The analytical psychology of Carl Jung

Analytical psychology is the work of Carl Gustav Jung and his followers. Also known as complex psychology, the term officially appears in 1913 to designate a extension of psychoanalysis, which is why it is regarded as both a school of psychoanalysis and a trend of psychology deep, according to Bleuler's expression to characterize all psychology that starts from the hypothesis of the existence of an unconscious psyche. In this Psychology-Online article, we collect the theory about the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.

Index

1. Carl Gustav Jung: Summary Biography
2. The analytical psychology of Carl Jung
3. Books and work by Carl Jung
4. Fundamental differences between Freud and Jung
5. Famous quotes by Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a young psychiatrist He was already recognized by the profession when he assumed the defense of Freud's work, both in psychiatric forums and in his own work, begun in 1902. In 1905 he was appointed a free professor of psychiatry and two years later he met Freud. His close collaboration was broken in 1913 at the request of

Gone are the years when Jung was the president of the International Psychoanalytic Association from its founding in 1910 until the beginning of the first World War. A time in which the psychoanalytic movement born in Vienna around Freud from 1900 is constituted and reaches an international dimension (Europe and the United States).

In 1930, he was appointed honorary vice president of the German Association for Psychotherapy and three years later he was a professor at the Zurich Polytechnic school until 1942. He left teaching due to his advanced age and for health reasons. Carl Gustav Jung died at the age of 85, in 1961, leaving a great legacy for psychology and the psychoanalytic current.

Jung begins his professional life in the most important psychiatric center of the moment, the Burgöhlzli University Clinic, run at the time by Eugen bleuler, creator of the notion of schizophrenia and a facilitator of psychoanalysis during those years. At the Jung Clinic he became familiar with psychiatry of the moment, both in its therapeutic, experimental and investigative aspects.

From that dedication will emerge the first psychoanalytic reading of psychoses, the experimental device of the Test of Association of Words and the notion of complex, in addition to several studies of child psychoanalysis and criminology psychoanalytic. In 1910 Jung immerses himself in mythology and in 1912 he presents his idea of ​​the collective unconscious, elaborates a energetic conception of libido and in the clinic considers the current conflict more important than the childish. Such modifications were not considered relevant by psychoanalysis back then, and neither would any of those presented by the different authors who mark out that history of schisms that is psychoanalysis. After more than a century of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy overdoses, all of this is old news. There are many syntheses that partially or totally articulate different points of view in psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry, giving rise to multiple approaches to suffering.

Theory of Analytical Psychology

Analytical psychology starts from the existence of a collective unconscious in the psyche of each individual, so that consciousness, linked to the self, not only has to deal with the contents of the unconscious personal, complex, personalized in what Jung calls shadow, but with all the transpersonal contents that dwell within us, the archetypes. The relationship of this self - a complex among others, but endowed with consciousness - with the unconscious collective throughout the biography constitutes the process of individuation, or self-realization psychic.

This process, understood as an articulation of psychic opposites which is presented in the form of conflicts, compensations and complementarities, consists of the differentiation conscious on the part of the individual of two great systems of opposites: individual / collective and conscious / unconscious. These include external / internal, before / after, yes / no or any of the opposites that consciousness establishes to configure a reality from the Real.

The individuation process has the naturalness of growth and as such it follows the phases of life from infancy to old age, with its various characteristics. At each moment they dominate different biological, social, archetypal aspects that are bringing to light the character of the individual, his psychic individuality, which Jung calls himself, the subject of both consciousness and the unconscious.

The unfolding of the self as an articulation of archetypes in the individuation process it is the specific object of analytic psychology. Analytical psychology defines a structure of the psyche and an energy that explains its dynamics. This energy is the libido, expressed in the interest shown by the subject towards the various objects of him. Driven by that interest, consciousness widens and differentiates. Libido follows the laws of energy as soon as it is produced thanks to a potential gradient - psychic conflict - it is conserved in the processes of understanding and degrades in closed systems. It presents a direction in time -progression / regression- and space -extraversion / introversion. Refering to structure From the psyche, Jung initially delimits the systems of consciousness, the personal unconscious - which integrates the Freudian preconscious and the unconscious - and the collective unconscious. Later he defines it according to the archetypes person, shadow, anima / animus and himself. The dialectic between person (the archetype of the social) and shadow allows the differentiation of the self, which in the Dialectic with its unconscious sexual counterpart (anima in the male, animus in the female) attests to the self.

This, in contact with the Real through the soul of the world expressed in synchronicities, makes the unus mundus, the Real, conscious. The constitution and differentiation of these figures occupies the process of individuation, whose relative consciousness is the goal of analysis. An analysis that consists of seeking a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious. A specific instrument to carry out this dialogue is the active imagination, based on the transcendent function, which links the conscious and the unconscious and allows the psychic transformation. The other fundamental method is the interpretation of dreams, for which Jung defines an objective and a subjective level, recommends the study of dream series and develops a concept of a dream symbol consistent with the hypothesis of the unconscious collective. With these conceptual tools Jung is creating a psychology, although his interest is not so much develop a system how to use a series of concepts and hypotheses to meet the needs clinics. Thus the typology of him arises in 1921.

Defining four psychic functions in opposition, thinking / feeling as judgmental acts and sensation / intuition as given acts, consider four types psychological ideals with a dominant function, with its opposite underdeveloped and the other two acting as auxiliaries. Depending on whether the dominant attitude is extroverted or introverted, the four types fold into eight, thus constituting a approximate characterology that allows orientation in the clinic and explains many of the interpersonal conflicts and choices of object. In a first formulation, psychotherapy consists of attending to the movements and transformations of the libido, following its investiture processes of the various objects.

These objects, images in their psychic immediacy, can be associated with the various levels of the psyche. At the level of the personal unconscious they are part of the complexes, at the level of the collective unconscious, of the archetypes. The investigation of the complexes refers to personal history, the experiences lived by the individual. The study of archetypes, however, refers to the human species in its historical unfolding. These two levels constitute the microscopic magnifications that analytical psychology considers essential.

Jung's work it is constituted over sixty years. His first publications, the Zofingia University Club Lectures, date from 1896-99, and from 1902 is his bachelor's thesis on the psychology and pathology of the so-called phenomena hidden. An evolution and increasing complexity can be seen from his initial psychiatric writings in the first decade of the 20th century to the last alchemical texts beginning in 1944. The fundamental books of this journey are: The psychology of precocious dementia (1907), Transformations and symbols of the libido (1912), Types Psychological (1921), Relations between the self and the unconscious (1928), Psychology and alchemy (1944), The psychology of transference (1946), Aion (1951), The interpretation of nature and the psyche (1952), a work that brings together Jung's studies on synchronicity and a long article by W. Pauli, and Mysterium coniunctionis (1955-56), in addition to a multitude of specialized articles.

Analytical psychology is not only Jung's creation, it is also the creation of the disciples and colleagues who were close to him and who have subsequently delved into his perspective. Grouped since 1916 in psychological clubs -the first in Zurich and shortly after in England (1922), the North American east coast (1936) and, from 1939, Germany, France and Italy-, in 1948 the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich was created and in 1955 the International Association of Psychology Analytics. Regarding Jung's relationship with other scholars, so important for the deepening of the knowledge necessary for the elaboration of analytical psychology, counted since 1933 with the meetings annual Eranos. Analytical Psychologists They have been leaving a suggestive work of their own that expands and modifies Jung's conceptions. To locate these authors, several classifications have been proposed.

The most generalized is due to Samuels, who establishes three schools or paradigms that guide clinical practice and research: classical, centered on the self, evolutionary, which attends centrally to the process of individuation, and archetypal, oriented rather to the game of archetypes. Lately, this author adds a fourth group, which he calls fundamentalist, whose appeal says it all. Confluences of analytic psychology with psychoanalysis can be found in all its schools, deep psychology and existential psychiatry. Regarding their influences, they are traced in systemic, humanistic, evolutionary and transpersonal psychologies and, beyond the specific field of psychotherapy and psychology, in the study of the plastic arts, literature, the science of religions, anthropology, epistemology and politics.

Within the framework of this theory, Freud and Jung They had a quite different typology, which influenced a large part of their theoretical production. Jung had developed, as a dominant function, intuition, while in Freud sensation prevailed. These differences in the "personal equation" do not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated when studying the divergences between Freud and Jung. The followers of both have tended in past decades to highlight the differences between the two.

However, with the passage of time, the followers of both currents have found that they are not necessarily contradictory theories (Thompson, 1979; Samuels, 1999) but, as proposed in this article, it is possible to analyze a good part of Freud and Jung's approaches as coming from two different types of personality, conditioned by one-sided optics. They can then be analyzed as extreme axes of the same spectrum of possibilities, and therefore, as complementary visions. Some of these polarities are presented below.

Libido as neutral energy: Unlike Freud's first approaches in which he understood the libido as a psychic energy of sexual character, analytical psychology maintained from the beginning that it was a neutral life force that, depending on the circumstances of each human being, could manifest itself in different ways, one of which could be sexual (Stevens, 1994). A psychology of the particular and the healthy: While Freud proposed a clinical approach focused on the pathological, Jung affirmed that it was not logical to derive the normal of the pathological, but the correct thing was to create a general psychology of the normal human being and then try to understand the patient from the healthy.

In the same line of thought, he rejected the tendency of psychotherapists to typify and label the mentally ill because he was convinced that each case was different and unique (Jung, 1935). On the other hand, he recommended that therapists not only concern themselves with evaluating what worked inadequately in the patients, but also to determine what was working satisfactorily, in order to start working from there (Jung, 1993; Fordham, 1966).

A creative unconscious

Another evidence of Jung's optimistic perspective is that while the unconscious that Freud conceived had a negative aspect, represented by all the repressed things of the individual, the unconscious was for Jung also a positive source that could generate great benefits (Jung, 1992). From his point of view, the unconscious is often shown as an endless source of creativity that can be transmitted to consciousness in the form of forces of renewal and transformation. A transrational realm: While Freud completely adhered to the scientific method based on the rationality, Jung was interested in a psychology that exceeded the rational side of the human being (Jaffé, 1992; Hochheimer, 1968).

He had great respect for the empirical method and demonstrated it several times, among others in his word association experiments (Jung, 2001); However, he always refused to commit himself to the fallacy of scientism, as he considered it to be a way of denying the validity of all phenomena not amenable to scientific investigation (Stevens, 1994).

On the contrary, he always kept his mind open to the irrational and causal elements that science tends to ignore, since He considered that by leaving them aside, essential aspects of the personality are sacrificed that prevent knowing the human being with all its paradoxes. Finalist principle: Another aspect that denotes the opposite view of the two authors is the emphasis placed by Freud on the principle of causality, while Jung insisted on the principle finalist and teleological.

That is, he considered that all the activities of the psyche are directed towards a purpose (Jung, 1992). This affects the contributions made by Jung to the field of psychotherapy, since some of these contributions consist of asking not only for the causes of psychic phenomena, but to complement this look with the question about the purpose that chase. The previous are some of the main contrary positions held by Freud and Jung, and help to understand the main foundations of analytic psychology: the self-regulation of the psyche, the structure model of the psyche, the personal unconscious, the complexes, the collective unconscious and the archetypes. General principles of analytical psychology 1.

Opposites and self-regulation of the psyche

According to Jungian theory, to understand the reality of the world, the psyche understands all forms of life as a struggle between antagonistic forces that generate tensions, which, when resolved, produce a development in the individual (Progoff, 1967).

Jung was also convinced that the psyche is a self-regulating system constantly striving to balance opposing tendencies. In this way, when a polarity or one-sidedness occurs in an individual's conscious realm, his unconscious reacts immediately in dreams, or fantasies, trying to correct the imbalance that is occurring (Jung, 1992).

• The shoe that fits one man tightens another; there is no recipe for life that works in all cases.
• Life not lived is a disease from which you can die.
• Show me a healthy human being and I will heal it for you.
• One does not enlighten by imagining figures of light but by making darkness aware.
• What you resist persists.
• The privilege of a life is to become who you really are.
• We cannot change anything without first understanding. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
• Knowledge rests not only on truth but also on error.
• Where love exists there is no desire for power and where power predominates, love is scarce. One is the shadow of the other.
• The meeting of two people is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is a reaction, both are transformed.

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