C.G. JUNG

BIOGRAPHY

C.G. JUNG

Carl Gustav Jung born July 26, 1875, in the small swiss village of Kessewil. His father was Paul Jung, a country Parson and his mother was Emilie preiswork Jung. He was surrounded by a fairly well educated extended family, including suide a few clergymen and some eccendrics as well.

The elder Jung started Carl on Latin he was six years old, beginning a long interest in language and literature especially ancient literature. Besides not modern western European languages, Jung could read several ancient ones, including Sanskrit, the language of the original Hindu holy books.

He began to use sickness as the excuse developing an embarrassing tendency to faint under pressure. He went on to study medicine at the University of Basel. 

After graduating he took a position at the Burghoeltzli mental hospital in Zurich under Eugene Bleuler, an expert on Schizophrenia. In 1903 long an admirer of Freud, he met him in Vienna in 1907. The story goes that after they met, Freud canceled all his appointments for the day.

Their relationship began to cool in 1909, during a trip to American. It was however, also the beginning of one of the most interesting theories of personality the world has ever seen.

After the war Jung traveled widely visiting for example tribal people in Africa, America and India. He retired in 1946, and began to retrent from public attention after his wife died in 1955. He died on June 6, 1961 in Zurich.

THEORY OF PERSONALITY

Jung’s theory divides the psyche into parts. The first is the ego, which Jung identifies with the conscious mind. Closely related is the personal unconscious, which includes anything which is not presently conscious but can be.

The collective unconscious, you could call it your “psyche inheritance”. It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species a kind of knowledge we are all born with.

Grander examples are the creative experiences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, or the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies. Fairy tales, and literature. They speak of leaving their bodies. Seeing their bodies and the events surrounding them clearly of being palled, through a long tunnel towards a bright light of seeing deceased relatives or religious figure waiting for them  and of their disappointment at having to leave his happy scene to return to their bodies. Perhaps we are all “built” to experience death of this fashion.

LEVELS OF PERSONALITY

THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY

The total personality or psyche as it is called by Jung consists of a number of differentiated but interacting systems. The principal ones are the ego, the personal unconscious and it complexes and the collective unconscious and its archetypes. The persona the anima and animus, and the shadow. In addition to these interdependent systems there are the attitudes of introversion and extraversion and the functions of thinking feeling sensing and intuiting.

The Ego :-

The ego is the conscious mind. It is made up of conscious perceptions. Memories, thoughts, and feelings. The ego is responsible for one’s feeling of identity and continuity, and from the viewpoint of the individual person it is regarded as being at the center of consciousness.

The Personal Unconscious :-

The personal unconscious is a region adjoining the ego. It consists of experiences that were once conscious but that have been repressed, suppressed, forgotten, or ignored and of experienced that were not weak in the first place to make a conscious impression upon the person add there is a great deal of two-way traffic between the personal unconscious and the ego. 

The Collective Unconscious :-

The concept of a collective, or transpersonal unconscious is one of the most original and controversial features of Jung’s personality theory. It is the most powerful and influential system of the psyche and in pathological cases over shadows the ego and the personal unconscious (Jung 1936,  1943,  1945).

A past that includes not only the rical history of humans as a separate species but also their prehuma or animal ancestry as well. It is almost entirely detached from anything personal in the life of an individual and it is seemingly universal. 

Racial memories or representations are not inherited as such rather we inherit the possibility or reviving experienced of past generations. They are predispositions that set us to react to the world in a selective fashion. These predispositions are projected on the world.            

To deny the inheritance of these primordial memories, Jung asserts, is to deny the evolution and inheritance of the brain.

“The form of the world into which he is born is already inborn in him as a virtual image” (Jung, 1945, p. 188).

“It (the unconscious) holds possibilities which are locked away from the conscious mind, for it has at its disposal all subliminal contents, all those things which have been forgotten or overlooked as well as the wisdom and experienced of uncounted, centuries, which are laid down in its archetypal organs”.

Archetypes :-

The structural components of the collective unconscious are called by various names, archetypes, dominants, primordial images . images, mythologies images and behavior patterns.

For example the archetype of the mother products an image of a mother figure that is then identified with the actual mother. In other words, the body inherits a performed conception of a generic mother that determines in part how the baby will perceive conception of a generic mother than determines in part how the baby will perceive its mother.

The repetition of this impressive experience eventually became fixed in the collective unconscious as an archetype of the sun-gold, the powerful dominating.

Human are driven by this archetype to seek new sources of energies. Our present age of energy represents the ascendance of the energies. Thus, the archetype of the hero and the archetype of the wise old man may blend together to produce the conception “philosopher king” a person who is respond to and revered because he is both a hero leader and a wise seer.

Although all archetypes may be taught of autonomous dynamic systems that can be came relatively independent of the rest of personality. Some archetype have evolved so far as to warrant their being treated as separate systems within the personality. These are the parsona the anima and animus and the shadow.

The Persona :-

The persona is a mask adopted by the persona. In response to the demands of social convention and tradition and to his or her own inner archetypal needs. It is the role assigned to one by society. The part of society expects one to play in life.

The persona is the public personality those aspects that one displays to the world or that public opinion fastens on the individual as contrasted with the private personality that  he becomes alienated from himself and his whole personality takes on a flat, or two dimensional, quality. He becomes a mere semblance of a human a reflection of society.

In this case the experiences consists of social interactions in which the assumption of a social role has served a useful purpose of humans throughout their history as social animals.

The Shadow :-

The Shadow archetype consists of the animal instincts that humans inherited in their evolution from lower forms of life consequently, the shadow typifies the animal side of human nature archetype the shadow is responsible for our conception of original skin, when it is projected outward.

The shadow, with ids vital and passionate animal instincts give a fall bodied or three dimensional quality to personality. It helps to round out the whole person.

The Anima and the Animus

It is fairly well recognized and accepted that a human is essentially a bisexual animal on a physiological level. The male secretes both male and female sex hormones as does the female on  the psychological level, masculine and feminine characteristics are found in both sexes.

In other words by living with woman throughout the ages, man has became feminized by living with man, woman has became masculinized.  

He may suffer bitter disappointment when he realizes that the two are not identical. There has to be a compromise of the external world for the person to be reasonably well adjusted. 

The Shadow :-

The shadow archetype consists of the animal instincts that humans inherited in their evolution from lower form as of life consequently the shadow typifies the animal side of human nature. As an archetype the shadow is responsible for our conception of original sin : when it is projected outward, it becomes or an enemo. 

The shadow, with its vital and passionate instincts gives a full bodies or three dimensional quality to the personality. It helps to round out the whole persona.

The Self :-

In his earlier writings Jung considered the self to be equivalent to the psyche or total personality. However, when he began to explore the racial foundations of personality and discovered  the archetypes he found that human striving for unity. This archetype expresses itself through various symbols.

The self is the midpoint of personality around which all of the of her systems are canstellated. It holds these systems together and provides the personality with unity, equilibrium and stability.

The experiences consists of social interaction in which the assumption of a social role has served a useful purpose Freud’s super ego in some respects. 

The concepts of the self is probably Jung’s most important psychological discovery and represents the culmination of his intensive studies of archetype.

Mandala

The most important archetype of all is the self. The self is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross and the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus back to the center and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personifications that best represent self are Christ and Buddha, two people who many believe achieved perfection. But Jung felt that perfection of the personality is only truly achieved in death.

The Dynamics of the Psyche :-

Jung conceived of the personality, or psyche, as being a partially closed energy system. It is said to be incompletely closed because energy from outside sources must be added to the system.

For example by eating, energy also is subtracted from the system.

By performing muscular work it is also possible for environmental stimuli to produce changes in the distribution of energy within the system.

In the external world reorients our attention and perception. The fact that the personality dynamics are subject to influences and modifications from external sources means that the personality  cannot achieve a state of perfect stabilization as it might be if it were a completely closed system. It can only became relatively stabilized.

Synchronicity :-    

Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psychological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mechanism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect. One thing leads to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the present.

Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view our individual ego’s are like islands in a sea : 

When we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious, coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is in states like this that we are especially open to “communication” from other egos. Synchronicity make Jung’s theory one of the rare ones is not only compatible with para psychological phenomena, but actually tries to explain them.

Introversion and Extroversion :-

Jung developed a personality typology that has became so popular that some people don’t realize he did anything else. It begins with the distinction between introversion and extroversion. Introverts are people who prefer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, dreams and so while extroverts prefer the external world of feelings and people and activities.

The words have became confused with ideas with shyness and sociability partially because introverts tend to be shy and extroverts tend to be sociable.

We now find the introvert – extrovert   in several theories notably Han’s Eysenck’s although often hidden under alternative names such as “Sociability” & “Surgency”.

The Functions :-

Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we need to deal with the world, inner and outer. Add each of us has our preferred ways of dealing with it ways we are comfortable with and good it Jung suggests there are four basic ways, or functions.

The first is sensing. Sensing means that it says getting information by means of the senses. A sensing person is good at looking and listening and generally to know the world.

The second is thinking. Thinking means evaluating information or ideas rationally ……., Jung called this a rational function meaning that it involves decision making or judging rather than simple intake of information.  

The third is intuiting. Instituting is kind of perception that works outside of the usual conscious processes.

The fourth feeling. Feeling like thinking is a matter of evaluating information this time by weighing one’s overall, emotional response.

Most of us develop only one or two or the functions. But our goal should be to develop all four. Once again Jung sees the transcendence of opposites as the ideal.

References

·        Theories of personality Colrins Hall Gordner , Lindzey John R. Campbell

·        Introduction to Psychology Clifford T. Margan Richard A Kinc fifth edition, Tata McGraw – Hill publishing, company Ltd, New Delhi.

·        Net Materials