Why should we read Jung?

Why should we read Jung?

Carl Gustav Jung was a famous Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist. He received his doctorate in medicine in Basel. He is the founder of analytical psychology, in which two layers of the unconscious are distinguished: personal unconscious and collective unconscious. 

He was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil (Switzerland) in a very religious family. Carl Gustav was the fourth, but also the first surviving child of Pavel Ahilje Jung and Emilie Preiswerk, so from an early age he was very lonely and withdrawn. Because of her depressed and eccentric mother, Jung had a better relationship with her father Pavlo.

Over time, Emilie was hospitalized, and because of her instability and frequent absences, Jung saw women as unreliable, while men were reliable but powerless. Later, in his memoirs, he wrote that the difficult family situation was a "handicap" because of which he developed an interest in psychoanalysis.

Everything started from a dream

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Given that he grew up as a lonely child, in complex and unsatisfactory family circumstances, Jung often went into the world of imagination. He also very quickly began to have vivid dreams that were filled with various symbols.

Jung considered dreams to be efforts of the psyche to communicate important knowledge to the individual. He valued them extremely and considered them the best way for a person to know himself and the world around him. Also dreams, according to Jung, are an important part of personality development - a process he called individuation.

Unlike Freud who believed that dreams express forbidden desires that must be concealed (he distinguished between manifest dream content - what is on surface, from the latent content - what is hidden), Jung saw dreams as an open expression of desires and needs. He wrote:

"They do not deceive, lie, distort or conceal... They always want to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand."

C.G. Jung

The most common symbols in dreams

Symbols, according to Jung's psychology, are the language we use to express ourselves in dreams. However, it is a language that is not always easy to translate into words. Therefore, Jungian psychology starts from the fact that although the symbolism of dreams has universal characteristics, the symbol cannot be interpreted without a deep understanding of the dreamer's personal situation. A psychotherapist helps the dreamer to interpret the meaning that the symbols have for him personally.

There is a certain symbolism in dreams that seems to be repeated in many people. For example, symbols like the forest, according to Jung, represent amysterious and strange place that has to do with the fear of facing what comes out of the unconscious.

In the same way when we dream of a former partner, according to Jung's interpretation of dreams, that figure of a dream partner could actually indicate some aspects of the dreamer's personality. In doing so, it is important, according to Jung, to analyze how we feel when we recall an image from a dream.

Dreaming that our teeth are falling out is also a frequent recurring pattern, which usually appears in periods of major life changes.

Generally speaking, when interpreting dreams, says Jung, we should keep in mind:

Recurring dreams are usually associated with negative experiences that people have adopted in the form of emotions of internal trauma. Considering that emotional traumas are most often repressed, we need to pay attention to them, or make them aware, in order to heal them.

Basic principles of Jungian psychology

Jung developed his version of psychoanalysis after breaking up with Freud. The most common term used to describe his method is "analytical psychology". It is about a model that strives for integration and personality maturation.

Psychological problems cannot be treated independently of the entire personality of the individual. Feeling of meaninglessness, lack of self-understanding, lack of spiritual orientation and creative blockage are, in the spirit of analytical psychology, seen as a sign of the need to find a new attitude towards ourselves and life in general. We must look for a deeper meaning of such signs.

Jung's model of the psyche includes several main components:

• ego or conscious being - identical to Freud's definition of the ego
• personal unconscious or a dynamic storehouse of drives, frustrations, fears and desires of an individual
• collective unconscious or, according to Jung, a reservoir of unconscious contents created during human evolution

The last part is the most controversial, and it separates Jung's psychology from other variants of psychoanalysis and brings it closer to ancient philosophical teachings.

According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains four archetypes or universal archetypes or patterns: Self, Animus, Anima and Shadow.

The archetypes are following:

• The selfor the “real self” of a person, is the superpersonal center of the psyche. In different societies, according to Jung, the Self is most often manifested as a primordial man; Adam Kadmon in Kabbalistic Judaism, Mahapurusha in Hinduism, Anthropos in Gnosticism, Christ as Logos in Christianity and Buddha in Buddhism. for a man
• The Shadow is the central obstacle that inhibits and destroys the individual, the "inner Devil" - the sum of self-destructive and constrictive energies of the unconscious

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Archetypes, in the form symbols, appear in dreams, daydreams and free associations. 

The most famous are:

In the same way, an important role in Jung's psychology is played by the Persona or mask - a figure that "puts on" the personality or "pulls them into it", mostly unconsciously, in communication with other people and in adapting to various life situations. A persona is a role or a mask that a personality plays in life (father, housewife, official, soldier...).

Ultimately, the goal of Jung's entire psychology is individuation. It is about the growth of personality, which through life's challenges and encounters with archetypes comes to achieved maturity and wholeness. 

Jung considered that his form of psychology is more intended for people of a more mature age, who have achieved their personal desires (sex, career, family, social recognition) and, saturated with life experiences, are on the threshold of a spiritual crisis and questioning what is often called "the meaning of life".

"If there is anything we would like to change in our child, we should first examine and see if it is not something what we need to change in ourselves." C. G. J ung

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Jung removed the possible objection that his psychology lacks universality by asserting that even young people can feel a strong urge for individuation, however, this happens more often at a more mature age. Exceptions are very early psychologically developed individuals, and people of such a psychological constitution for whom the features of human existence, family and career, are in the background.

In 1921, Jung's book Psychological Types was published in which he talked about several different personality types, including introverts and extroverts.

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"An extrovert is focused on losing his own energy, moving towards external objects, while an introvert is focused on accumulating and moving energy into the inner world."

The difference between Jung and Freud

There are numerous controversies about C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud. We can even say that we are divided into those who support the ideas of one and oppose the theories of the other.

Namely, in the beginning, these two great men were collaborators and friends, and their theories had a lot in common. Freud, Jung's mentor, even publicly announced that Jung would be his "successor". 

Jung, for example, accepted Freud's pattern of personality formation in the early stages of childhood, but he insisted that Freud's overall vision was limited and flat. Freud assigned childhood a distinct deterministic role in personality development, and Jung believed that personality can also change in later life, being shaped by goals and aspirations.

For Freud, libido is the source of sexual energy, and for Jung general life energy based on the creative collective unconscious. While Freud believed that the unconscious mind consisted of desires that people repressed, especially sexual desires, Jung believed that there were other important motivators of human behavior besides sexuality.

Ultimately, due to different views on psychoanalysis, especially on the unconscious and libido, their collaboration ended, and Jung completely separated from Freud and his authority.

The influence of the East

In December 1937, Jung went on an extensive trip to India where for the first time he was under the "direct influence of a foreign culture". A few years ago, he traveled in East Africa, but was quite limited there due to the language barrier. 

During a trip to India, Jung fell seriously ill and suffered from delirium in a Calcutta hospital for two weeks. After 1938, his travels were limited to Europe.

Jung's interest in the East was deep and long-lasting, and the traditional teachings of China and India played an important role in his personal and intellectual development, as well as in the formation of ideas and practices that are key to Jungian psychology. For example, Hindu philosophy became an important element in his understanding of the role of symbolism and the life of the unconscious. Also, the influences of Buddhism,yoga and Taoism, and he also studied classic texts such as I Ching i Tibetanska knjiga mrtvih. 

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Although he was a clinician and writer and as such he founded analytic psychology, he spent a large part of his life's work researching other areas such as quantum physics, Eastern and Western philosophy, astrology, sociology, literature and art. 

Jung's interest in philosophy and spiritual subjects led many to view him as a mystic, although he preferred to be seen as a man of science.

His work influenced writers, artists and musicians such as Hermann Hesse, David Bowie, Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Fellini and many others.

Ultimately, why should we read Jung? The answer may have been given by the author himself:

Jung wrote numerous works, some of which are:

• "Transformations and Symbols of Libido"
• "Psychological Types"
• "Connections between I and of the unconscious"
• "Psychology and religion"
• "Psychology and alchemy"
• "Mysterium coniunctionis"
• "Man and his symbols"
• "Memories, dreams, reflections"
• "The Red Book"

You can find many of them in the Biblos Antiquarian! :)

More at Carl Gustav Jung

Prepared by: Marijana Matijević