by Ruth Snowden
Jung also visited Equatorial Africa and found a timeless world that had existed even before there were any people to know that it was there. Seeing this, Jung suddenly grasped the cosmic meaning of consciousness – man was like a second creator. In observing the world and being consciously aware of it he gave it objective existence, and so man was indispensable for the completion of creation.
Jung was a great traveller
In 1937, Jung visited India. He realized that here, as in many of the other cultures he had visited, people still lived in the whole body and had not retreated to live only from the head as they had in the West. While he was in India, Jung dreamed that he had to swim to a castle on an island off the coast of Britain, bringing the Holy Grail back to its home. For Jung, this dream was a timely reminder that he needed to return to focus on his own people and culture. India was not his goal – it was simply a part of the road that was carrying him closer to his goal.
JUNG AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Jung emphasized that every person has a unique story to tell, some aspects of which are hidden in the unconscious. It is the unfolding of this life story that provides the pathway to individuation: a lifelong process that we all need to go through. Jung always patiently talked with people and listened to them in order to really understand their unique problems. He laid less emphasis on childhood experiences than other psychoanalysts had done – for him the person’s life now was the most important aspect. He always stressed that the spiritual aspect of human psychic experience was of vital importance, encouraging people to realize that they are not isolated beings but part of a great mysterious whole.
Unlike many other psychotherapists of his day, Jung sat face to face with his patients, and encouraged them to see him as a human being, not just as a doctor. However, outside the consulting room he tended to be formal and polite, setting a little distance between himself and his client. He enjoyed helping people to explore their inner worlds, but he was not always interested in his clients’ outpourings – one woman who came to see him dissolved into copious tears during every session and he dealt with this by reading the newspaper!
Jung believed that many people became neurotic because of a split in their psyche between the modern and the primitive. Deprived of the mythical truths of their ancestors and cut off from the world of nature, they developed a huge gulf between the ego and the unconscious. In being helped to close this gulf, a person can begin to achieve healing. Jung emphasized that he never claimed to understand a person fully – a person’s inner world was their own territory and, as such, it had to be respected. Not only that, but inner growth is hard work and nobody can do this work for somebody else. Unlike analysts from other schools, Jung always stressed the importance of feelings, saying that it is not possible to achieve healing through working only in an analytical way ‘in the head’.
In his therapy sessions, Jung combined formality with face-to-face interaction.
One of Jung’s most important pupils was Barbara Hannah (1891–1986). Born in England, she travelled to Zurich to meet Jung and stayed in Switzerland for the rest of her life, working as a psychotherapist and teaching at the C.G. Jung Institute. She wrote many books developing Jung’s ideas. Another major follower of Jung was Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–98). She was a founder of the C.G. Jung Institute and wrote widely on many subjects including psychotherapy, dreams, alchemy, fairy tales and personality types. Jung’s lover Toni Wolff also became an analyst, but she published very little, preferring to concentrate on patients.
KEY ASPECTS OF JUNGIAN ANALYSIS
The system of psychology that Jung developed over the years provided him with a useful map of the psyche and gave structure to his therapy sessions. He used various approaches to finding his way into a person’s inner world.
SYMBOLS
Jung encouraged his patients to talk about their dreams and fantasies and to explore their symbolic content. These symbolic messages provided clues as to what was going on in the person’s unconscious and helped to bring issues into conscious awareness.
ARCHETYPAL MESSAGES
Many symbolic messages that emerge from the unconscious are archetypal in nature. Jung often worked with these symbols in a constructive way, seeking possible connections with symbolism in myth, folklore and religion, in order to arrive at clarification and enhanced meaning.
ASSOCIATION
Given an original image or idea, Jung would encourage the patient to follow a train of spontaneous connected thoughts. He believed that these were always meaningful in one way or another, and might uncover unconscious complexes.
ACTIVE IMAGINATION
Jung encouraged people to explore symbolism emerging from the unconscious in creative ways, such as drawing, painting, drama or writing. This active imagination process brings the person back to a playful, child-like state that allows the unconscious to express itself more freely.
BALANCING OF OPPOSITES
Jung frequently emphasized the process of balancing of opposites, which is necessary to achieve a healthy, integrated psyche. Once two conflicting opposite trends are brought into consciousness, the tension between them can be resolved. A third state, representing a new, healthier attitude, can emerge. Jung called this third state the ‘transcendent function’.
CRITICISMS OF JUNG
Like all great thinkers, Jung has had plenty of critics. Some of them have accused him of being domineering and egotistical, determined to collect devoted admirers in the academic world. Others have suggested that he lived off his wife’s fortune and was a womanizer – sour grapes perhaps! And, as we have already seen, many dismissed him as an unscientific, mystical thinker, immersed in a fantasy world.
Some have accused Jung of anti-Semitism: this accusation first arose in the early 1930s, when he became president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, which was based in Germany. This was just at the time Hitler came into power, and people were being forced to conform to Nazi ideas. Jung was well aware of the dangers of the ideology of the Society becoming too one-sided, so he worked to alter the balance of membership, which had previously been predominantly German. He saw this new balance as being important not only to allay people’s fears, but also to protect the German people from what he saw as an increasing spiritual isolation.
Jung resigned from the Society in 1939 and, by this stage, he was becomingly increasingly and openly hostile to the Nazi regime. His books were banned in Germany and destroyed elsewhere in Europe; at one point, once he was on the Nazi blacklist, he had to flee from his home in Zurich to safety in the mountains. Later, various documents came to light that showed that he had played a major part in advising Jewish friends and helping them to escape to England and the US. Accusations of Nazi collaboration are still occasionally levelled at Jung, but one has only to read what he has to say in his books to see that this has more to do with lucrative and sensational journalism than with the truth. Jung was interested in healing people and encouraging them to grow as individuals rather than in dark power and dictatorship.
Jung was always very popular with women and he was a pioneer figure in promoting the idea that we all have a masculine and a feminine aspect. Theoretically, he supported women and wanted them to have equal rights and make their own way in the world. Nevertheless, he was a man of his times in many ways and his attitude was sometimes rather patriarchal and paternalistic.
Jung’s psychology has sometimes been attacked for encouraging people to concentrate mostly on themselves – critics say that he does not give enough attention to relationships with others. However, Jung argues that it is not possible to separate the relationship with the Self from the relationship with others: we cannot hope to relate well to others until we can see ourselves clearly.
INTO THE FUTURE
For Jung, life was a sacred journey with meaning and purpose. His interests were very wide-ranging and he wrote extensively on many different subjects. Above all, he was a psychologist and analyst, and it is this aspect o
f his work that most people come to first. His analytical method gradually strips away built-up defensive layers of the personality until we are able to see our true selves. The goal is to achieve a wider, fuller consciousness, less dependent on ego. This new consciousness is no longer totally egocentric, obsessed with its own petty needs and endlessly using unconscious ploys to cover up its inadequacies.
Certainly Jung himself was not a perfect being, but this only makes him more human – like all of us, he had his shadow side. But whatever he was like as a person, it is certainly true that his influence has extended far beyond his private work as a psychologist, making him one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
• His ideas about the collective unconscious and archetypes have given us new insights into the history of the human psyche.
• His lifelong interest in dreams has expanded our understanding of the mysterious world of the unconscious.
• Many of his ideas about personality, such as introversion and extroversion, have become part of everyday language and understanding.
• His fascination with mythology, religion and the paranormal has encouraged people to develop new thinking about spiritual psychology.
• Many modern forms of psychotherapy have roots in his ideas.
Jung’s charismatic personality has inspired many people and taught us to look deeply within ourselves and to begin to accept ourselves for who we truly are. Ultimately, this is a spiritual journey – one that Jung saw as being essential if mankind were to have a future. It is this conscious awareness and fulfilment of one’s own unique being – the individuation process – that is the pathway and the goal of Jungian analysis.
Synchronous events surrounded Jung right up until his death. On the day he died, 6 June 1961, his friend, the writer and visionary Laurens van der Post, had a dream of Jung waving goodbye. On the same day, Barbara Hannah discovered that her car battery had suddenly run down completely. His death was followed a few hours later by a violent storm, during which lightning struck his favourite poplar tree by the lake. In what was probably his last ‘big’ dream, he saw a huge round stone on a high plateau. At its foot were engraved the words ‘And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness.’ His journey through life was complete.
SUMMARY
Today we have largely focused on Jung’s approach to therapeutic practice – what came to be termed ‘Jungian analysis’. We have seen how, for Jung, therapy was always about the whole person and his or her on-going journey towards individuation, never about abnormal behaviour or neurotic symptoms. Unlike Freud, who often focused only on uncovering the roots of psychological disorder in childhood trauma, Jung looked to the person as they were in the here and how and how he could help them to move into the future.
Throughout this week we have been introduced to one of the towering figures in twentieth-century psychology, whose ideas about dreams, personality types and the collective unconscious have proved influential far beyond his own field. Jung was above all a humane and an open-minded thinker, prepared to recognize that there would always be a great deal about the human psyche that would remain opaque and that the quest to unravel its mysteries had only just begun.
FACT-CHECK (ANSWERS AT THE BACK)
1. Jung’s travels taught him…
a) That people in the West repressed many of their emotions
b) That people in the West were too rational
c) That people in the West had lost contact with their primitive energies
d) That the Western way of life was superior
2. Which of the following characterizes Jung’s approach in therapy sessions?
a) He sat away from them so he was invisible
b) He sat face to face with them
c) He encouraged his patients to weep and shout
d) He insisted that they close their eyes as they described their dreams
3. How might you describe Jung’s therapeutic approach more broadly?
a) Respectful
b) Intellectual
c) Holistic
d) Patriarchal
4. Which one of the following was not among Jung’s pupils?
a) Antonia Wolff
b) Melanie Klein
c) Marie-Louise von Franz
d) Barbara Hannah
5. Which of the following is not a typical technique of Jungian analysis?
a) Dream analysis
b) Active imagination
c) Hypnosis
d) Association
6. What, according to Jung, is the ‘transcendent function’?
a) The ability to go beyond the here and now
b) A state in which the patient comes closer to God
c) A state in which two conflicting trends are brought into balance
d) None of the above
7. Jung used to be criticized for being an anti-Semite largely because…
a) He was President of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy during the Nazi period
b) He admired Hitler
c) Hitler referred to many of his ideas in Mein Kampf
d) He betrayed some of his Jewish friends to the Nazi authorities
8. Which of the following best characterizes his attitude to women?
a) He was a militant feminist
b) He saw them only as sex objects
c) He was both sympathetic and paternalistic
d) He disliked women
9. Why is it unfair to criticize Jung for encouraging people to ‘naval-gaze’?
a) Because he believed that the inner world was all that mattered
b) Because it is through seeing ourselves more clearly that we can nurture better relationships
c) Because what really mattered was an individual’s journey towards the Self –nothing else
d) All of the above
10. Of what was Jung’s final major dream?
a) A car breakdown
b) A friend waving goodbye
c) A tree struck by lightning
d) A big boulder on a plateau
GLOSSARY
analytical psychology The system of psychology as developed by Carl Jung
anima (Latin: fem. form of animus) The unconscious feminine side of a man’s personality; compare animus
animus (Latin: ‘spirit’) The unconscious masculine side of a woman’s personality; compare anima
archetype A primary structure of the human psyche that governs the psychical processes
collective unconscious The often repressed part of the psyche that is made up of 1) archetypes and 2) instincts and which every human being shares
complex An emotionally charged group of ideas, thoughts or images
ego The centre of consciousness that provides us with our sense of identity
extrovert Personality attitude in which psychic energy is directed outwards into the world; compare introvert
individuation The biological process towards psychic wholeness, the Self
instinct The biological drives that determine our behaviour, together forming the libido
introvert Personality ‘attitude’ in which psychic energy is directed towards one’s own thoughts and feelings. Compare extrovert
libido Psychic energy
persona (Latin: ‘mask’) The mask worn by the ego – how we present ourselves to others
personal unconscious The usually repressed part of the psyche that is made up of complexes and which is particular to each individual
projection A process whereby an unconscious characteristic, a fault, or even a talent of one’s own is seen as belonging to another person or object
psyche ‘By psyche, I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious’ (Jung)
Self, the The archetype of wholeness of the psyche that transcends the ego
shadow The unconscious part of the personality that contains characteristics that one cannot recognize as one’s own
synchronicity The simul
taneous occurrence of two meaningful but not causally connected events
Zeitgeist (German: ‘spirit of the age’) The collective psyche of a period in history; like the individual psyche, the Zeitgeist also has a shadow
ANSWERS