Carl Jung

Protestant psychiatrist and psychologist Prof. Dr. med. Jung

Carl Gustav Jung (b. 26 July 1875 in Kesswil, Kanton Thurgau; d. 6 June 1961 in Küsnacht, Kanton Zürich) was a German Swiss (Deutschschweizer) psychoanalyst and psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology, which is sometimes considered distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis, but heavily influenced by it, and analytical psychology has been criticized for some of the same reasons as psychoanalysis, such as for being a pseudoscience.

Life

From left to right: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall and C. G. Jung (sitting); Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones and Sándor Ferenczi (standing), 1909

Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in a village on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance. The father, Dr. phil. Paul Jung (1842–1896), was a Protestant pastor, the mother, Emilie, née Preiswerk (1848–1923), was interested in spiritualism and the occult. She is said to have had prophetic gifts and often followed her inspirations absentmindedly. His grandfather was Prof. Dr. med. Carl Gustav Jung (1794–1864). Young Carl hardly has any contact at school. He feels misunderstood and lonely. The only person he can communicate with is his mother. But because she admires him above all, “[...] I was left alone with my thoughts. That was my favorite too. I played alone, walked alone, dreamed and had a mysterious world to myself."

From 1895, Jung studied medicine in Basel and also attended lectures in law and philosophy, and in 1902 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the “Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter okkulter Phänomene”. To do this, he uses his recordings of the séances with his cousin Hélène Preiswerk. In Richard von Krafft-Ebing's “Textbook of Psychiatry” (1879), Jung was enthusiastic about its description of psychoses as “diseases of the person”. Through a “lightning flash of enlightenment” he realizes that he wants to become a psychiatrist:

“Here alone could the two streams of my interest flow together [...] Here was the common field of experience of biological and spiritual facts, which I was looking for everywhere and not had found.”

After his state exams in 1900, Jung worked as Eugen Bleuler's assistant at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich. He is particularly interested in the question “What goes on in mentally ill people?” He is dismayed to note that their psychology hardly plays a role in diagnosis and therapy. In the winter of 1902/03, Dr. Jung assisted Pierre Janet at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris. His research at Burghölzli on brain tissue samples and his work with hypnosis, which was popular at the time to cure the symptoms of mental illness, did not satisfy Jung's search for the origins and nature of mental illness. Jung completed his habilitation under Bleuler in 1905 with the results of his research on Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien: Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychopathologie (diagnostic association studies: contributions to experimental psychopathology).

He carried out experimental association studies, examining so-called complexes (diagnostic association studies, 1906) and turned to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, whom he visited in 1907. Freud saw Jung as an apostle who could carry his teachings into ecumenism and made him president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1911. As early as 1913, their paths diverged schismatically. One of the doctrinal divergences concerned the nature of libido, the drive energy, whose exclusively sexual view Jung rejected. He developed his own teaching and an associated therapeutic practice, which he simply called Analytical Psychology.

The collective unconscious and its archetypes created a tool that Jung used to interpret a wide variety of psychological, social, cultural and religious phenomena. His joy of interpreting in such diverse fields as astrology, late antique gnosis, medieval alchemy, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Chinese throwing oracle I Ging appear to some observers to be uninhibited; his penchant for spiritualism and collective chatter, combined with racist, anti-Jewish and misogynistic attitudes, led him to a world during the 1930s His closeness to ethnic doctrines became unmistakable, although this did little to detract from the worldwide influence of his teachings that still exists today.

Jung was not a racist, as is sometimes rumored. He believed in racial consciousness, but not discrimination based on race. He was also not an anti-Semite, but he criticized Jewish-influenced sciences when they disregarded all the facts and findings of others (gentiles). In 1939, he became a professor in Zurich and in 1944 full professor of medical psychology at the University of Basel. He lived and practiced in Küsnacht on Lake Zurich, where he died in 1961.

Psychology

Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in countercultural movements across the globe. He emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. His most notable ideas include the concept of psychological archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity.

Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern people rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of unconscious realms. His work in spirituality helped to inspire Alcoholics Anonymous as he found spirituality helps people quit addiction.

Main Theories

• The concept of introversion and extroversion (although he did not define these terms as they are popularly defined today).
• The concept of the complex.
• The concept of the collective unconscious, shared by all people. It includes the Jungian archetypes. The group hive-like behavior of people socially is a manifestation of the collective unconscious.
• Synchronicity as a mode of relationship that is not causal, an idea that has influenced Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he developed the notion of unus mundus in connection with the notion of non-locality) and some other physicists.

Family

In February 1903, Jung married the wealthy Schaffhausen resident Emma Rauschenbach (1882–1955). She was interested in science, history and politics and was fascinated by the Grail legend. Her husband encouraged her interests; She was not only an important conversation partner and critic of his texts, but also helped him with his work by taking on writing tasks. From 1930, she worked as an analyst herself. The wealth she brought with her into the marriage was an important prerequisite for Jung's freedom of research. The couple had four daughters and a son.

External links

• A Dangerous Method
• Reply to Jordan Peterson on the Jewish Question — From His Heroes: Part Three: Jung

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Carl Jung
• Encyclopedia.com: Carl Jung
• Encyclopedia.com: Jung, Carl Gustav
• Encyclopedia.com: Jung, Carl Gustav (1875–1961)
• Encyclopedia.com: Jung, Carl Gustaf
• Encyclopedia.com: Jungian Psychology