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

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