Jung: Psyche, Self, Archetypes, and Psychological Types (Chapter 3)

Carl Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland. His family included many Protestant religious leaders.
He studied medicine at the University of Basel and later taught at the University of Zurich.
Early in his career, he was a key student and supporter of Sigmund Freud. They even traveled to the United States together in 1909.
He passed away in 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Jung believed that your entire personality is what he called the Psyche.
He thought that the hidden, unconscious parts of your mind play a very important role in shaping who you are.
Jung's idea of Libido wasn't just about sexual energy like Freud's. Instead, he saw it as a broad life force, a general psychic energy that includes spiritual aspects.
He believed that important parts of your personality continue to grow and change even when you're an adult, not just when you are a child.
Your personality, according to Jung, is also shaped by your future goals and what you're striving for, not just what happened in your past.
Jung didn't fully trust pure science to explain everything about the mind, arguing that some psychological experiences are too deep and complex for only scientific methods.

Jung's theory of personality includes several key parts: The Psyche and the Self, Ego, Persona, Shadow, Anima and Animus, Personal Unconscious, and Collective Unconscious.
The Psyche and the Self together describe your entire personality, bringing together both the parts you are aware of (conscious) and the parts you are not aware of (unconscious).

Your complete and integrated personality includes both how you see yourself (for example, thinking you are a helpful person) and any hidden, unacknowledged needs you might have (like selfish desires).
A man who sees himself as very masculine, but hasn't explored his softer, more nurturing side, is an example of reconciling different parts of himself.

Jung believed that the unconscious mind helps to fill in what's missing from your conscious awareness to make you a complete person.
Compensation: This is how the unconscious balances out your conscious mind. For example:
- If you rarely express anger in your daily life, you might dream about being aggressive. This dream helps your mind deal with those unexpressed aggressive feelings.
- If you constantly work without rest, your body might force you to stop by getting sick (a psychosomatic illness). This illness compensates for your neglect of rest.
So, Compensation is the way the unconscious makes up for what's lacking in your conscious life, often through dreams or body signals.

Individuation: This is the process of becoming a truly complete and unique person, where all parts of your mind and personality are fully developed and working together.
Transcendent Function: This is the process where all the opposing parts of your personality (like your good and bad sides, or masculine and feminine traits) come together to form one unified and whole self.
For example, in midlife, a man might start exploring his sensitive side, or a woman, after raising children, might go back to school to follow long-neglected interests. These kinds of changes show a move towards becoming more psychologically complete and whole.

The Ego acts like a gatekeeper, deciding what thoughts and feelings enter your conscious mind.
It's the part of you that makes choices and has willpower, but it's not the entire center of your personality.
There's a risk of ego inflation, where the ego becomes too big or dominant, making a person overly focused on themselves and their own importance.

The Persona is typically developed by young adulthood (YA).
It's essentially the mask you wear or the social role you play to fit into the world and interact with others.
Significant changes in your social role (like starting a new job or becoming a parent) can sometimes make your personality feel disjointed or inconsistent.
Social rituals (like graduations or weddings) often mark a change in your persona.

The Shadow is the part of your unconscious mind that holds the traits and feelings that don't fit with how you consciously see yourself. It's often the