Jung (week 2) Flashcards
Background
- Freud and Jung were influenced by the scientific and philosophical developments of the nineteenth century, including the evolutionary theory and certain discoveries in archaeology
and cross-cultural studies - son of a Swiss Reformed Church pastor, was born in the small Swiss town of Kesswyl on Lake Constance
- Jung also says psychology happens outside of clinical
- Jung is interested in religion, folklore mythology, culture (Freud disagrees)
- Freud says biology, Jung says spiritual
- Freud says unconscious is personal
- Believes conflict isn’t drives and societal norms but opposing forces (needs to be balanced)
- Jung says theres not that much regression and sexuality in unconscious
- Jung says there is a personal and collective unconscious (same for everyone)
- Jung ascribes the development of the psyche or consciousness to a dialectical
relationship between opposing forces. These opposing forces propel the psyche
from a simple, undifferentiated, unconscious natural state to a complex state of
higher psychic awareness and spiritual fulfilment - Jung’s theory may be regarded as holistic because he does not only concentrate on
the structures, processes and content of the individual psyche, but he also places
the psyche in a broad, inherited collective context (which he calls the collective
unconscious). Jung’s holistic approach is also reflected in his view that the ultimate
goal in the development of personality is to attain ‘wholeness’, as represented
by the attainment of a self.
Which dimensions in human functioning are recognised by Jung?
- The physiological dimension involves all processes and drives that
are essential for physical survival, including the need to breathe, eat,
drink and have sex. Jung was opposed to the reductionist explanation of
psychic processes in terms of physiological processes because he believed
that this led to a ‘psychology without the psyche’. Instead he strove to
develop a ‘psychology with a psyche’. Jung did not deny the importance
of biological factors in human existence; he merely believed that psychic
processes should be studied in their own right, in terms of their own
intrinsic regularities, rather than to be traced back to a physiological
origin and acknowledged only in a physiological context - The social dimension is concerned with interaction with other people.
* The psychic dimension refers to all those conscious processes, which can
logically be understood and explained by reason and which help a person
adapt to his or her reality - The spiritual or religious dimension refers to people’s dependence
on and subjection to irrational experiences; that is, experiences that
cannot be understood and explained by human reason. The human being,
for Jung, is both a rational and an irrational being and it is especially the
latter which, he believes, has not received sufficient attention in the study of
human behaviour. Jung uses the concept of religion to describe a person’s
irrational experiences. Note should be taken that, for him, the spiritual or
religious dimension is an idea much larger and more subtle than religious
practice according to a specific denominational dogma. It includes all the irrational aspects of being human. For Jung, the attainment of the self to which all human existence is directed is concerned especially with the religious dimension of the psyche. This elevates the human psyche to a spiritual plane above the usual physiological, social and psychic levels
of existence.
It is the psychic and religious dimensions that receive special attention in Jung’s
theoretical views on the psyche, and through which he has made his greatest
contribution to understanding the human psyche.
View of personhood
- Human beings are complex, dynamic organisms made up of opposing forces;
- These factors drive or draw them into action;
- Consciously or unconsciously
- The idea of opposing forces is very important in Jungian psychology
1. good and evil
2. introverted and extroverted
3. masculine and feminine-Unconscious is dominated by the opposite of what dominates at a conscious level - So, for Jung, like Freud and Adler, conflict is important…
- We strive to integrate these opposing tendencies into a harmonious whole, the self
- A holistic theory: does not concentrate only on the structures, processes and content of the individual psyche, but also places the psyche in broad, inherited, collective context – the collective unconscious
- Acknowledges a spiritual, religious dimension to the psyche: the attainment of the self occurs at a spiritual plane beyond the mere physiological, social and psychic levels of existence
- Psyche: The totality of all conscious and unconscious psychic processes; a comprehensive concept which encompasses universal human traits, not just individual ‘personality’ traits
Structure of personality
- Psyche (spirit/soul) is a dynamically structured totality and represents people and the world
- A divisible and even divided entity that strives towards ‘wholeness’: THIS IS THE MAIN PURPOSE OF LIFE
- uses the term ‘personality’ when discussing the plurality of the psyche, in the sense that a person’s psyche may be ‘split’ into more than one personality, as in the expression ‘angel
abroad and devil at home’. - divisions of psyche are independent
- Different components are related but often opposed:
1. personal-impersonal
2. conscious-unconscious
3. internalised-externalised
4. constructive-destructive
5. public-private - The essence of the psyche is the self; and the self is an archetype: images and dispositions that have been transmitted to humanity through generations
- According to Jung, ‘the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expressed the unity of the personality as a whole.’
- The self is the potential of the psyche: teleology
- Psyche functions on three levels of consciousness:
1. the conscious
2. the personal unconscious
3. the collective unconscious
The conscious
- Its essence is the ego and the conscious is an essential prerequisite for its development
- All conscious aspects of functioning
- Ego functions both internally (self-awareness) and externally (awareness of reality)
Ego consciousness, the conscious experience of
the ‘I’, emanates from the unconscious. Jung maintains that a newborn’s psychic life
does not as yet possess perceivable ego consciousness but that this consciousness
emanates from the infant’s general overall awareness of stimuli (Jung, 1960:347).
The ego comprises all conscious aspects of functioning, including sensations,
perceptions, feelings, thoughts, evaluations and active memory. The ego functions
both externally and internally (Jung, 1960:323):
* External functioning is the process by which the ego helps to structure
reality through sensory perception and thereby facilitates interaction with
the external world. It is the ego that enables the individual to understand the
physical world and the social world and to be active in them.
* Internal functioning refers to the way the ego structures the individual’s
awareness of him- or herself to bestow on the person his or her own identity,
which remains fairly constant over time.
The personal unconscious
- each indiv’s personal unconscious is unique
- storeroom of indiv experiences and interactions with the world and the interpretations there of
- Its contents are generally available to consciousness
- There is a continual interaction between personal unconscious and ego
- 3 ways how content is formed
1. Mental data becomes unconscious because it loses its intensity and is
forgotten
2. Some sensory impressions are not intense enough to penetrate through to
the conscious, but do enter the psyche subliminally
3. Some mental information has been repressed to the unconscious - Most important content: individual complexes
- A complex is a transformed instinct; a composite of ideas or experiences that becomes psychologically activated and carries emotional intensity
- it has 2 components
1. one that is determined be repeated personal experiences in interaction with the environment
2. another that is determined by archetypes and instincts from the collective
unconscious - It forms when an archetype or instinct is combined with a personal experience
For example, an individual can develop a mother complex when
his or her own experience with a mother is combined with the archetype of a mother.
In a similar way the individual can develop an achievement complex, a power complex or
any other type of complex. Apart from repeated everyday experiences, Jung contends
that traumas (emotional shocks) and moral conflicts are some of the more common
factors leading to the development of complexes
The collective unconscious
- also known as the transpersonal unconscious
- Inherited potential
- Not peculiar to the individual but universal to all human beings
- Forms the foundation of the human psyche
- Exists completely independently and is not influenced by conscious experience or the personal unconscious
- Jung: ‘The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings… it exerts an influence that comprises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths.’
- It contains instincts and archetypes
- Archetypes are innate psychic predispositions that influences a person to perceive in a certain way, to experience and form images
- ‘a treasure-house of mythological motifs’ (Jung)
- Archetypes are expressed through symbols – archetypes manifest in the symbolic.
- There are a great variety of archetypes: birth, death, sun, darkness, power, women, men, sex, water, mother, pain…
- But the most NB for his account of personhood are
1. The persona
2. the anima and animus
3. the shadow
4. the self
Persona
- Public self; develops in relation to the role one has to play in society
- The persona is not the whole psyche
- When the persona becomes too important, psychopathology can develop
Anima and animus
- A person possesses not only the physiological traits of both sexes, but also the psychological traits of both sexes
- Anima: female archetype present in every male person unconscious
- Animus: male archetype present in every female person unconscious
- The persona is in a supplementary relationship with the anima or animus
The anima or animus contains qualities that are lacking in the persona. For
example, a woman who is externally extremely feminine will have an extremely
masculine internal psyche and a highly masculine man will be highly feminine
internally
When the anima and the animus combine with personal experience to form a
complex, the anima and animus play a vital role in determining the behaviour of the two sexes towards each other, their understanding of each other and their choice of a partner. If, for instance, a man’s anima emphasises dependency and tenderness and his personal experience with women (represented initially by his mother) emphasises
passivity as a female characteristic, he could very well misunderstand a woman with a self-assertive and competitive personality by regarding her as extremely aggressive. A woman whose animus emphasises aggression and who equates her personal experience of masculinity with hunting and adventure could, in turn, misjudge a man who is interested in cooking and home-care as being weak or effeminate
The process of choosing a marriage partner, however, is far more complex because the anima and the animus in combination with the father- and the mother complex form unconscious projections, according to which people of the opposite sex and/or opposite personalities attract each other.
The shadow
- Represents the primitive animal instincts inherited by humanity in the evolutionary process from the lower forms of life
- shadow is probably the strongest but also the most dangerous archetype because it contains the impulsive urges and emotions normally unacceptable to society and is therefore repressed
- Jung poses two possible reasons for the shadow’s repression
1. The norms of society are usually irreconcilable with the shadow’s impulses and society expects its members to conform to its norms. The more the societal norms, the larger the shadow and the stronger the repression
2. The shadow might be repressed when its impulses are irreconcilable with
and threatening to the persona - The more stringent societal norms, the longer the shadow cast
- A source of vital energy (like the id)
- Integrating ego and shadow leads to creative behavior; or action orientation in a crisis
- The person who represses his or her shadow or channels it inappropriately can behave destructively towards himself or herself and others, and is overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy in a crisis because the impulses of his or her repressed shadow are not to be relied
upon. People who deny their shadow are people who do not fully acknowledge their humanness and resemble individuals incapable of casting shadows
The self
- Motivates an individual to integrate the various components of the psyche into a harmonious whole
- Represents a person’s striving towards unity, wholeness, integration
- The self surfaces when the conscious and unconscious are no longer in opposition to each other and accept each other to form a greater whole
- According to Jung, the self is the central
archetype and forms the nucleus of the personality around which all the other systems cluster - Transcendent function: religion is an instinct peculiar to human beings with the main purpose of maintaining psychic balance
- The archetype of the self is present from birth, but the attainment of selfhood emerges only during the middle years of life. The attainment of selfhood is reached after the psyche has become fully differentiated into various systems through the process of individuation, when these differentiated, opposing systems are synthesised
into a new unity or wholeness by means of the transcendent function. For Jung, the transcendent function is a developmental principle, whereby he seeks to explain how the psyche is able to achieve wholeness after differentiating into various subsystems - Manifested in symbols like the mandala
The mandala is a geometric pattern comprising a square
with four quarters containing a circle with a centre point, which
serves as a symbol of unity and completeness in many Eastern
religions. For example, it is used as an aid during meditation
in Tibetan Buddhism. It also appears in many other cultural,
religious and historical context
For Jung it represents a graphical representation of the self and he used to draw a mandala every morning in order to observe his psychic transformation from day to day. Presently it is frequently used in art therapy and therapy with children
The dynamics of the personality
Basic assumptions
Later Jung added a third principle to the causal and goal-directed principles underlying the dynamics of behaviour, namely synchronicity. According to this principle, the causes of behaviour are not to be sought in the past, nor in the future, but in a ‘meaningful concurrence’ between events. Behaviour is therefore not explained in terms of causes because what is significant is the fact that events occur concurrently (Jung, 1960:485). Jung (1960:516) calls it a ‘modality without a cause, an ‘acausal orderedness’.
Jung maintains that the significance of such events lies in their simultaneous occurrence and that they should not be attributed to coincidence or chance. Behavioural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance and other para-psychological
phenomena can be understood and described, according to Jung, only as a consequence of an acausal synchronistic relationship.
What are the forces that propel a person to physical or psychological action, according to Jung?
- Like Freud, humans are complex energy system
- libido= physical and psyching energy
- Psychic energy/life eenrgy: energy of personality (hypothetical construct and not directly observable)
- expressed in all psychic attitudes and functions, as well as in the psyche’s attempt to achieve a balance between its various subsystems
- Jung states that both physical and psychic energy are generated internally by the metabolic processes and that there is mutual interaction between psychic and physical energy
- The psyche can also acquire further energy from outside through individual experiences
- Psychic value: intensity of the psychic energy invested in a psychic activity
Distinguishes two ways of establishing the strength of unconscious psychic values:
* complex indicators
* word-association test
According to Jung, there are two principles that determine how energy is distributed
throughout psychic functioning:
- The principle of equality (or conservation of energy) postulates that the psyche
conserves energy and it never loses or adds to it. Energy lost in one component
of the system will simply reappear in another component. For example, if an
individual’s persona becomes weakened through therapy, libidinal energy will be withdrawn from the archetype of the persona. However, this energy is conserved and may be transferred to the archetype of the shadow, thereby strengthening the ‘primitive’, unacceptable part of the psyche. The process of redistributing energy in the psyche takes place continuously - The principle of entropy (or balance) postulates that energy flows from a stronger
(or warmer) element to a weaker (or colder) element. The psyche therefore
constantly tries to maintain a balance between the different subsystems through the
redistribution of energy from stronger to weaker components. Ideally, the psyche
strives to create a situation in which all the subsystems have an equal amount of
psychic energy at their disposal so that a system of total balance can exist. When, for
instance, the shadow becomes too strong, according to the principle of entropy, the
psychic energy will be re-channelled to a weaker ego or persona
Interaction between subsystems of the psyche
Due to redistribution of energy, three forms of interaction:
opposition
compensation
synthesis
Opposition
- most subsystems are in a polar relationship to one another so that they
can generate the tension essential for life - Without tension there would be no energy and therefore no psyche or even life
- On the one hand he postulates that the psyche strives towards a
tensionless state (balance between all the subsystems), and on the other hand he
maintains that the tension caused by imbalance is essential for life (contradictory)
Even though the psyche strives towards a tensionless state, opposing forces exist
everywhere in the psyche, for example between the conscious and unconscious, the
persona and shadow, introversion and extraversion, anima and animus, etcetera.
Compensation
- With compensation, Jung claims that opposites attract and complement each
other - Through compensation the psyche prevents a lopsided development of a
subsystem which could lead to neuroses or psychoses - Compensation occurs mostly between the conscious and unconscious
- The overemphasis of a characteristic or function on the conscious level is compensated for by emphasising the opposite characteristic or function on the unconscious level. Dominant masculinity on the conscious level, for example, is compensated for by the anima on the unconscious level. Dreams with archetypal contents compensate for the repressed archetypes
Synthesis
- In contrast to Freud, Jung believes that people are not condemned to perpetual
conflict but that they can effect a union (synthesis) between opposing systems - Such unity can be achieved only through the transcendent function according to
which opposing forces can be integrated in the development of the self
Attitudes of the psyche
Did Jung distinguish between various personality types and, if so, how?
For Jung, each individual can be characterised as oriented primarily inwardly or
primarily outwardly according to the primary channelling of psychic energy
- Introversion is an inner directness of psychic energy based on the
subjective experiences of the ego. An introvert sources energy from within
and is preoccupied with his or her own emotions and experiences and often
appears to be aloof and even asocial - Extraversion, by contrast, sources energy from the outside world and from other people, and is directed towards external reality – people, objects and
events outside the ego – rather than individual experiences or subjective
perceptions. The extravert reveals a lively interest in the world around him or
her and appears highly sociable.
Even though both attitudes are present in all people, one is usually dominant
and conscious and the other unconscious and subordinate. The subordinate and
unconscious orientation is able to assert itself as the dominant attitude in dreams or
in extraordinary circumstances (Jung, 1971). A person who is normally withdrawn
and reserved can become self-assertive and aggressive under the influence of alcohol.
Functions of the psyche
Irrational functions
Rational functions
Irrational functions
way the psyche collects information and orients itself towards outer reality, and also how it reacts to stimulation directly without rational considerations coming into play
- Sensation refers to the way in which the psyche experiences external impulses through the senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
- Intuition is unconscious perception on a subliminal level. Through this the psyche is elevated beyond the bodily confines of time and space and what
happens is an ‘immediate experience and consciousness’, which cannot be
achieved by any of the other functions.
Rational functions
The rational functions indicate indirect ways of processing information and indirect
ways of reacting on the basis of a rational decision process
- Thinking is a logical and structuring function directed towards the objective explanation and understanding of the world. It is therefore the function that
the psyche uses to interpret what has been perceived - Feeling is an evaluative function by which information is judged as good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative. It forms the basis for the individual’s
experience of subjective feelings of pleasure, sadness, anger or love.
The development of the personality and the psyche
Individuation is the process whereby the infant’s undifferentiated psyche divides
into subsystems. Each of the subsystems – ego, persona, shadow, anima, animus,
etcetera – strives to differentiate itself fully from the infant-psyche and to develop
into an integrated system on its own
The transcendent function, however, refers to how the person’s development
of a synthesis between the opposed differentiated systems of the psyche can be
achieved in attaining the self. This implies bringing the conscious and unconscious
together through the integration of opposing aspects of the personality into a whole
(self)
The optimal development of the personality
Jung believes that optimal development lies in attaining the self. This usually
occurs in the early middle years of a person’s life as a result of the individuation
process and the transcendent function. Optimal development occurs when there
is a blurring of the boundaries between what is conscious and unconscious and
between the individual and the world, so that the person becomes part of a new and
greater union as the opposing processes and forces in the psyche are synthesised
