Jung Flashcards

1
Q

Introduction

Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.

His work has been influential not only in psychiatry but also in anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. As a notable research scientist based at the famous Burghölzli hospital, under Eugen Bleuler, he came to the attention of the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

Freud saw in the younger man the potential heir he had been seeking to carry on his “new science” of psychoanalysis.

Jung’s research and personal vision, however, made it impossible for him to bend to his older colleague’s doctrine and a schism became inevitable.

Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual’s conscious and unconscious elements. Jung considered it to be the main task of human development.

He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, extraversion and introversion.

According to Jungian psychology, individuation is the process of transforming one’s psyche (mind) by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious.

A

Individuation is a process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.

Besides achieving physical and mental health, people who have advanced towards individuation tend to become harmonious, mature, responsible; they promote freedom and justice and have a good understanding about the workings of human nature and the universe.

It’s a teleological concept: the notion that the goal of personal development is wholeness i.e. to become as complete a human being as personal circumstances allow.

Teleology - the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.

The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

Chapter 1 - The man and his Psychology

“To be normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful.”

More than any other psychologist, Jung’s understanding of humanity grew directly out of his understanding of himself.

He turned into a lifelong gnostic: one dedicated to know the reality of the psyche through direct experience and personal revelation.

Psyche - the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious

He attacked scientists for their inflexible materialism.

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2
Q

2 of Freud’s basic assumptions were unacceptable to Jung:

1/ That human motivation is exclusively sexual
2/ The unconscious mind is entirely personal and peculiar to the individual

Instead of conceiving psychic energy as wholly sexual, Jung preferred to think of it more as a more generalised ‘life force’ (similar to Schopenhauer’s Will), of which sexuality was but one mode of expression.

Jung also believed there lay a deep and most important layer that he was to call the collective unconscious which contained the entire psychic heritage of mankind.

Psychic - relating to the mind

Jung understood the psyche to be an a priori fact of nature, an objective phenomenon which is irreducible to any factor other than itself.

What distinguishes the Jungian approach to developmental psychology from virtually all others is the idea that even in old age we are growing towards realisation of our full potential.

For Jung, ageing is not a process of inexorable decline but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential.

Through the miracle of consciousness, the human psyche provides the mirror in which Nature sees herself reflected.

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Chapter 2 - Archetypes and the collective unconscious

The collective unconscious proved to be Jung’s most significant contribution to psychology.

Archetypes:

  • functional units of the collective unconscious
  • identical psychic structures common to all, constituting the archaic heritage of humanity
  • resemble Plato’s Ideas (Forms) to a limited extent
  • have dynamic, goal-seeking properties
  • see their actualisation (evocation) in the personality and behaviour of the individual
  • an inherited mode of functioning NOT an inherited idea
  • a pattern of behaviour
  • possess a fundamental duality: it is both a psychic structure and a neurological structure - both spirit and matter.

Complexes are personifications of archetypes; they are the means through which archetypes manifest themselves in the personal psyche.

The currency of archetypal theory

Many other disciplines have produced concepts similar to the archetype hypothesis, but without reference to Jung:

  • Structural anthropology: unconscious infrastructures held responsible for all human customs and institutions
  • Linguistics: at the deep neuropsychic level, there exists a universal (or archetypal) grammar on which all individual grammars are based.
  • Sociobiology: the patterns of behaviour typical of all social species (human included) are dependent on genetically transmitted response strategies.
  • Ethology: behavioural repertoires of species is dependent on structures which evolution has built into the central nervous system of the species
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3
Q

Jung conceived the programme for human life to be encoded in the collective unconscious as a series of archetypal determinants which are actualised in response to inner and outer events in the course of the life cycle.

The theory can be stated as a psychological law: whenever a phenomenon is found to be characteristic of all human communities, it is an expression of archetype of the collective unconscious.

Behavioural characteristics such as maternal bonding, dominance striving, sexual mating, and home building satisfy three biological criteria, namely, universality, continuity, and evolutionary stability, and as such are liable to be archetypal based, giving rise to typical psychological experiences as well as typical patterns of behaviour in all human communities wherever they exist.

Synchronicity = meaningful coincidence

‘A coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning’ e.g. dreams of a death of distant friend the very same night that she dies.

Whatever else the archetypal hypothesis may achieve, it can at least provide a bridge between the science of mind and the science of behaviour.

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Chapter 3 - The stages of life

The most profound influence of archetypes is in their regulation of the human life cycle.

We come into the world bearing with us an archetypal endowment which enables us to adapt to reality in the same way as our remote ancestors. The sum total of this endowment is incorporated in the Self.

Individuation is the raison d’être of the Self.

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