{yung}
Carl Gustav Jung, b. July 26, 1875, d. June 6, 1961, was a Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology. The issues he dealt with arose in part from his personal background, which is vividly described in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961). Throughout his life Jung experienced periodic dreams and visions with striking mythological and religious features, and these experiences shaped his interest in myths, dreams, and the psychology of religion. For many years Jung felt he possessed two separate personalities: an outer public self that was involved with the world of his family and peers, and a secret inner self that felt a special closeness to God. The interplay between these selves formed a central theme of Jung's personal life and contributed to his later emphasis on the individual's striving for integration and wholeness.
Following his medical training in Basel and early years of practice at the Burgholzli Mental Hospital in Zurich, where he conducted studies of word association, Jung was deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud's writings on mental illness and dreams. From 1907 to 1913, Jung maintained close ties to Freud, and in 1911, Jung became the first president of the Internationale Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft (International Psychoanalytic Association). Theoretical disputes, chiefly concerned with the significance of sexuality in human life, finally led to Jung's breaking off the relationship with Freud.
Theory of Motivation and Personality
Jung felt that the emphasis of psychoanalysis on erotic factors led to a one-sided, reductionistic view of human motivation and behavior. He proposed that motivation be understood in terms of a general creative life energy--the libido--capable of being invested in different directions and assuming a variety of different forms. He named two principal directions of the libido: introversion, or inward into the realm of images, ideas, and the unconscious; and extraversion, or outward into the world of other people and objects. (The latter term is now commonly spelled extroversion.) Persons in whom extroversion predominates are extroverts, while those in whom introversion is strongest are introverts (see extroversion-introversion). Jung also proposed that people could be grouped according to which of four psychological functions is most highly developed: thinking, feeling, sensation, or intuition. Transformations of libido from one sphere of expression to another--for example, from sexuality to religion--are accomplished by symbols generated during personality change.
Theory of Symbols
Jung viewed symbol creation as central to understanding human nature, and he explored the correspondences between symbols arising from the life struggles of individuals and the symbolic images underlying religious, mythological, and magical systems of many cultures and eras. To account for the many striking similarities between independently originating symbols in individuals and across cultures, he suggested the existence of two layers of the unconscious psyche: the personal and the collective. The personal unconscious comprises mental contents acquired during the individual's life that have been forgotten or repressed, whereas the collective unconscious is an inherited structure common to all humankind and composed of the archetypes--innate predispositions to experience and symbolize universal human situations in distinctively human ways. There are archetypes corresponding to such situations as having parents, finding a mate, having children, and confronting death, and highly elaborated derivatives of these archetypes populate all the great mythological and religious systems. Toward the end of his life Jung also suggested that the deepest layers of the unconscious function independently of the laws of space, time, and causality, giving rise to paranormal phenomena, such as clairvoyance and precognition.
Therapy
In Jungian therapy, which deals extensively with dreams and fantasies, a dialogue is set up between the conscious mind and the contents of the unconscious. Patients are made aware of both the personal and collective (archetypal) meanings inherent in their symptoms and difficulties. Under favorable conditions they may enter into the individuation process: a lengthy series of psychological transformations culminating in the integration of opposite tendencies and functions and the achievement of personal wholeness.
George Atwood
Bibliography: Bennet, E. A., What Jung Really Said (197; repr. 1983); Brome, Vincent, Jung (1978; repr. 1981); Hogenson, George, Jung's Struggle with Freud, rev. ed. (1994); Jacobi, Jolande, The Psychology of C. G. Jung, 7th ed. (1968); Jung, Carl G., The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung, 20 vols. (1953- 75) and The Essential Jung, ed. by A. Storr (1983); Mattoon, Mary A., Jungian Psychology after Jung (1994); Nagy, Marilyn, Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung (1991); Noll, Richard, The Jung Cult (1994); Wehr, Gerhard, Jung (1987; repr. 1989).
(c) 1996 Grolier, Inc.