2. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud
• Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, are pioneers of
modern psychology. Many people believe
that Jung was a pupil of Freud but even
though Jung was some 20 years younger and
Freud was already well established when they
met, it was more of a collaboration, as Jung
himself asserted on numerous occasions.
3. Collective Unconscious
• Jung and Freud parted their ways over what
they thought was the unconscious. For Freud
the unconscious consisted mostly of repressed
instinctual drives of which the sexual drive
was the most prominent. Jung divided the
unconscious into personal unconscious and
the collective unconscious. Freud never
accepted the existence of the collective
unconscious.
5. What characterises the Collective
Unconscious?
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Autonomy of the unconscious
Compensation for one-sided conscious attitude
Creativity – new ideas
Production of Symbols
Archetype – a predisposition and the remnants of
our ancient mind
• Universality of archetypal motives including in
people who couldn’t have prior knowledge of
them
6. Psychological Types
• Temperamental differences between Freud and Jung
also reason for parting
• Jung publishes Psychological Types in 1921, in which he
distinguishes between two basic psychological
orientations that of extraversion and introversion,
terms used to this day
• people can be divided into two types those for whom
external events are more important and real, and
those preoccupied with and more aware of their inner
life. Just like there was no concept of unconscious
before Freud, there was no concept of extraversion and
introversion before Jung.
7. Psychological Functions
• People vary not only according to the degree
of extraversion and introversion, but also
according how well developed are their
psychological functions of:
• thinking
• feeling
• sensation
• Intuition
8. Meyer-Briggs Personality Test
• Not many of us are purely extraverted or
introverted; there is a sliding scale. The degree of
extraversion or introversion is not static; it
changes over time
• Based on the concept of extraversion and
introversion as well as psychological functions,
Mayer-Briggs devised a test which is being used
to this day in personality tests. One of its uses is
testing compatibility between people and
suitability for particular occupations.
9. Psychological Functions
• This diagram represents the relationship between different functions.
Each of us has one rational and one irrational function that is better
developed than its opposite in the diagram.
thinking
rational
sensation irrational
intuition irrational
feeling rational
10. Inferior functions and Individuation
process
• if one of our main functions is strong, the opposite one will be
less developed. Jung called the less developed function an
inferior function. So if someone has well developed thinking
his feeling will be less developed and vice versa.
Correspondingly, in someone with strong preference for
sensation, the intuitive faculty will be weaker and vice versa.
• in order to be a better functioning individual, to become
whole, it is important to develop our inferior functions. Thus
a thinking type would be a more whole individual if he
developed his feeling. Conversely, a feeling person should
aim to develop her thinking faculty. This will assist the
Individuation process.
• The inferior function will be to a large degree unconscious
11. Individuation
• Jung states unequivocally that the purpose of life of every human
being is to become conscious; that everyone’s gain in consciousness
benefits every other human being (not unlike the Buddhist concept
of meditating to benefit all beings) and increases the totality of
consciousness in the Universe. In this way we assist the evolution
of man and the evolution of the Universe. Jung believes that
human consciousness is a fragile life’s experiment.
• Jung calls the process of becoming conscious by assimilating the
material from our unconscious Individuation
• The task of Individuation lays in establishing a dialogue with the
fantasy figures – or the contents of the collective unconscious – and
integrating them into consciousness, hence recovering the value of
the mythopoeic imagination which had been lost to the modern
age, and thereby reconciling the spirit of the time with the spirit of
the depth.
12. Jung’s Philosophy or where these ideas
come from
• Jung was a scientist but he also had a keen interest in philosophy,
mythology, religion, folklore, literature, archeology, anthropology;
he travelled extensively
• His philosophical interests included Kant, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche. He read Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist and Christian
mystic and Goethe's Faust. He studied the works of the Gnostics.
• He was a psychiatrist with vast clinical experience.
• But above all else since childhood he had intense dreams, visions
and other experiences, which convinced him of the reality of the
Psyche
• He recalls these experiences in his autobiography “Dreams,
Memories, Reflections”
• He explained his ideas in “Man and his Symbols”, a book designed
for a layman, which he wrote just before his death in 1961
13. Ours is an ancient mind
Rational and fantasy thinking
• Jung contrasted directed and fantasy thinking; the former
verbal and logical, the latter passive, associative and
imagistic. The first exemplified by science and the latter by
mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients lacked a
capacity for directed thinking. Has our capacity for fantasy
thinking atrophied?
• fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased.
Transformation and Symbols of the Libido 1921 (the work
published after his split with Freud) was a study of fantasy
thinking and the continuous presence of mythological
themes in the dreams and fantasies of contemporary
individuals.
• For Jung myths were symbols of the libido and they
depicted its typical movements
14. The Red Book
• In 1913 Jung retreated from public life and
undertook “his most difficult experiment”,
which he called “the encounter with the
unconscious”. This experiment lasted until
1930 but was at its most intense during the 4
years between 1913 to 1917.
• He recorded his experiences in the Red Book,
which was not permitted to be published until
2009
16. Jung was not mad
Jung did not have a mental breakdown
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Jung had three visions that predicted the outbreak of First World War, and were similar to a
psychotic breakdown. He even started to doubt his own sanity.
In Liber Novus Jung notes that the inner voice said that what the fantasy depicted would
become completely real. And it did. I quote: “I was preparing a lecture on
schizophrenia…and kept saying to myself: “I’ll be speaking of myself” . Very likely I go mad
after reading out this paper”. ….The visions pointed to the exact time his reading to the
Congress in Aberdeen was taking place, July 1914. “On July 31 immediately after my lecture , I
learned …that the war had broken out”… on the next day nobody was happier than I. Now I
was sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me”…I understood that my visions and my
dreams came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious. What remained for me to
do was to deepen and validate this discovery. This is what I have been trying to do for forty
years”
While discussing active imagination Jung commented: “the reason why the involvement looks
very much like a psychosis is that the patient is integrating the same fantasy material to
which the insane person falls victim because he cannot integrate it but is swallowed up by it”
Studying his fantasies, Jung realised that he was studying the myth creating function of the
mind
Carl Jung lived at the turn of 19th century from 1875 to 1961
Jung and Freud are pioneers. Jung asserted that they were working together and that theirs was not a relationship between teacher and pupil
Freud could not accept Jung’s concept of Collective Unconscious, which was fundamental for Jung, one reason for their split
Jung’s representation of thePsyche. Collective unconscious is where the archetypes originate. We do not know the extent of the Collective Unconscious
These are characteristics of the Collective Unconscious. Archetypal motives are universal found in people’s of all races education knowledge etc
In 1921 Jung publishes “Psychological Types” where he divides people into two types: extraverts and introverts. The concepts with which we are familiar and use widely today
Psychological functions that of thinking feeling sensation and intuition are not developed to the same degree in every individual
Meyer-Briggs Personality Test is based on these distinctions devised (or discovered) by Jung,
The diagram above shows how these functions are related. For example there are people whose main function is thinking and others whose main function is feeling. These two, feeling and thinking Jung called rational functions. The two remaining functions Jung called irrationalfunctions. . Each person has one rational and one irrational function more developed than their opposite ones. There are many possible variations for each type. It’s according to these variations that people are classified in the Meyer-Briggs Test
The less developed or inferior function is largely unconscious. The process of Individuation involves developing the inferior function by making it conscious
Individuation is becoming conscious by assimilating material from our unconsciousThe first point struck me as an archetype; a myth not unlike the beliefs of some primitive tribes Jung describes in his writings.
Jung’s ideas come from personal experience; his visions, dreams, “his encounter with the unconscious”, but he was a man of great learning, which enabled him to make connections, and a deep thinker. He was a psychiatrist with great clinical experience.
According to Jung there are two types of thinking; the logical, verbal and the fantasy thinking; the images that come to our mind when directed thinking stops. Jung considered images that rise from our unconscious as facts; they are ideas that lead to creating “our reality” such as for example bridges, houses etc. They have first been an idea in someone’s mind
Jung recorded his “encounter with the unconscious” in The Red Book which was published posthumously in 2009. This “his most difficult experiment” was undertaken in 1913 – 100 years ago.
This is self-explanatory, I have included it in the presentation to give a flavour of the book.
Quote is taken from Introduction to the Red Book. Jung had very powerful visions that predicted the outbreak of First World War, which made him afraid that he was going mad. However, his visions turned out to be true, exactly as predicted. He then understood that his visions and his dreams came from the Collective Unconscious, and he spent the following forty years trying to deepen and validate this discovery. Encounter with the Collective Unconscious resembles psychosis, however, the difference is one is not swallowed up by the Unconscious