Bio: (1875–1961) Carl Jung did his medical studies at the University of Basle, after which he became a psychiatrist at the Burghölzi Mental Hospital in Zurich, affiliated with the University of Zurich. There Jung began his dissertation named On the Psychology and Pathology of so-called Occult Phenomena (1902). This work was inspired by Freud’s books Studies on Hysteria and Interpretation of Dreams, and by studies done by Pierre Janet and Theodore Flournoy. In 1902 Jung quit his job at the hospital and went to Paris to study at the College de France. In  1903 he returned to Burghölzi hospital. In his early years, Jung was a follower of Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, which led him, in 1907, to organize an informal ‘Freud Club’ at the hospital. Next year Jung organized the first Psychoanalytical Congress. After that Freud and Jung organized and founded the International Psychoanalytical Association, of which Jung was elected president in 1910. After his professional split with Freud Jung left the post of the president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1914. At the same time, Jung resigned from his post as lecturer at the university and dedicated his time to his private psychotherapist practice. In 1928 Jung joined the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, where he was elected vice-president in 1930, and president in 1933. Jung also becomes the editor of the society’s journal - Zentralblatt for Psychotherapie. After that Jung worked as a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and as professor of medical psychology at the University of Basle.

Jung’s theoretical and therapeutical approach to psychology and psychiatry was significantly shaped by his lifelong interest in ancient texts, languages and cultures, archaeology and anthropology, religion, theology, mysticism, and occultism. His empirical research was based not only on his work with psychiatric patients in hospitals and in his private practice but also did psychological studies in native societies in North America and Africa. Jung also participated in archaeological and anthropological expeditions in Sudan, Egypt, and India. Jung used all that empirical and textual knowledge to shape his ideas, but also to test and verify them.

                               Analytical Psychology

Jung named his methodological and theoretical approach to psychology analytical psychology. Analytical psychology studies the unconscious mind, but, unlike Freud’s psychoanalysis, analytical psychology sees the unconscious as not limited only to previously conscious content. In Jung’s theory, similar to Freud’s approach, the mind has a tripartite structure . For Jung conscious ego is identified with the conscious mind and awareness of the self. Its main function is to make an individual aware of their internal processes and the external world so they can adequately function on a daily basis.

Below and next to the conscious ego lies the personal unconscious, which refers to those thoughts, memories, experiences, and feelings that are unconscious but can be easily recalled to conscious awareness.  All those temporarily unconscious things are not available to an individual because he or she is not thinking about them or because they are repressed as they may be too emotionally threatening. emotional-toned complexes -  a set of attitudes, thoughts, memories, and feelings focused on a particular concept – are the most important elements of an individual’s unconscious. The importance of a complex’s influence on an individual rises as more elements become attached to a complex. In a situation when a complex becomes too strong and invasive it becomes pathological and creates an imbalance in an individual’s personality. Pathological complexes are autonomous expressions of unconscious conflicts. For Jung, even behaviors that are considered pathological (paranoias and hallucinations) are the products of normal desires and hopes, a hidden substratum of our own nature, and make sense in the context of an individual’s life experiences.

The third part of a mind’s tripartite structure, in Jung’s theory, is the collective unconsciousness. Collective unconscious is “transpersonal”, that is, shared by all people, unlike personal unconscious which is unique to each person. This transpersonal collective unconsciousness was developed over evolutionary and historic times, and it represents a reservoir of experiences and primordial images transmitted over generations.

Jung calls the most significant shared ideas or predispositions in the collective unconscious archetypes. Archetypes are emotionally charged universal images, thoughts, and symbols; and they have had a major role in the history of humankind, as well as playing a great role in people’s everyday lives. The most common and widespread archetypes are: the shadow, the anima/the animus, the persona, the self, and the hero. The shadow is the unconscious, instinctive, impulsive, infantile, negative, and undeveloped aspects of the ego and the personality. The anima and animus are concepts that reflect the psychological bisexuality of human nature, as every person possesses unconscious images that represent characteristic features and tendencies of the opposite sex. Anima are feminine and emotional aspects found in men, and animus are masculine and rational characteristics found in women. The persona represents someone's public personality, a mask that the ego assumes and is socially accepted, that is, the tendency of people to adopt the norms and social roles of the society that they live in. The hero represents an idealized picture that a person has of himself or herself.

For Jung, well rounded and developed personality has a balance of archetypes and how important role they play – an individual has to have a balance of both masculine and feminine characteristics, and, similarly, if the persona has too significant a role for an individual, that individual can become shallow and conformists. In a process of building a balance of archetypes, an individual learns how to control and manage its attitudes, ideas, feelings, intuition, and sensations. The result of that process is that the center of one’s personality moves from ego to self. The self is the most important archetype and a center of well rounded individual that has a balance and unity between conscious and unconscious, private and public, masculine and feminine, aspects of and individual psyche. The process of building a self Jung calls individuation, a process of creating individuality in somebody. His notion of the ‘anatomy and embryology of mental development,’ refers to the idea that stages of the personal process of individuation reflect the same stages of development that happened in the evolutionary history of mankind.

The process of individuation is guided by several principles and by libidinal energy. Jung sees libidinal energy as a creative life-force, but unlike in Freud’s theory, libido isn’t limited to only sexual energy but has a much broader scope. For Jung, Libidinal energy includes also philosophical and spiritual needs of an individual. The libido functions as a type of generalized ‘psychic energy’, possessing both positive and constructive elements and negative and deconstructive elements. Libido serves as a motivation for individuals to crate a balance of those opposing elements on various levels – social, emotional, spiritual and creative.

As mentioned above, the process of individuation is guided by several principles. The fist of those is the principle of opposites states and it functions as the source of libidinal energy. The second is the principle of equivalence, which refers to the degree that somebody is able to recognize that opposite states exist in him or her, and this principle is critically important for an individual personal growth because better recognition of opposites leads to personal growth. The third is the principle of entropy which relates to the tendency for opposites to come together and for libidinal energy to decrease over someone’s life with aging. For Jung, the goal of life should be the optimal application of all three principles and, as a product of that process, transcendence and equal expression of all the opposites, which leads to the full realization of a well-rounded self.

Apperception is one of the key concepts of analytical psychology, and it relates to the psychic process through which new content is assimilated into consciousness and made understandable and clear, based on its similarity to already existing content in the consciousness.

The psychological growth of an individual is going to be constrained depending on the degree to which certain opposite states are denied or suppressed. This denial or suppression can cause the psychic energy to be diverted and lead to the development of a complex. Neuroses arise when an individual does not achieve a sense of integration of the self which leads to a projection of underrepresented aspects of the self onto others which are blamed for one’s one problems. Even more prolonged and extreme repression of undeveloped parts of the self leads to the development of psychosis and severe problems with one’s public persona and consciousness.

                          Psychological Types

Jung, in his book Psychological Types (1921), after combining data from historical research and therapeutical practice, introduced a new classification of psychological types. He introduces two main attitude types - extroversion and introversion. The attitude of extraversion relates to the orientation of the psychic energy toward objective experience and events and objects in the external environment. Introverted attitude relates to psychic energy focused on subjective internal personal experience. In every individual, both attitudes exist, but each personality has one attitude more expressed on a conscious level.  

In addition to two attitudes, Jung introduced four psychological functions: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. Each function represents a specific orientation for understanding someone’s experiences in the outside world.

The thinking function refers to the tendency to use ideas and intellect to make a judgment about concrete reality. The feeling function refers to making an emotional judgment about the world. The sensation function involves using our senses to relate to the world and reality. The intuition function conveys an unconscious, hidden, and deeper understanding of the world and reality.

For Jung, every person possesses all four functions, although one (superior function) is more dominant and developed on a conscious level than others (inferior functions).  He states that attitudes and functions interact in three ways – they oppose each other, compensate for each other, or are combined in synthesis. The combination of two attitudes and four functions crates classification with eight Psychological Types:

1. Extraverted Thinking - objective, rational, principled, and idealistic.
2. Introverted Thinking - directed by ideas, independent, often lacking intimacy.
3. Extraverted Feeling – adaptive to external circumstances.
4. Introverted Feeling – sympathetic and helpful to others, but dependent and reserved.
5. Extraverted Sensation - realistic, focused on concrete things and, friendly.
6. Introverted Sensation - passive, restrained, controlling, and calm.
7. Extraverted Intuition -, outgoing and enterprising, but irresponsible.
8. Introverted Intuition – artistic dreamer, sometimes obsessive.

                         Synchronicity

In the book Synchronicity as a Principle of Acausal Relations (1952), which Jung co-wrote with physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900–58) authors introduce the concept of synchronicity, an archetype that represents the connection of the human psyche and physical matter. They argue that psyche and matter are two aspects of the same essence and can manifest themselves synchronistically. The concept of synchronicity was used by Jung to explain the concurrence of two important events that are not causally related but are otherwise connected to the same thing, for example, when someone is thinking about a friend and at the same time that friend calls him or her on the phone.  

                   Therapeutical Methods

Apart from theoretical contributions Jung developed his therapeutical method called analytical psychotherapy. As in theory, Jung’s therapy is focused on the analysis of the unconscious and the rebuilding psychological balance of the patient. He focused on present conditions as causes of neurosis and used transference and counter-transference as therapeutic tools. He emphasized the importance of an unbiased empirical approach to mental phenomena and the therapeutic value of the active community in which patients filled their days with meaningful activities. Jung organized sessions with patients in a symmetrical setting (where a patient was sitting, not lying down).

Jung pioneered the use of word association in therapy as a tool for identifying the presence of complexes, as verbal and nonverbal responses of patients to certain words were seen as evidence of the importance of those words to the patients. He also analyzed dreams with a method of amplification where patients would expand on the emotions and details related to their dreams in order to explore patients unconscious archetypes.

Jung deployed the method of active imagination to assimilate unconscious contents by asking patients to imagine an interaction with archetypes that are peticulary significant to them.

Main works

About the Conflicts of a Child's Soul (1910); 

Psychology of the Unconscious (1912); 

Seven Sermons to the Dead (1916); 

 Psychological Types (1921);

Contributions to Analytic Psychology (1928);

Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933);

Psychology and Alchemy (1944); 

Essays on Contemporary Events (1946);

Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951); 

Symbols of Transformation (1952); 

Synchronicity as a Principle of Acausal Relations (1952);

Answer to Job (1954); 

Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy (1956); 

Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959); 

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960); 

Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (1961).