Theory of the PsycheThe Complex takes over… • In ordinary human
experience, the experience of being taken over by a complex is what we point to with
language such as "I was beside myself" or "I don't know what got into me." Jung wrote vividly
of the autonomous quality of the complexes.

1. Carl Jung Psychology and Religion in the Search for Personal Wholeness Johann Maree
Summer School, UCT, Jan. 2012
2. Introduction: a formidable task • It is not easy to provide a clear exposition of Jung’s
analytical psychology because he changed his mind as he went along. • In the foreword of Frieda
Fordham’s book on Jung, he wrote: “As I cannot claim to have reached any definite theory my
work consists of a series of different approaches, or one might call it, a circumambulation of
unknown factors. This makes it rather difficult to give a clear-cut and simple account of my ideas.”
• It is even harder to do it in 45 minutes as Freud also needs to make a guest appearance. • So,
without any further delay, here goes.
3. Biographical sketch • Carl Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland and brought up in or
near the historic city of Basel. • His father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church. He was
continually racked by doubts about his beliefs. • His mother was a highly intuitive woman,
possibly with psychic abilities and sensitivities. • Jung’s childhood experiences and memories of
religion were quite negative: crowds of dark-clothed men and weeping women; a hole in the
ground into which a box was put; told Jesus had taken someone to himself.
4. Doctor Jung and Doctor Freud • Jung trained as a doctor and began working in the
famous Burghoelzli psychiatric hospital linked to University of Zurich. • Jung was Freud’s junior
by 19 years and was one of first psychiatrists to support Freud’s controversial theories, but he
was also one of the first to break away from Freud. • To understand why Jung broke away from
Freud it is necessary to review a few relevant concepts and theories of Freud first.
5. Sigmund Freud • Freud went to a medical school in Vienna and initially did research for
many years in neuropsychology. • He then went to Paris to study with the great psychiatrist,
Charcot. • He returned to Vienna and set up a practice in neuropsychiatry with the help of his
mentor and friend, Joseph Breuer. • They treated young women suffering from hysterical
symptoms. • Freud was struck by how many of them were related to repressed traumatic sexual
experiences in childhood.

6. The sexual instinct and Libido • Freud claimed that there was a repression of the sexual
instinct and from this he developed the idea that sexual instinct provided psychic energy for the
psyche which, in its sublimated form, gave rise to human achievements. • He called this psychic
energy the libido. This energy was primarily derived from a sexual drive. • Freud linked the libido
closely with the id, one of the three components that make up the mind or psyche in Freud’s
model.
7. The Id, Ego and Superego • The id is the primitive, animalistic, instinctual element,
libidinous energy demanding immediate satisfaction. “I want it and I want it now!” • The sole
governing device here is the pleasure principle. • The ego is a cluster of cognitive and perceptual
processes including memory, reality-testing, problem-solving that are conscious and serve to
mediate between the demands of the id and prohibitions of the superego. It serves like an
executive to maintain psychic balance. • The superego dictates ethical and moral conduct.
8. The Unconscious • One of Freud’s greatest contributions to psychology was his scientific
study of the unconscious. • According to Freud, the unconscious is a domain of the psyche
encompassing the repressed id functions, the memories, images and wishes that are too anxiety-
 provoking to be accepted into consciousness. • Freud found that there are powerful ideas in the
unconscious, but they cannot become conscious due to a force that represses them and resists
bringing them out into the open.
9. Jung’s separation from Freud • Jung met Freud for the first time in Vienna in February
1907. They talked virtually non-stop for 13 hours and Jung vividly describes in Memories,
Dreams, Reflections how the foundations were laid for their eventual separation. • Jung
subsequently proposes that sexuality is not the sole source of psychic energy, but that ‘libido’ is a
general psychic energy which may flow in channels serving a range of instincts. • For Jung the
ego is the centre of consciousness and, as such, does not encompass or understand the whole
person or self.
10. The Collective Unconscious • From treating psychotic patients at Burghoelzli and wide
reading Jung came to the conclusion that the unconscious material that emerged could not have
come from the subject’s personal learning or experience. He postulated that it came from a
collective unconscious derived through aeons of repetition of human experience. • Jung wrote:
‘there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is
identical in all individuals. The collective unconscious does not develop individually but is
inherited.’
11. Archetypes • In addition, Jung said that the collective unconscious is not just ‘a dead
deposit, a sort of abandoned rubbish heap, but a living system of reactions and aptitudes that
determine the individual’s life in invisible ways.’ • It also consists of pre-existent forms that Jung
called archetypes. He first called them primordial images in that he considered them to be archaic
or primordial types of universal images that date back to humankind’s remotest beginnings. •
Everyday realities like mother, father, husband and wife create the mightiest archetypes.
12. The anima • The three most important archetypes Jung called the anima, animus and
shadow. • The anima is the unconscious image of the feminine that every man has within himself.
• Jung wrote: ‘Every man carries with him the eternal image of woman. This image is
fundamentally unconscious, an imprint of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit of
all the impressions ever made by woman.’ • To explain the existence of the anima Jung invoked
the persona by which he means ‘the formation of the mask behind which most people live.’
13. Persona • Jung maintained that ‘a compensatory relationship exists between persona and
anima.’ He explained: • ‘The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual
consciousness and society, a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite
impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.’ • ‘Society
expects every individual to play the part assigned to him, so that a man who is a parson must not
only carry out his official functions, but at all times and in all circumstances play the role of parson
in a flawless manner.’
14. The compensatory relationship between persona and anima • Jung explained: ‘The
persona, the ideal picture of a man as he should be, is inwardly compensated by feminine
weakness, and as the individual outwardly plays the strong man, so he becomes inwardly a
woman, i.e., the anima, for it is the anima that reacts to the persona.’ • Jung considered the
anima to be a personality which is easily projected upon a woman. • This projection means that a
man can transfer to his wife the protective role that his mother played in his early life. This places
the marriage ‘permanently on the brink of explosion’ .
15. Animus • Similar to a man, every woman carries within her the eternal image of a man. • In
the same way that man has an unconscious anima, woman has an unconscious animus which
consists of “masculine” characteristics. The animus is also an active force on the woman who is
unconscious of its presence. • The way to remove the negativity of the animus and to live in
harmony with him is for woman to differentiate between her ego and the animus instead of
assuming them to be one as she unconsciously does. Similarly, the man has to differentiate
between his ego and the anima. This is achieved by individuation dealt with later.
16. Shadow • The inferior being in ourselves is what Jung calls the shadow. It consists of all
that we are ashamed of and that we do not want to know about ourselves. • It constitutes part of
our personal unconscious, but we also have an archetypal shadow in the realm of our collective
unconscious. It represents an encounter with evil and facing it can be a shattering experience. •
The shadow of every person has to be firmly grasped and acknowledged for a person to achieve
a state of wholeness.
17. Individuation and the Self • The essence of achieving personal wholeness for Jung lies in
the individuation process. • The end result of the process in which wholeness is achieved is to
bring an undivided Self into existence. Jung attached a special meaning to Self. For him the Self
is both the centre and the totality of the psyche. It consists of both the conscious ego and the
unconscious and is only constituted once there is awareness and acceptance of the unconscious
and its shadowy contents by the ego.
18. The individuation process • By individuation Jung means bringing antagonistic functions
of the personality into harmony with each other. • Jung wrote: ‘Individuation means becoming a
single, homogeneous being. It also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore
translate individuation as “coming to selfhood” or “self-realization.”’ • Individuation entails a
lifelong development of personality from conception to death. Jung divided a full lifespan into two
stages, a first half of life and a second half.
19. Three stages of individuation • Erich Neumann has refined and expanded lifelong
development into three stages: containment/nurturance, i.e. the maternal stage;
adapting/adjusting, i.e. the paternal stage; centring/integrating, i.e. a wholeness stage. •
Neumann expands the concept of individuation to include the process of becoming the
personality that one innately is potentially from the beginning of life. • The
containment/nurturance stage lasts a long time in modern societies, much longer than childhood
because it is preparing the person fully for adulthood.
20. Containment/nurturance (c/n) stage • For the individuation process to develop to the full
it is necessary for the person to go through primary and secondary school as well as some form
of post-school training or education in order to acquire a profession. This period of dependence
on parents may last as long as thirty years! • The C/N stage is symbolically defined as maternal:
Nurturance is delivered in the form of warm support and encouragement. The harsh realities of
life are screened out. • Nurturance is provided not only by mothers, but also by fathers, teachers,
or institutions such as schools and churches.
21. Transition from 1st to 2nd stage • During the first stage a relative amount of autonomy,
independence and self-control is introduced along the way so that by the end of this stage people
are able to do for themselves what others have done for them earlier. • In the second stage, the
adapting/adjusting stage, the father occupies the symbolic centre in order to instil the rigour of
functioning and performance demanded for adaptation to the world.
22. 2nd stage: adaption/adjusting • The second stage is governed by the law of
consequences for actions taken (the reality principle). • The person is exposed to a world in
which standards of performance are paramount and consequences for behaviour are forcefully
and implacably drawn. • Strict conditions are imposed upon the distribution of all rewards,
including love and positive regard. • This is not the world as ideal but the world as real.
23. 3rd stage: centring/integrating • The tasks in this stage of life are: • to embark upon the
journey of becoming a centred and whole individual; and • to relate to the transcendent as well as
the immediate concrete realities of human existence. • The ego now begins to answer to an inner
call from the psyche, rather than to an outer demand derived from society. • Working to live and
survive is no longer sufficient; one must now find something worth living for.
24. Centring/integrating and the Self • Jung speaks of the Self integrating the shadow and
relating in a new conscious way to the anima and animus. • The aim of the third stage is thus a
degree of integration of the inner opposites inherent in the Self. • The Self is the goal towards
 which the process of individuation strives. It represents psychic wholeness and the process by
which self-division may be healed.
25. Jung on religion and God
26. Jung’s childhood experience of God • Jung’s impression of institutional religion as a
child was quite negative. He realised that his father, a Swiss Reformed Church pastor, had lost
his faith. As a child he wanted to help his father, but did not know how. Later in his life he did. • At
the age of 11 Jung allowed a visionary revelation to come over him as an act of obedience to
God. It revealed to him that God shared his view of the institutional church. • He found the vision
completely emancipatory: he experienced an ‘unutterable bliss’ he had never known before.
27. Jung’s reflection on his experience • Years later Jung wrote: “That was what my father
had not understood, I thought; he had failed to experience the will of God. He did not know the
immediate living God who stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible and His Church, who
calls upon man to partake of His freedom.” • “It was obedience which brought me grace, and after
that experience I knew what God’s grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing
matters but fulfilling His will.”
28. God as an archetype • Jung arrived at the view that ‘the soul possesses by nature a
religious function.’ • Because of this natural religious function of the soul Jung maintained that
there is a God archetype in the collective unconscious of all human beings. • However, Jung
made a distinction between the God-image archetype and God himself. In the collective
unconscious there is only a God-image. • Jung’s main concern was with the ways in which the
God-archetype had manifested itself in actual experiences.
29. God one of the soul’s deepest and closest intimacies • Jung adopted the concept
‘numinous’ from Rudolf Otto to designate the particular emotional quality of archetypal
experiences of God. Otto describes the experience as the mysteriumtremendum at fascinens
(terrifying and fascinating mystery). It implies an emotional apprehension of God as wholly other,
awesome, overpowering, urgent and fascinating. • For Jung, it is ‘psychologically quite
unthinkable’ for God to be ‘wholly other’. This is because ‘a wholly other could never be one of
the soul’s deepest and closest intimacies – which is precisely what God is.’
30. Jung’s treatment of christianity • Murray Stein has argued that Jung’s stance towards
Christianity was basically that of therapist. Frieda Fordham sees this as Jung’s childhood mission
to restore his father’s faith by integrating his psychological insights into existing Christian dogma.
• People who found salvation in Christ, said Jung, had assimilated the historical Jesus into the
archetype of the self. ‘This archetypal idea is a reflection of the individual’s wholeness, i.e. of the
self, which is present in him as an unconscious image.’
31. Perfection but not wholeness in God • But this Christ-figure ‘lacks the darkness of spirit,
and is also without sin. Without the integration of evil there is not totality.’ • According to Jung, the
Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, represents perfection, but not wholeness. This is because
Christianity has recognised the need to face the question of human and cosmic evil, but has
excluded and repressed evil from the presence of the Trinity.
32. Jung suggests a quaternitarian God • Jung suggested that evil be included within the
doctrine of God: that Satan be the fourth figure in the Godhead. The Devil, he argued, represents
God the Father’s eternal adversary and should be placed back in the realm from which it
originated. • In this way, said Jung, ‘the act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by
Lucifer’s denial.’ • The quaternitarian pattern implies completeness in distinction from perfection
which is implied by the Trinitarian pattern. Evil is the element of reality that Trinitarian thought
excludes.
33. Evaluation of Jung • Appreciative • Jung made advances on Freud by broadening the
concept of libido to general psychic energy and introducing the concept collective unconscious. •
Individuation as a process of ‘the dialectical discussion between the conscious mind and the
 unconscious’ in order to attain wholeness in the Self is one of Jung’s great contributions to
humanity. Individuation encompasses the integration and reconciliation of the unconscious dark
side of our human nature into the conscious ego thereby helping us become whole people.
34. Shortcomings and criticisms • Jung constructed a very complex structure of the human
psyche that is not easy to understand fully and clearly. He also changed his mind from time to
time which shows how tenuous some of his concepts and theories were. • On the other hand,
Jung was very dogmatic about some of his theories. Renos Papadopoulos writes that Jung stuck
to theories he invented and propagated them ‘with the fervour of a zealot’. • It was a mistake of
Jung to restrict religion to numinous experiences as many devout believers pursue their religion
without such experiences.
35. Moving beyond Jung • Although there is much in Jungian analytical psychology that is of
value, we should not hesitate to move beyond it to other schools of thought in psychology and
psychotherapy. Not one of them has a monopoly on truth and insights into the human psyche.
Rather, they each bring different insights into knowing ourselves better and dealing with
challenges we face. • We can strive to reach that of God in us by different means, not only
numinous experiences. Praying, listening and meditating are some of the routes we can take.