Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a son of a minister in Switzerland.
Hewas born on July 26, in the small village of Kesswil on Lake Constance. Hewas named after his grandfather, a professor of medicine at the Universityof Basel. He was the oldest child and only surviving son of a Swiss Reformpastor. Two brothers died in infancy before Jung was born. Jung’s motherwas a neurotic and often fought with his father. Father was usually lonelyand very irritable.
When the child could not take his mother’s depressionsand his parents’ fights, he sought refuge in the attic, where he playedwith a wooden mannikin. Carl was exposed to death early in life, since hisfather was a minister and attended many funerals, taking his son with him. Also, Jung saw many fishermen get killed in the waterfalls and also manypigs get slaughtered. When he was eleven, he went to a school in Basel, metmany rich people and realized that he was poor, compared to them.
He likedto read very much outside of class and detested math and physical educationclasses. Actually, gym class used to give him fainting spells (neurosis)and his father worried that Jung wouldn’t make a good living because of hisspells. After Carl found out about his father’s concern, the faintssuddenly stopped, and Carl became much more studious. He had to decide his profession. His choices included archeology,history, medicine, and philosophy. He decided to go into medicine, partlybecause of his grandfather.
Carl went to the University of Basel and hadto decide then what field of medicine he was going to go into. Afterreading a book on psychiatry, he decided that this was the field for him,although psychiatry was not a respectable field at the time. Jung becamean assistant at the Burgholzli Mental hospital in Zurich, a famous medicalhospital. He studied under Eugen Bleuler, who was a famous psychiatristwho defined schizophrenia.
Jung was also influenced by Freud with whom helater became good friends. Freud called him his crown-prince. Theirrelationship ended when Jung wrote a book called “Symbols ofTransformation. ” Jung disagreed with Freud’s fundamental idea that a symbolis a disguised representation of a repressed wish. I will go into thatlater. After splitting up with Freud, Jung had a 2 year period ofnon-productivity, but then he came out with his “Psychological Types,” afamous work.
He went on several trips to learn about primitive societiesand archetypes to Africa, New Mexico to study Pueblo Indians, and to Indiaand Ceylon to study eastern philosophy. He studied religious and occultbeliefs like I Ching, a Chinese method of fortune telling. Alchemy wasalso one of his interests. His book, “Psychology and Alchemy,” publishedin 1944 is among his most important writings.
He studied what all thistold about the human mind. One of his methods was word association, whichis when a person is given a series of words and asked to respond to them. Abnormal response or hesitation can mean that the person has a complexabout that word. His basic belief was in complex or analytical psychology. The goal ispsychosynthesis, or the unification and differentiation of the psyche(mind). He believed that the mind started out as a whole and should staythat way.
That answered structural, dynamic, developmental questions. Iwill attempt to restate the major ideas and terms in this book in apseudo-outline. It will make the understanding a bit more clear. STRUCTUREJung said that there are three levels of mind.
Conscious, PersonalSubconscious, and Collective Subconscious. The conscious level serves fourfunctions. The following are the functions of people (not types!):A. Thinking: connecting ideas in ordered strings. B. Feeling: evaluating ideas upon feelings about them.
C. Sensing: wanting to get experiences. D. Intuiting: following unfounded ideas. A & B are called rational, and C & D are called irrational.
If theydon’t make much sense, they will be explained in more detail afterexplaining Types. There are also 2 classes of conscious behavior:A. Introverted, which are people who are content to stay within theirown psyche. They base their whole life on analyzing their mind.
B. Extroverted, which are people who seek out other people. They careabout the outside world and adjust to it. Also, one of the two classes usually dominates, and rarely does one seean individual with perfectly balanced classes of behavior. Jung said thatan ego is a filter from the senses to the conscious mind. All egorejections
