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Theories of Personality: Carl Jung

Biography

  • 1875 - 1961
  • Very metaphysical
  • At a young age, he turned from reason to his dreams, visions, and fantasies
  • At critical times, Jung resolved problems and made decisions based on what his unconscious told him through his dreams
  • Became interested in Freud’s work in 1900 when he read “The Interpretation of Dreams”
  • While a follower of Freud, he was never an uncritical one
  • Originally trained with Freud
  • Broke from Freudian analysis
  • EVENT: Freud and Jung analyzed each others’ dreams
    • Freud showed resistance to Jung’s analysis
    • Freud stopped, saying he would lose authority
  • Felt Freud overemphasized sexual aspects
  • Experience with developing sciences of Anthropology and Sociology
  • Spent time living in different cultures

Major Theories

  • Focused on the unconscious and conscious mind … he believed that the unconscious played more of a role in controlling our thought process (especially during dreaming)
  • The collective unconscious was also more dominant factor in the development of human personality
    • Behavior -> Ancestor

Introduction – Basic Principles

  • Psychic Energy
    • Libido
    • Contrary to Freud’s sexual energy
  • Principle of Opposites
    • Our personality consists of opposing/competing forces that we strive to balance
    • Ex. Conscious vs Unconscious
    • Ex. Introversion vs. Extraversion
    • Opposition (conflict) creates energy
    • Propels movement forward
    • One force comes with an opposing force
    • Libido drives but more holistic
    • Experience rather than biological
    • More spiritual ideas
    • Transcends biological needs
  • Principle of Equivalence
    • Energy created by opposites is given to both sides equally
    • Each pair in opposite has = amounts of energy
    • Increase in one area pulls energy from other area
    • Too much on one side:
    • May spur growth/create problems
    • Complex is said to develop
    • One are diminished -> will go to other areas
  • Principle of Entropy
    • Tendency for opposites to come together – be less extreme opposites
    • When younger, degree of opposites tends to be extreme
    • As one grows, able to tolerate differences/opposites (doesn’t have to be one or the other – can be both)
    • We strive toward balancing the opposites
    • Natural tendency for growth
    • Balance -> not free of conflict
    • Individuation: term used for goal of unity of our personality (unification of opposing forces into whole)
    • Extreme opposites -> tendency to find balance

Core Concepts

Ego

  • Conscious mind
  • Center of consciousness
  • Characterized by one dominant attitude (introversion/extraversion)
    • Determines perception of and reaction to environment
  • Characterized by 2 functions:
    • Thinking/Feeling: rational, logical
    • Sensing/Intuiting: based on experiences

Personal Unconscious

  • Similar to Freud’s conception of preconscious and unconscious
  • Contains memories that can be recalled as well as those that have been repressed
  • Complex: cluster of emotionally-charged memories that influence behavior
    • Arise from need to adapt and inability to meet that need/challenge
    • Develop over time
    • Identified through word association tests
    • Ex. Mother complex, guilt complex, hero complex

Collective Unconscious

  • Psychological residue of man’s ancestral past
    • Reservoir of mankind’s experiences as species
    • accumulated memories of mankind’s experiences
    • Seen in themes and symbols in cultures (why we respond to them):
    • Parallels in myths, fairy tales, literature, art, etc.
    • Dreams
    • Deja vu experiences
    • Near death experiences
    • Passed on unconsciously
    • Shared

Archetypes

  • Inherited predisposition to experience things in certain ways
  • “Symbols” for significant disposition
  • A way to understand a “role”
  • Transcends culture
  • More like an emotion
  • Jung described them as “thought-forms” -> implied as much feeling as thought
  • Experience archetypes as emotions associated with significant life events such as birth, adolescence, marriage, and death or with extreme reactions to danger
  • Jung found common archetypal symbols in cultures that were so widely separated in time and location that there was no possibility of direct influence

Additional Archetypes

  • Persona
    • Your public personality, aspects of yourself that you reveal to others
    • masks
  • Shadow
    • Prehistoric fear of wild animals, represents animal side of human nature
    • Dark; undesirable parts of ourselves
  • Anima
    • Feminine archetype in men
  • Animus
    • Masculine archetype in women
  • Anima/Animus: opposing forces in a person
  • Others
    • God, Hero, Nurturing Mother, Wise Old Man, Wicked Witch, Devil, Powerful Father

Examples of Archetypes

  • Family Archetypes
    • Father: stern, powerful, controlling
    • Mother: feeding, nurturing, soothing
    • Child: birth, beginnings, salvation
  • Animal Archetypes
    • Faithful Dog: unquestioning loyalty
    • Enduring Horse: never giving up
  • Story Archetypes
    • Hero: rescuer, champion
    • Maiden: purity, desire
    • Wise Old Man: knowledge, guidance
    • Magician: mysterious, powerful
    • Witch/Sorceress: dangerous
    • Trickster: deceiving, hidden

Archetypes of Collective Unconscious

  • Self
    • Center of psyche
    • Represents our striving for unity of opposing forces
    • Individuation
    • Process by which individual integrates opposing tendencies
    • Indivisible
    • Contradictions do not overwhelm
    • Personified by Jesus Christ and Buddha
    • Perfection only completed at death
    • Symbolized in mandala
    • Drive => to become better

Theory of Psychological Type

  • Attempt to explain individual differences
  • Began with concepts of introversion and extraversion
  • Added functions (thinking-feeling, sensing-intuiting) later
  • Represents preferences rather than exclusive talents
  • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
  • Explains why one person is different to the other
  • Attitudes
    • Orientations
    • Our tendency to act in certain ways; how we orient to the world
    • Introversion
    • Oriented toward inner world (object -> ego)
    • Prefer inner world of thoughts, feelings, dreams, etc.
    • Focus on concepts, ideas, internal expressions
    • More oriented to collective unconscious and archetypes
    • Extraversion
    • Oriented to outside world (ego -> object)
    • Prefer world of things and people
    • Focus on others and thinks aloud
    • More oriented toward persona and outer reality
  • Functions: rational functions
    • Judging: how we come to conclusions about what we perceive
    • Thinking
      • Decide impersonally on basis of logical conclusions
      • Tell what it is
      • Naming and interpreting experience
    • Feeling
      • Decisions based on personal and social values
      • Tell what it is worth
      • Evaluating an experience for its emotional worth to us
  • Functions: nonrational functions
    • Perceiving: how we gather/take in information
    • Sensing
      • Pay attention to observable facts/events through 5 senses (seeing, hearing, touching, etc.)
      • Good at looking and listening
    • Intuiting
      • Focus on meanings, relationships, possibilities
      • Unconscious sensing – knowing without sensing
      • Unconscious processing
  • Types
    • Each type represents preferences for one over the other
    • Dominant function => function used most enthusiastically
    • Development and type
    • Youth and Adolescence
      • Develop dominant function
      • Most natural - feels most comfortable
    • Midlife
      • People tend to be motivated toward completion of personality
      • Begin to add neglected functions