Sigmund Freud was Carl Jung’s greatest influence. Although he came to partcompany with Freud in later years, Freud had a distinct and profound influence on CarlJung. Carl Jung is said to have been a magnetic individual who drew many others into hiscircle.
Within the scope of analytic psychology, there exists two essential tenets. The firstis that the system in which sensations and feelings are analyzed are listed by type. Thesecond has to do with a way to analyze the psyche that follows Jung’s concepts. It stressesa group unconscious and a mystical factor in the growth of the personal unconscious. It isunlike the sytem of Sigmund Freud. Analytic psychology does not stress the importance ofsexual factors on early mental growth.
In my view, the best understanding of Carl Jungand his views regarding the collective unconscious are best understood in understandingthe man and his influences. In keeping with the scope and related concepts of Carl Jung,unconscious is the sum total of those psychic activities that elude an individual’s directknowledge of himself or herself. This term should not be confused either with a state ofawareness, that is, a lack of self knowledge arising from an individual’s unwillingness tolook into himself or herself (introspection), nor with the subconscious, which consists ofmarginal representations that can be rather easily brought to consciousness.
Properly,unconscious processes cannot be made conscious at will; their unraveling requires the useof specific techniques, such as free association, dream interpretation, various projectivetests, and hypnosis. For many centuries, students of human nature considered the idea ofan unconscious mind as self contradictory.
However, it was noticed by philosophers suchas St. Augustine, and others, as well as early. Dexperimental psychologists, including Gustav Sechner, and Hermann Von Helmholtz, thatcertain psychological operations could take place without the knowledge of the subject. Jean Sharcot demonstrated that the symptoms of post-traumatic neuroses did not resultfrom lesions of the nervous tissue but from unconscious representations of the trauma.
Pierre Janet extended this concept of “unconscious fixed ideas” to hysteria, whereintraumatic representations, though split off from the conscious mind, exert an action uponthe conscious mind in the form of hysterical symptoms. Janet was an important influenceon Carl Jung, and he reported that the cure of several hysterical patients, using hypnosis todiscover the initial trauma and then having it reenacted by the patient, was successful.
Josef Breuer also treated a hysterical patient by inducing the hypnotic state and thenelucidating for her the circumstances which had accompanied the origin of her troubles. As the traumatic experiences were revealed, the symptoms disappeared. Freud substitutedthe specific techniques of free association and dream interpretation for hypnosis. Hestated that the content of the unconscious has not just been “split off,” but has been“repressed,” that is forcibly expelled from consciousness.
Neurotic symptoms express aconflict between the repressing forces and the repressed material, and this conflict causesthe “resistance” met by the analyst when trying to uncover the repressed material. Asidefrom occasional psychic traumas, the whole period of early childhood, including theoedipus situation or the unconscious desire for the parent of the opposite sex and hatredfor the parent of the same sex, has been repressed.
In a normal individual, unknown tohimself or herself, these early childhood situations influence the individual’s thoughts,feelings, and acts; in the neurotic they determine awide gamet of symptoms which psychoanalysis endeavors to trace back to theirunconscious sources. During psychoanalytic treatment, the patient’s irrational attitudestoward the analyst, referred to as the “transference,” manifests a revival of old forgottenattitudes towards parents.
The task of the psychoanalyst, together with the patient, is toanalyze his resistance and transference, and to bring unconscious motivations to thepatient’s full awareness. Carl Jung considered the unconscious as an autonomous part ofthe psyche, endowed with its own dynamism and complementary to the conscious mind.
He distinguished the personal from the collective unconscious; the later he considered tobe the seat of “archetypes” universal symbols loaded with psychic energy. As newapproaches to the unconscious came about, Jung introduced the word association test,that is, spontaneous drawing, and his own technique of dream interpretation. Histherapeutic method aimed at the unification of the conscious and the unconscious throughwhich he believed man achieved his “individuation,” the completion of his personality.
Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jungs’ concepts of the unconscious have provided a key tonumerous facts in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology, and for theinterpretation of artistic and literary works. (Ellenberger, p.1) Hypnosis has contributedlargely to our understanding of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung understood this, andrepresented itself throughout his many experiments and tests.
In recent times, ourunderstanding of the unconscious has been expanded due to experimental hypnosis and, aswell, projective psychological tests. It has been observed that Jung’s relations with theother significant people in his life appear to have been as unsatisfactory as his own. It hasbeen observed that Jung despised his pastor father as a weakling and failure and hadmixed feelings about his mother.
After Jung broke with Freud, his former collaboratorand mentor, Jung went on to develop his own psychological system. This incorporated anumber of key concepts which included the collective and conscious, the repository ofmankind’s psychic heritage, and realm of the archetypes inherited patterns in the mindthat exist through time and space.
Then there were anima/animus, the image ofcontrasexuality in the unconscious of each individual, and shadow, the repressed andwanted aspect of a person. There is also the theory of psychology types, i.e. introverts,and extraverts, which influenced William James’ dichotomy of tough and tender mindedindividuals. Jung also developed his theory of individuation, which holds that eachindividual’s goal in life is to achieve his own potential.
