Personality Theories in Psychology: Carl Jung

Freud said that the goal of therapy was make the unconscious conscious. Indeed, he made this postulate the core of his work as a theorist. And furthermore, he defined the unconscious as something very unpleasant. To illustrate this, consider the following: he is a cauldron of established desires; a bottomless pit of wicked and incestuous longings; a bed of terrifying experiences that can still rise to consciousness. Frankly, this doesn't sound like something I want to access my consciousness!

Soon after, a new thinker appeared, making a breakthrough in Personality Theories in Psychology: Carl Gustav Jung. Keep reading this Psychology-Online article if you want to know more about this well-known psychologist and psychiatrist.

Index

1. Jung's summary theory
2. Biography
3. Personality theory according to Jung
4. The theory of archetypes
5. Other archetypes
6. The dynamics of the psyche according to Jung's theory
7. Vital goals and objectives
8. Personality types according to Jung
9. Discussion about personality types
10. Readings

Carl Jung, Freud's young colleague, he devoted himself to the exploration of "inner space" through all of his work. He launched himself into the task equipped with the antecedents of Freudian theory, of course, and with a seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion and philosophy. But he was especially adept at the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabbalah, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If there is a person who has a sense of the unconscious and the habits of it as capable of expressing himself only symbolically, this is Carl Jung.

In addition, he had the capacity for very lucid dreaming and occasional illusions. In the fall of 1913 he had a vision of a "monstrous flood" that engulfed almost all of Europe whose waters reached to the slopes of the mountains of his native Switzerland. He saw thousands of people drowning and the city shaking. Then the waters turned to blood. In the weeks following the vision, dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood arose. He was scared that he was getting psychotic.

But on August 1 of that year, the First World War began. Jung believed that somehow there was a connection between him as an individual and humanity in general that could not be explained. From this moment until 1928, he went into a painful process of self-exploration that would form the basis of his future theory.

He carefully he began to write down his dreams, fantasies and visions, and he drew, painted and sculpted them. He found that his experiences tended to take human forms, beginning with a wise old man and his companion, a little girl. The wise old man evolved, through various dreams, into a kind of spiritual guru. The little girl became "anima", the feminine soul, which served as a means of communication (medium) between the man and the deepest aspects of his unconscious.

A leather brown goblin appeared as a warden from the entrance to the unconscious. She was "the shadow", a primitive company of Jung's Self. Jung dreamed that both he and the goblin had murdered the beautiful blonde girl, whom he named Siegfred. For him, this scene represented a caution with respect to the dangers of work aimed only to obtain the glory and heroism that would soon cause a great pain all over Europe (as well as a warning about the dangers of some of his own tendencies toward Sigmund Freud's heroic enterprise!).

Jung also dreamed a lot about questions related to death; with the territory of the dead and their rebirth. For him, this represented the unconscious itself; not that "little" unconscious of which Freud made so great, but a new collective unconscious of humanity. An unconscious that could contain all deaths, not just our personal ghosts. Jung began to consider that the mentally ill were haunted by these ghosts, at a time when no one was supposed to believe in them. Just by "recapturing" our mythologies, we would understand these ghosts, we would feel comfortable with death and thus overcome our mental pathologies.

Critics have suggested that Jung was simply ill when all of this happened. But Jung believed that if we want to understand the jungle, we cannot be content with just moving around it. We must enter it, no matter how strange or terrifying it may look.

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in a small town in Switzerland called Kessewil. His father, Paul Jung, was a rural clergyman and his mother was Emilie Preiswerk Jung. The boy Carl grew up surrounded by a very educated and extended family that included a few clergymen and some eccentrics as well.

His father introduced Carl to Latin at the age of 6, which he accepted from the beginning with great interest, especially in ancient language and literature. In addition to reading most of the modern languages ​​of Western Europe, Jung also read alternately several other ancient languages ​​such as Sanskrit (the original language of the books Hindu sacred).

Carl was more of a lonely boy in his teens, he didn't care much about school and he couldn't stand competition. He attended a boarding school in Basel, Switzerland, where he came face to face with the jealousy of his classmates. He began to use illness as an excuse, developing an embarrassing tendency to faint when he was under great pressure.

Although his first career choice was archeology, he settled on medicine at the University of Basel. There he met the famous neurologist Kraft-Ebing, and came to work for him. Under his influence, he studied psychiatry.

Shortly after graduating, he settled in the Burghoeltzli Mental Hospital in Zurich under the tutelage of Eugene Bleuler, father and foremost connoisseur of schizophrenia. In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach. At that time, he also spent part of his time teaching at the University of Zurich and kept a private practice. It was here that he invented word association.

Being a great admirer of Freud, he finally met him in Vienna in 1907. The story goes that after meeting him, Freud canceled all his appointments for the day, to continue a conversation that would last for 13 continuous hours. Such was the impact of this encounter between these two privileged minds! Eventually, Freud regarded Jung as the crown prince of psychoanalysis and his right hand man.

But Jung he never fully supported Freudian theory. His relationship began to cool off in 1909, during a trip to America. On this trip, the two entertained themselves analyzing each other's dreams (apparently in a more casual serious), when at one point Freud demonstrated excessive resistance to Jung's efforts at analysis. Finally, Freud told him that they should stop, as he was afraid of losing his authority. Jung was evidently insulted.

The First World War it was an especially painful period of self-examination for Jung. Yet it was just the beginning of one of the most interesting personality theories the world has ever seen.

After the war, Jung traveled a lot; from tribes of Africa to populations of America and India. He retired in 1946, withdrawing from public life from this time until the death of his wife in 1955. He died on June 6, 1961 in Zurich.

Jung's theory divides the psyche into three parts. The first is The I, which is identified with the conscious mind. Closely related is found the personal unconscious, which includes anything that is not present in consciousness, but is not exempt from being. The personal unconscious would be like what people understand by unconscious in that it includes both memories, those that we can quickly attract to our consciousness and those memories that have been repressed by any reason. The difference is that it does not contain instincts, as Freud included.

After describing the personal unconscious, Jung adds a part to the psyche that will make his theory stand out from the rest: the collective unconscious. We could simply call it our "psychic heritage." It is the reservoir of our experience as a species; a type of knowledge that we are all born with and share. Even so, we are never fully aware of it. From it, an influence is established on all our experiences and behaviors, especially emotional ones; but we only know him indirectly, seeing these influences.

There are certain experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others. The experience of love at first sight, the deja vu (the feeling of having been in the same situation before) and the immediate recognition of certain symbols and meanings of some myths, can be considered as a sudden conjunction of the external and internal reality of the unconscious collective. Other examples that more fully illustrate the influence of the collective unconscious are the creative experiences shared by world artists and musicians in all time, or the spiritual experiences of the mystique of all religions, or the parallels of dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales and the literature.

An interesting example currently being discussed is the near death experience. It appears that many people from different parts of the world and with different cultural backgrounds experience very similar situations when they have been "rescued" from clinical death. They talk about feeling that they are leaving their body, seeing their bodies and the events around them clearly; that they feel like a "force" draws them into a long tunnel that leads to a bright light; of seeing deceased relatives or religious figures waiting for them and a certain frustration at having to leave this happy scene and return to their bodies. Perhaps we are all "programmed" to experience death in this way.

The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung also called them dominants, imagos, primordial or mythological images, and other names, but the term archetype is the best known. It would be an innate (unlearned) tendency to experience things in a certain way.

The archetype is formless in itself, but acts as an "organizing principle" on the things we see or do. It works in the same way as instincts in Freudian theory. At first, the baby just wants something to eat, not knowing what she wants. That is, she presents an undefined longing that, however, can be satisfied for some things and not for others. Later, with experience, the baby begins to crave more concrete things when she is hungry (a bottle, a cookie, a grilled lobster, a piece of New York-style pizza).

The archetype is like a black hole in space. We only know that it is there by how it attracts matter and light to itself.

The maternal archetype

This archetype is particularly useful as an example. All of our ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an environment that has included a mother or a surrogate for her. We would never have survived without the connection to a caring person in our time as helpless infants. It is clear that we are "constructed" in a way that reflects our evolutionary environment: we come into this world ready to desire a mother, we seek her, recognize her, and deal with her.

Thus, the mother archetype is an evolutionarily constituted ability of its own aimed at recognizing a certain relationship, that of "motherhood." Jung establishes this as something abstract, and all of us project the archetype to the generality of the world and to particular people, usually our own mothers. Even when an archetype does not find a real person available, we tend to personify him; that is, we turn him into a mythological character "from fairy tales", for example. This character symbolizes the archetype.

This archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or "mother earth" of mythology; by Eva and Maria in western traditions and by less personalized symbols like the church, the nation, a forest or the ocean. According to Jung, someone whose mother has not satisfied the demands of the archetype would perfectly turn into a person who does. search through the church or identifying with the "mother earth", or in meditation on the figure of Mary or in a life dedicated to the sea.

Manna

We should know that these archetypes are not really biological things, like Freud's instincts. They are more specific demands. For example, if one dreams of elongated things, Freud would suggest that they represent the phallus and consequently sex. Jung would propose a very different interpretation. Even dreaming of a penis does not necessarily imply sexual dissatisfaction.

It is striking that in primitive societies, phallic symbols they usually don't refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize manna, or spiritual power. These symbols are displayed when it is necessary to implore the spirits for a better harvest of corn, or to increase fishing or to help someone. The relationship between penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fertility and fertilization are part of most cultures.

The shadow

Of course, in Jungian theory there is also room for the sex and instincts. These are part of an archetype called the shadow. It derives from a pre-human and animal past, when our concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we were not aware of ourselves as subjects.

Would be the "dark side" of the Self (of the self. N.T.) and our negative or devilish part is also in this space. This assumes that the shadow is amoral; neither good nor bad, as in animals. An animal is capable of warmly caring for its offspring, while also being a ruthless killer for food. But he doesn't choose any of them. He just does what he does. Is innocent". But from our human perspective, the animal world seems brutal, inhuman; so the shadow becomes something of a "garbage can" of those parts of us that we do not want to admit.

Shadow symbols include the serpent (as in the Garden of Eden), the dragon, monsters, and demons. It usually guards the entrance to a cave or a pool of water, which would represent the collective unconscious. The next time you dream that you are fighting a very strong fighter, you may just be fighting yourself!

Person

The person represents our public image. The word, obviously, is related to the term person and personality and comes from the Latin that means mask. Therefore, the person is the mask that we put on before going out into the external world. Although it begins as an archetype, over time we assume it, becoming the part of us most distant from the collective unconscious.

In the best presentation of him, he constitutes the "good impression" that we all want to make by fulfilling the roles that society demands of us. But, at its worst, it can be confused even by ourselves, by our own nature. Sometimes we come to believe that we really are what we pretend to be.

Anima and animus

A part of the person is the male or female role that we must play. For most theorists, this role is determined by physical gender. But, like Freud, Adler, and others, Jung thought that actually we are all bisexual by nature. When we begin our life as fetuses, we possess undifferentiated sexual organs and it is only gradually, under hormonal influence, that we become male and female. In the same way, when we begin our social life as infants, we are not male or female in the social sense. Almost immediately (as soon as they put those blue or pink booties on), we develop under social influence, which gradually turns us into men and women.

Across cultures, expectations for men and women differ. These are based almost entirely on our different roles in reproduction and other details that are almost exclusively traditional. In our society today, we still retain many remnants of these traditional expectations. We still expect women to be warmer and less aggressive; that men are strong and that they ignore the emotional aspects of life. But Jung believed that these expectations meant that we have only developed half of our potential.

The anima is the feminine aspect present in the collective unconscious of men and the animus is the masculine aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together they are known as syzygy. The anima can be represented (personified) as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as mother earth. It is usually associated with a deep emotionality and with the force of life itself. The animus can be personified as an old sage, a warrior, or usually a group of men, and it tends to be logical, often rationalistic, and even argumentative.

The anima and animus are the archetypes through which we communicate with the collective unconscious in general and it is important to get in touch with it. It is also the archetype responsible for our love life: as a Greek myth suggests, we are always looking for our other half; that other half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fell in love at first sight, we have stumbled upon something that has filled our anima or animus archetype particularly well.

Jung said that there was no fixed number of archetypes that we could list or memorize. They overlap and combine with each other as needed and their logic does not meet the logical standards that we understand. Jung, however, defined a few others:

Besides the mother, there are other family archetypes. Obviously, there is a dad which is often symbolized by a guide or authority figure. There is also the archetype of family which represents the idea of ​​blood brotherhood, as well as deeper ties than those based on conscious reasons.

We also have the boy, represented in mythology and in art by children, particularly infants, as well as by other small creatures. The celebration of the baby Jesus at Christmas is a manifestation of the child archetype and represents the future, evolution, rebirth and salvation. Interestingly, Christmas occurs during the winter solstice, which represents the future and rebirth in primitive Norse cultures. These people light bonfires and perform ceremonies around the fire imploring the return of the sun. The child archetype is also frequently mixed with others, forming the child-god or the child-hero.

Many archetypes are legend characters. The hero is one of the main ones. He is represented by the mana personality and is the fighter of the evil dragons. Basically, he represents the Self (we tend to identify with the heroes of the stories) and is almost always involved in battles against the shadow, in the form of dragons and other monsters. However, the hero is stupid. He is, after all, ignorant of the ways of the collective unconscious. Luke Skywalker from Star Wars would be the perfect example.

The hero is usually tasked with rescuing the maid, which represents purity, innocence and in all equally, naivety. In the first part of the Star Wars story, Princess Leia is the maiden. But, as the story progresses, she becomes animated, discovering the power of the force (the collective unconscious) and becomes a partner just like Luke, who turns out to be her brother.

The hero is guided by a old wise man, a form of animus that reveals to the former the nature of the collective unconscious. In Star Wars, this old man is Obi Wan Kenobi, and then Yoda. Note that they both teach Luke all about the force, and as Luke matures, they die, becoming part of him.

You may be wondering about Darth Vader's "dark father" archetype. He is the shadow and the master of the dark side of the force. He also happens to be the father of Leia and Luke. When he dies, he becomes one of the old wise men.

This is also an archetype animal and represents human relationships with the animal world. A good example would be the hero's faithful horse. Snakes are also frequent animal archetypes and we think they are particularly clever. After all, animals are closer to their natures than we are. Perhaps the little robots and the ever-available spaceship (the Falcon) are symbols of animals.

And then there is the illusionist, usually represented by a clown or a magician. His role is to make things more difficult for the hero and create problems for him. In Scandinavian mythology, many of the adventures of the gods originated from some trick demonstrated to their majesties by the half-God Loki.

There are other archetypes that are a bit more complicated to mention. One is the original man, represented in western cultures by Adam. Another is the archetype God, which represents our need to understand the Universe; that gives us meaning to everything that happens and that everything has a purpose and direction.

The hermaphrodite, both male and female, is one of the most important ideas in Jungian theory and represents the union of opposites. In some religious pictures, Jesus Christ is represented rather as an effeminate man. Likewise, in China, the character of Kuan Yin is in fact a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), But he is painted in such a feminine way that he is usually considered more as the goddess of compassion!.

The most important archetype is that of self (We will keep the term "self" here than "itself", due to its literal acceptance in Spanish-speaking psychology. N.T.). The self is the ultimate unit of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross, and the mandala figures that Jung found in the paintings. A mandala It is a drawing that is used in meditation and is used to move the focus of attention towards the center of the image. It can be a line as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personification that best represents the self is Christ and Buddha; two people, by the way, who, according to many, represent the achievement of perfection. But Jung believed that the perfection of the personality is only achieved with death.

Well, you're fine with mental content. Let us now turn to the principles of your operations. Jung gives us three principles. The first one is the principle of opposites. Each wish immediately suggests its opposite. For example, if I have a positive thought, I can't help but have the opposite somewhere in my mind. In fact, it is a fairly basic concept: to know what is good, I must know what is bad, in the same way that we cannot know what is black without knowing what is white; or what is high without the low.

This idea came to me when I was about eleven years old. I remember that occasionally I gave myself to save many innocent little creatures of the forest that had somehow been injured (I am afraid that many times causing their death). I once tried to heal a robin, but when I held it up in my hand, a halo of sunlight dazzled me and I put my hand to my face. At that moment the thought crossed my mind that I might have crushed him. Imagine, I did not like the idea at all, but it came to me undeniably.

According to Jung, it is the opposition that creates power (or libido) of the psyche. It is like the two poles of a battery, or the splitting of an atom. It is the contrast that brings the energy, so a strong contrast will lead to strong energy and a weak contrast will lead to poor energy.

The second principle is the equivalence principle, where the energy resulting from the opposition is distributed equally on both sides. Thus, when I held that little bird in my hand, there was an energy that prompted me to help him; as well as another with the same characteristics that I was going to crush him. I tried to help the bird, so all that energy was distributed in the various behaviors directed to that end. But what happened to the other party then?

Well, that depends on the attitude one takes towards that unfulfilled desire. If we keep that desire consciously; that is, we are able to recognize it, then we cause an increase in the quality of psychic functioning; that is, we grow.

If, on the contrary, we try to deny that this thought was there, if we suppress it, the energy will be directed towards the development of a complex. The complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that are grouped (which establish a constellation) around a specific theme from an archetype. If we deny having had a thought related to squashing the bird, we could put that idea in one of the forms offered by the shadow (our "dark side"). Or if a man denies the emotional side of him, his emotionality may find its way into his expression within the anima archetype.

This is where the problems begin. If we pretend that in our whole life we ​​are absolutely good; that we don't even have the ability to lie and cheat; of stealing and killing, then every time we are good, our other part will consolidate into a complex around the shade. That complex will start to take on a life of its own and will haunt you in some way. You can see yourself suffering from nightmares where you squash little birds!

If the complex lasts for a long time, it can become "owning" you and you can end up with a multiple personality. In the movie "The Three Faces of Eve", Joanne Woodward played a sweet and withdrawn who eventually discovered that she went out on Saturday nights, assuming an identity contrary. She did not smoke, and yet she found packets of cigarettes in his purse; she did not drink, but woke up hungover and did not flirt with men, although she found the most sexy clothes in her room. It is important to say here that although multiple personality disorder is rare, when it appears it does not tend to present in such an extreme, black and white way.

The last principle is the entropy principle, which establishes the tendency of opposites to attract each other, in order to decrease the amount of vital energy throughout life. Jung got the idea from physics, where entropy refers to the tendency of all physical systems to overlap; that is, that all energy is eventually distributed. If, for example, we have a heater in the corner of a room, over time the whole room will get hotter.

When we are young, opposites tend to be very extreme, wasting a great deal of energy. For example, adolescents tend to exaggerate differences between the sexes, with boys being more macho and the more feminine girls, so their sexual activity is invested with large amounts of energy. Furthermore, these oscillate from one extreme to another, being mad and savage at one time and finding religion at another.

As we get older, most of us begin to feel comfortable with our facets. We are a little less idealistic and naive and recognize that we are a combination of good and bad. We are less threatened by our sexual opposites and we become more androgynous. Even in old age, women and men tend to look more alike. This process of getting over our opposites; Seeing both sides of who we are is called transcendence.

The goal of life is to achieve a self. The self It is an archetype that represents the transcendence of all opposites, so that each aspect of our personality is expressed in an equitable way. Therefore, we are neither masculine nor feminine; we are both; the same for the Self and the shadow, for the good and the evil, for the conscious and the unconscious, and also the individual and the collective (the creation in its totality). And of course, if there are no opposites, there is no energy and we stop working. Obviously, we would no longer need to act.

If we try to distance ourselves a bit from mystical considerations, it would be advisable to place ourselves in a more centralist and balanced position of our psyche. When we are young, we lean more towards the Self, as well as the trivialities of the person. As we age (assuming we have done it appropriately), we move toward considerations deeper about the self and we get closer to people, to life and to the universe itself. The person who has realized himself (who has developed his self - her self) is in fact less self-centered.

Synchronicity

Over the years, theorists have widely discussed whether psychological processes are established from mechanistic or teleological models. Mechanism is the idea that things work through a process of cause and effect. One thing leads to another, and that other to a next, and so on, whereby the past determines the present. Teleology is the idea that defends that we are guided by our purposes, meanings, values ​​and others. Mechanism is associated with determinism and the natural sciences; teleology is related to free will and is currently considered a somewhat strange position. It is still common in moralistic, legalistic, and religious philosophers and, of course, also in some personality theorists.

With respect to the authors we review in this book, Freudians and Behaviors tend to be mechanists, while neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists tend towards the teleological. Jung believes that both play a role, but adds a final ideological alternative called synchronicity.

Synchronicity supposes the occurrence of two events that are neither causally nor teleologically associated, but nevertheless have a significant relationship. Once, a patient described a dream about a beetle to me and just at that moment, a beetle very similar to the one he described in his dream flew through the office window. Many times, people dream of, say, the death of a loved one and the next morning we find the actual death of that person and that he died more or less at the time he we dream. Sometimes we pick up the phone to call a friend and meet him on the line when he picks up the handset. Most psychologists would call these situations coincidences or try to show us how frequent they are. Jung believed that these situations were indicative of how humans interconnect with nature in general through the collective unconscious.

Jung was never clear about his religious beliefs, but this unusual idea of ​​synchronicity is easily explained in the Hindu perspective of reality. From this point of view, our individual selves are like islands in the sea. We are used to seeing the world and others as individual and separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other through the ocean floor that underlies the waters.

The other world is called maya, which means illusion and is considered a dream of God or like a dance of God; that is, God has created it, but it is not real in itself. Our individual selves are called jivatman or individual souls, also being something like an illusion. We are all extensions of the one supreme Atman or God, who allows himself to forget one little of their identity to become seemingly separate and independent, each becoming U.S. But in fact, we are never quite separate. When we die, we wake up being what we really were from the beginning: God.

When we dream or meditate, we get into our personal unconscious, getting closer and closer to our essence: the collective unconscious. It is precisely in these states that we are most permeable to the "communications" of other I's. Synchronicity makes Jungian theory one of the few that is not only compatible with parapsychological phenomena, but even attempts explain them.

Jung developed a typology of personality that has become so popular that many people believe that he did nothing else. It starts with the difference between introversion Y extroversion. Introverts prefer their inner world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, dreams, and others, while extroverts prefer the external world of things, activities, and people.

Personality theories in Jungian psychology

These terms have been confused with words like shyness and sociability, in part because introverts tend to be shy and extroverts tend to be more sociable. But Jung was referring more to how inclined (our Self) we are towards the person and external reality or towards the collective unconscious and its archetypes. In this sense, the introverted subject is a little more mature than the extroverted, although it is true that our culture values more to the extrovert... and Jung already warned us that all of us tend to value our own type above any other! thing!.

At present, we find the introversion-extroversion dimension in several theories, of which the notable is that of Hans Eysenck, although this dimension is hidden under the alternative names of "sociability" and "upwelling".

The functions

Even when we are introverts or extroverts, it is clear that we need to deal with the world, both internal and external. And each of us has our own way of doing it, in a more or less comfortable and useful way. Jung suggests that there are four ways o functions to do so:

1. The first is that of sensations, which, as the word itself indicates, involves the action of obtaining information through the meanings of the senses. A sensitive person is one who directs his attention to observe and listen, and therefore, to know the world. Jung considered this function as one of the irrational ones, or what is the same, which comprises more perceptions than the judgment of information.
2. The second is that of thought. Thinking involves evaluating information or ideas rationally and logically. Jung called this function as rational, or decision-making based on judgments, rather than a simple consideration of information.
3. The third is the intuition. This is a model of perception that works outside of typical conscious processes. It is irrational or perceptual like sensation, but it arises from a much more complex integration of large amounts of information, rather than just seeing or listening. Jung said it was like "looking around corners."
4. The fourth is the feeling. It is the act of feeling, like thinking. It is a question of evaluating the information. In this case it is directed to the consideration of the emotional response in general. Jung called him rational; evidently not in the way we are used to using the term.

All of us possess these functions. We would say that we simply use it in different proportions. Each of us has a higher function that we prefer and that is more developed; another secondary, of which we are aware of its existence and we use it only to support the first. We also have a tertiary, which is very poorly developed and is not very conscious for us and finally a lower one, which is very poorly developed and is so unconscious that we could deny its existence in U.S.

Most of us only perform one or two of the functions, but our goal should be to perform all four. Once again, Jung considers the transcendence of opposites as an ideal.

Assessment

Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers found Jung's types and roles of the personalities who decided to develop a test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (the Type Indicator Myers-Briggs). Becoming one of the most popular and studied tests of how many there are.

Based on the answers to more or less 125 questions, we are placed in one of the 16 types, establishing a definitive inclusion in two or three types. The result of the type to which we belong says very little about us (for example, our tastes or dislikes, our career choices, our compatibility with others, and so on successively). In general, many people like the test, since it has the peculiarity of being one of the few tests that has the unusual quality of not being overly judicious: none of the resulting types is overly negative, nor is it overly positive. Instead of assessing how "crazy" you are, simply open your personality to exploration.

The test has four scales. The Extrovesrio-introversion (E-I) is the most important. Researchers who have applied the test have found that 75% of the population is extroverted.

The following is that of Sensation-intuition (Y-N), with about 75% of the population being sensitive.

The next one is Thought-feeling (T-F). Although the results in the studied populations are distributed almost equally, the researchers have found that about two-thirds of men belong to the first category, while another two-thirds of women are sentimental. These results could be considered somewhat stereotyped, but we must take into account that Jungians consider of equal value both thought as well as feeling and that, of course, a third of men are sentimental and that another third of women use the thought. In addition, we must consider that society does establish value differences between thought and feeling. Of course, a sentimental man and an overly rational woman find it difficult to cope with the expectations of stereotypes of people in our society.

The last scale is that of Judgment-perception (J-P), a scale included by Myers and Briggs and absent from Jungian theory. These authors decided to include it in order to determine which of the functions could be superior. Generally, judicious people are more cautious and careful, even inhibited in their lives. Perceptive people tend to be more spontaneous and even careless at times. Extroversion plus a "J" assumes that the person is a thinker or a sentimentalist. Both are powerful. Extroversion plus a "P" means that we are dealing with a sensitive or intuitive person. At the other extreme, an introvert with a high "J" will be a sensitive or intuitive, while an introvert with a high "P" will be a thinker or a sentimentalist. The J and P are equally distributed in the population.

Each type is identified by four letters, such as ENFJ. These have become so popular that we can even find them on car license plates!

• ENFJ (Sentimental extroversion with intuition). These people are talkative. They tend to idealize their friends. They behave like good parents, but they have a certain tendency to allow themselves to be manipulated by them. They become good therapists, teachers, executives, and salespeople.
• ENFP (Intuitive extroversion with sentimentality). These people love new things and surprises. They are very emotional and expressive. They are susceptible to muscle tension and tend to be hyper-alert. In general, it is common for them to tend to feel their inner side a lot regarding emotions. They are good for sales, advertising, politics, and acting.
• ENTJ (Extroversion of thought with intuition). When they belong to a home, they expect a lot from their partners and their children. They like organization and order and are usually good executives and administrators.
• ENTP (Intuitive Extroversion with Thought). They are lively people; nothing boring or aged. As couples, they are somewhat financially dangerous. They are good at analysis and possess a great entrepreneurial spirit. They tend to establish themselves in a superior position over others in a very subtle way.
• ESFJ (Sentimental extroversion with sensation). These people like harmony. They tend to present a 'must' and 'don'ts' position. They are usually dependent, first on their parents and then on their partners. They are very sensitive people who interact with others with their hearts in hand.
• ESFP (Extroversion of feeling with sentimentality). They are very generous and impulsive, having a poor tolerance for anxiety. They can be good entertainers, they like public relations and they love the telephone. They should avoid major headaches in studies, such as science.
• ESTJ (Extroversion of thought with sensation). They are very responsible people as couples, parents and as workers. They are realistic; with their feet on the ground, more like bored and aged and they love tradition. We can usually see them in civic clubs.
• ESTP (Extroversion of sensation with thought). They are action-oriented people, usually sophisticated and even risky (our James Bond). As couples they are charming and exciting, but they present problems when it comes to commitment. They perform as good promoters, entrepreneurs and entertainment artists.
• INFJ (Intuitive introversion with sentimentality). These are the typical serious students and those workers who really want to contribute. They are very intimate and hurt easily. They are good partners, but they tend to be very reserved physically. People often believe that they are psychic. They establish themselves as good therapists, practitioners, ministers, and so on.
• INFP (Sentimental introversion with intuition). These people are idealistic, self-sacrificing and with a certain reserve or distance from others. They are very familiar and homey, but they don't relax easily. We find them frequently among psychologists, architects, and religious men, but never among businessmen. Both Jung and I admire these kinds of people. Sure, Jung and I are like that!
• INTJ (Intuitive introversion with thought). It is the most independent group of all. They love ideas and logic and therefore are very given to scientific research. They are rather particular in their way of thinking.
• INTP (Introversion of thought with intuition). These are the so-called bookworms. They are caring, faithful people and easily go unnoticed. (As a recent example, in the movie "What women want" with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, a female character appears in the company where the character of Gibson works who goes completely unnoticed by others and she is constantly thinking about this situation. N.T.). They tend to be very precise in their use of language. They are good at logic and mathematics and make good philosophers and theoretical scientists, but never writers or commercials.
• ISFJ (Introversion of feeling with sentimentality). They are helpful people and are very work directed. They can be fatigued and tend to be attracted to hooligans. They are good nurses, teachers, secretaries, interns, librarians, middle business entrepreneurs, and housekeepers.
• ISFP (Sentimental introversion with sensation). They are shy and withdrawn; not very talkative, but they like acts that have to do with sensual activities. They like painting, drawing, sculpture, musical composition, dance (the arts in general) and nature. They are not very good at romantic commitment.
• ISTJ (Introversion of sensation with thought). They are the so-called force-dependent pillars. They usually try to modify the ways of being of their partners and other people. They become good bank analysts, auditors, accountants, tax inspectors, supervisors from bookstores and hospitals, businessmen, physics educators and teachers, and even, good boys scouts.
• ISTP (Introversion of thought with sensation). They are action-oriented and fear-free people who seek risk. They are impulsive and dangerous to stop. They love tools, instruments, and weapons, and they usually become technical experts. They are not at all interested in communication and are often misdiagnosed as dyslexic or hyperactive. They tend to be bad students.

Even without having been examined by the test, we could well recognize ourselves in one of the types described. Or rather, ask others; they are very likely to be more accurate in their assessment of us! But if you prefer, you can download a free online test from Jung. The address is The Keirsey Temperament Sorter. I recommend it!.

Many people believe that Jung has a lot to say about them. These include writers, artists, musicians, film directors, theologians, clergymen of any religion, students of mythology, and, of course, some psychologists. Examples that come to mind include mythologist Joseph Canpbell, filmmaker George Lucas, and science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. Anyone interested in creativity, spirituality, psychic phenomena, the universal, and those topics will find Jung a good guide.

But scientists, including most psychologists, have quite a bit of trouble with Jung. This not only fully supports the teleological point of view (as most psychologists do personality), but goes one step further, delving into the mystical interconnections of the synchronicity. Not only does it postulate the existence of an unconscious where things are not easy to grasp by the eye empirical, but also establishes a collective unconscious that has never been and will never come to consciousness.

In fact, Jung takes an essentially contrary to the reductionist current; it starts with the highest levels (even spirituality itself) and derives the lowest levels of psychology and physiology from them.

Even those psychologists who applaud his teleology and his anti-reductionism are not comfortable with him. In the same way that Freud does, Jung tries to draw everything into his system. Chance, accidents or circumstances have little place. Personality (and life in general) seems "over-explained" in Jungian theory.

I have observed that his theory often attracts students who have trouble dealing with reality. We know that when the world, especially the social world, becomes too difficult, some people withdraw into fantasy. Some, for example, simply become kitchen helpers by cutting potatoes; others, however, embrace very complex ideas that claim to explain everything. Some get into Gnostic or Tantric religions, those that feature complex religious figures angels and demons, heavens and hells, and engage in endless discussions about the symbols. Some others turn to Jung. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this; But for someone who is far from reality, these positions are definitely not going to help.

These criticisms do not cloud the foundations that have arisen from Jung's theory, but we should be careful with them.

The positive issues

On the positive side, we could highlight the contributions of Myers-Briggs and other tests, made from Jung's work. Since these tests do not place the subject in dimensions between "good" and "bad", they are much less "persecuting". They just make people more aware of who they are.

At first sight, Jung's archetypes it would seem the strangest idea, even though they have been shown to be very useful for the analysis of myths, fairy tales, general literature, artistic symbolism and religious exhibitions. They apparently capture some of the basic "units" of our own expression. Many people have suggested that it is just a lot of characters and stories from the real world, and that we just rearrange the details of them.

This position suggests that the archetypes do in fact refer to some deep structures of the human mind. After all, from a physiological perspective, we come into this world with a certain structure. We see in a certain way, just as we hear; We process information in a particular way, we behave that way, since our glands and muscles are designed in a certain way. Importantly, at least one cognitive psychologist has suggested searching for the underlying structures of Jungian archetypes.

Finally, Jung has opened our eyes to the differences between child and adult development. Children clearly emphasize differentiation (separating one thing from another) in learning. "What's that?"; "Why is that so and not the other way?" "What kinds of things is that thing?" They actively seek diversity. And many people, including various psychologists, have been so impressed by this that they have come to the conclusion of saying that all child development is a matter of differentiation, of learning more and more "stuff".

But with respect to adults, Jung has emphasized the idea that they tend more towards integration for the transcendence of opposites. We adults look for connections between things; how they fit together, how they interact; how they contribute to a whole. We want things to make sense, to have meaning; in short, the purpose of all this. Children unravel the world; the adults try to pick up the pieces and put them together.

Connections

On the one hand, Jung remains tied to his Freudian roots. It emphasizes the unconscious more than Freudians do. In fact, it could be seen as a logical extension of the Freudian tendency to place the causes of things in the past. Freud also spoke of myths (Oedipus, for example) and how they impact the modern psyche.

On the other hand, Jung has much in common with neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists. He believes that we are made for progress, to move in a positive direction, not just for an adaptive purpose, as Freudians and behavioralists advocate. His idea of ​​self-actualization is very similar to that of self-actualization.

The equilibrium or balance of opposites has also found its counterpart in other theories. Authors such as Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Andreas Angyal, David Bakan, Gardner Murphy and Rollo May make references to the search for a balance between two opposing tendencies, one directed towards individual development and the other towards the development of social interest or compassion. Rollo May mentions a mind composed of "daemons" (little gods) such as the desire for sex, love and power. They are all positive while in place, but when they involve the whole personality, we will have "daemonic possessions" or mental illness.

Finally, we owe Jung a greater openness of interpretation, whether related to symptoms, dreams, or free associations. While Freud developed a more or less rigid interpretation (especially the sexual one), Jung allowed himself to go a little further, directing his idea rather towards a more "mythological" interpretation of free will, where practically anything could mean, in fact, any thing. Existential analysis, in particular, has benefited from Jungian ideas.

Most of Jung's writings are contained in The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung. It is my duty to tell you that most of his work is not easy to read, but contains enough topics of interest to make it worth your while.

If you are interested in something a little simpler, there is an autobiography called Memories, Dreams, Reflections, written with his student Aniela Jaffé. It has a good introduction, as long as the first chapter before it has been read.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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