right |thumb |263px |Carl Jung
Analytical psychology (, sometimes translated as analytic psychology; also Jungian analysis) is a term referring to the psychological practices of Carl Jung. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.
The history of analytical psychology is intimately linked with the biography of Jung. At the start, it was known as the "Zurich school", whose chief figures were Eugen Bleuler, Franz Riklin, Alphonse Maeder and Jung, all centred in the Burghölzli hospital in Zurich. It was initially a theory concerning psychological complexes until Jung, upon breaking with Sigmund Freud, turned it into a generalised method of investigating archetypes and the unconscious, as well as into a specialised psychotherapy.
Analytical psychology, or "complex psychology", from the German , is the foundation of many developments in the study and practice of psychology as of other disciplines. Jung has many followers, and some of them are members of national societies around the world. They collaborate professionally on an international level through the International Association of Analytical Psychologists (IAAP) and the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS). Jung's propositions have given rise to a multidisciplinary literature in numerous languages.
Among widely used concepts specific to analytical psychology are anima and animus, archetypes, the collective unconscious, complexes, extraversion and introversion, individuation, the Self, the shadow and synchronicity. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is loosely based on another of Jung's theories on psychological types. A lesser known idea was Jung's notion of the Psychoid to denote a hypothesised immanent plane beyond consciousness, distinct from the collective unconscious, and a potential locus of synchronicity.
The approximately "three schools" of post-Jungian analytical psychology that are current, the classical, archetypal and developmental, can be said to correspond to the developing yet overlapping aspects of Jung's lifelong explorations, even if he expressly did not want to start a school of "Jungians". Hence as Jung proceeded from a clinical practice which was mainly traditionally science-based and steeped in rationalist philosophy, anthropology and ethnography, his enquiring mind simultaneously took him into more esoteric spheres such as alchemy, astrology, gnosticism, metaphysics, myth and the paranormal, without ever abandoning his allegiance to science as his long-lasting collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli attests. His wide-ranging progression suggests to some commentators that, over time, his analytical psychotherapy, informed by his intuition and teleological investigations, became more of an "art". contemporary preoccupations such as social and family relationships, dreams and nightmares, work–life balance, architecture and urban planning, politics and economics, conflict and warfare, and climate change are illustrated in several publications and films.
Origins
thumb|250px |An 1890 etching of Burghölzli hospital where Carl Jung began his career
Jung began his career as a psychiatrist in Zürich, Switzerland. Already employed at the Burghölzli hospital in 1901, in his academic dissertation for the medical faculty of the University of Zurich, he took the risk of using his experiments on somnambulism and the visions of his mediumistic cousin, Helly Preiswerk. The work was entitled, "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena". It was accepted but caused great upset among his mother's family. Under the direction of psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, he also conducted research with his colleagues using a galvanometer to evaluate the emotional sensitivities of patients to lists of words during word association. Jung has left a description of his use of the device in treatment. His research earned him a worldwide reputation and numerous honours, including honorary Doctorates from Clark and Fordham Universities in 1909 and 1910 respectively. Other honours followed later.
In 1907, Jung travelled to meet Sigmund Freud in Vienna, Austria; they had begun corresponding a year earlier. At that stage, Jung, aged thirty-two, had a much greater international renown than the forty-nine-year-old neurologist. As he said, "The beauty about the unconscious is that it is really unconscious." Hence, the unconscious is 'untouchable' by experimental researches, or indeed any possible kind of scientific or philosophical reach, precisely because it is unconscious.
The break with Freud
thumb |left |Still talking, Jung with psychoanalytic colleagues. Front row: [[Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung. Back row: Abraham Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi. 1909 in front of Clark University.]]
It was the publication of a book by Jung that provoked the break with psychoanalysis and led to the founding of analytical psychology. In 1912 Jung met "Miss Miller", brought to his notice by the work of Théodore Flournoy and whose case gave further substance to his theory of the collective unconscious. It was the second part of the work that brought the divergence to light. Freud mentioned to Ernest Jones that it was on page 174 of the original German edition that Jung, according to him, had "lost his way". and with Ernest Jones as defender of Freudian orthodoxy; while on the other side, were Jung's partisans, including Leonhard Seif, Franz Riklin, Johan van Ophuijsen and Alphonse Maeder. Jung the importance of sexual development as an instinctual drive and focused on the collective unconscious: the part of the unconscious that contains memories and ideas which Jung believed were inherited from generations of ancestors. While he accepted that libido was an important source for personal growth, unlike Freud, Jung did not consider that libido alone was responsible for the formation of the core personality. Due to the particular hardships Jung had endured growing up, he believed his personal development and that of everyone was influenced by factors unrelated to sexuality. Central to this process of individuation is the individual's continual encounter with the elements of the psyche by bringing them into consciousness.
It follows that the aim of (Jungian) psychotherapy is to assist the individual to establish a healthy relationship with the unconscious so that it is neither excessively out of balance in relation to it, as in neurosis, a state that can result in depression, anxiety, and personality disorders or so flooded by it that it risks psychosis resulting in mental breakdown. One method Jung applied to his patients between 1913 and 1916 was active imagination, a way of encouraging them to give themselves over to a form of meditation to release apparently random images from the mind to bridge unconscious contents into awareness.
"Neurosis" in Jung's view results from the build-up of psychological defences the individual unconsciously musters in an effort to cope with perceived attacks from the outside world, a process he called a "complex", although complexes are not merely defensive in character. His theories consist of observations of phenomena, and according to Jung, it is phenomenology. In his view psychologism was suspect.
According to the Italo-French psychoanalyst Luigi Aurigemma, Jung's reasoning is also marked by Immanuel Kant, and more generally by German rationalist philosophy. His lectures are evidence of his assimilation of Kantian thought, especially the Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason. Aurigemma characterises Jung's thinking as "epistemological relativism" because it does not postulate any belief in the metaphysical.
Jung used the concept to illustrate the case of men of a South American tribe fantasizing they are macaw birds.
Finally, his use of the English expression, "pattern of behaviour", which is synonymous with the term archetype, is drawn from British studies in ethology.
The principal contribution to analytical psychology, nevertheless, remains that of Freud's psychoanalysis, from which Jung took a number of concepts, especially the method of inquiring into the unconscious through free association. Individual analysts' thinking was also integrated into his project, among whom are Sándor Ferenczi (Jung refers to his notion of "affect") or Ludwig Binswanger and his Daseinsanalysis (Daseinsanalyse). Jung also affirms Freud's contribution to our knowledge of the psyche as being, without doubt, of the highest importance. It reveals penetrating information about the dark corners of the soul and of the human personality, which is of the same order as Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). In this context, Freud was, according to Jung, one of the great cultural critics of the 19th century.
Divergences from psychoanalysis
Jungian analysis is, like psychoanalysis, a method to access, experience and integrate unconscious material into awareness. It is a search for the meaning of behaviours, feelings and events. Many are the channels to extend knowledge of the self: the analysis of dreams is one important avenue. Others may include expressing feelings about and through art, poetry or other expressions of creativity, the examination of conflicts and repeating patterns in a person's life. A comprehensive description of the process of dream interpretation is complex, in that it is highly specific to the person who undertakes it. Most succinctly, it relies on the associations which the particular dream symbols suggest to the dreamer, which at times may be deemed "archetypal" insofar as they are supposed to be common to many people throughout history. Examples could be a hero, an old man or woman, situations of pursuit, flying or falling.
Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis relies entirely on the development of the transference in the analysand (the person under treatment) to the analyst, Jung initially used the transference and later concentrated more on a dialectical and didactic approach to the symbolic and archetypal material presented by the patient. Moreover, his attitude towards patients departed from what he had observed in Freud's method. Anthony Stevens has explained it thus:
:Though [Jung's] initial formulations arose mainly out of his own creative illness, they were also a conscious reaction against the stereotype of the classical Freudian analyst, sitting silent and aloof behind the couch, occasionally emitting ex cathedra pronouncements and interpretations, while remaining totally uninvolved in the patient's guilt, anguish, and need for reassurance and support. Instead, Jung offered the radical proposal that analysis is a dialectical procedure, a two-way exchange between two people, who are equally involved. It was a revolutionary idea when he first suggested it. It is a model which has influenced psychotherapists of most schools.
In place of Freud's "surgical detachment", Jung demonstrated a more relaxed and warmer welcome in the consulting room. The process of contemporary Jungian analysis depends on the type of "school of analytical psychology" to which the therapist adheres. The "Zurich School" would reflect the approach Jung himself taught, while those influenced by Michael Fordham and associates in London, would be significantly closer to a Kleinian approach and therefore, concerned with analysis of the transference and countertransference as indicators of repressed material along with the attendant symbols and patterns.
Dream work
thumb |[[Dream Analysis, 1928–1930 seminars given by Jung, first published in English in 1984]]
Jung's preoccupation with dreams can be dated from 1902. It was only after the break with Freud that he published in 1916 his "Psychology of the Unconscious" where he elaborated his view of dreams, which contrasts sharply with Freud's conceptualisation. While he agrees that dreams are a highway into the unconscious, he enlarges on their functions further than psychoanalysis did. One of the salient differences is the compensatory function they perform by reinstating psychic equilibrium in respect of judgments made during waking life: thus a man consumed by ambition and arrogance may, for example, dream about himself as small and vulnerable person.
According to Jung, this demonstrates that the man's attitude is excessively self-assured and thereby refuses to integrate the inferior aspects of his personality, which are denied by his defensive arrogance. Jung calls this a compensation mechanism, necessary for the maintenance of a healthy mental balance. Shortly before his death in 1961, he wrote: Unconscious material is expressed in images through the deployment of symbolism which, in Jungian terms, means it has an affective role (in that it can sometimes give rise to a numinous feeling, when associated with an archetypal force) and an intellectual role. Some dreams are personal to the dreamer, others may be collective in origin or "transpersonal" in so far as they relate to existential events. They can be taken to express phases of the individuation process and may be inspired by literature, art, alchemy or mythology.
Analytical psychology is recognized for its historical and geographical study of myths as a means to deconstruct, with the aid of symbols, the unconscious manifestations of the psyche. Myths are said to represent directly the elements and phenomena arising from the collective unconscious and though they may be subject to alteration in their detail through time, their significance remains similar. While Jung relies predominantly on Christian or on Western pagan mythology (Ancient Greece and Rome), he holds that the unconscious is driven by mythologies derived from all cultures. He evinced an interest in Hinduism, in Zoroastrianism and Taoism, which all share fundamental images reflected in the psyche. Thus analytical psychology focusses on meaning, based on the hypothesis that human beings are potentially in constant touch with universal and symbolic aspects common to humankind. In the words of André Nataf:
Principal concepts
In analytical psychology two distinct types of psychological process may be identified: that deriving from the individual, characterised as "personal", belonging to a subjective psyche, and that deriving from the collective, linked to the structure of an objective psyche, which may be termed "transpersonal". These processes are both said to be archetypal. Some of these processes are regarded as specifically linked to consciousness, such as the animus or anima, the persona or the shadow. Others pertain more to the collective sphere. Jung tended to personify the anima and animus as they are, according to him, always attached to a person and represent an aspect of his or her psyche. These are shaped by the contents of the collective unconscious, by others, and by the larger society. Jung considered, for instance, an "animus of the anima" in men, in his work Aion and in an interview in which he says:Jung stated that the anima and animus act as guides to the unconscious unified Self, and that forming an awareness and a connection with the anima or animus is one of the most difficult and rewarding steps in psychological growth. Jung reported that he identified his anima as she spoke to him, as an inner voice, unexpectedly one day.
In cases where the anima or animus complexes are ignored, they vie for attention by projecting itself on others. This explains, according to Jung, why we are sometimes immediately attracted to certain strangers: we see our anima or animus in them. Love at first sight is an example of anima and animus projection. Moreover, people who strongly identify with their gender role (e.g. a man who acts aggressively and never cries) have not actively recognized or engaged their anima or animus.
Jung attributes human rational thought to be the male nature, while the irrational aspect is considered to be natural female (rational being defined as involving judgment, irrational being defined as involving perceptions). Consequently, irrational moods are the progenies of the male anima shadow and irrational opinions of the female animus shadow.
Archetypes
The use of archetypes in psychology was advanced by Jung in an essay entitled "Instinct and the Unconscious" in 1919. In his psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal or personal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. The method he favoured was hermeneutics which was central in his practice of psychology from the start. He made explicit references to hermeneutics in the Collected Works and during his theoretical development of the notion of archetypes. Although he lacks consistency in his formulations, his theoretical development of archetypes is rich in hermeneutic implications. As noted by Smythe and Baydala (2012), A group of memories and attitudes associated with an archetype can become a complex, e.g. a mother complex may be associated with a particular mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological givens which probably arose through evolution.
Archetypes have been regarded as collective as well as individual, and identifiable in a variety of creative ways. As an example, in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung states that he began to see and talk to a manifestation of anima and that she taught him how to interpret dreams. As soon as he could interpret on his own, Jung said that she ceased talking to him because she was no longer needed. However, the essentialism inherent in archetypal theory in general and concerning the anima, in particular, has called for a re-evaluation of Jung's theory in terms of emergence theory. This would emphasise the role of symbols in the construction of affect in the midst of collective human action. In such a reconfiguration, the visceral energy of a numinous experience can be retained while the problematic theory of archetypes has outlived its usefulness.
Collective unconscious
Jung's concept of the collective unconscious has undergone re-interpretation over time. The term "collective unconscious" first appeared in Jung's 1916 essay, "The Structure of the Unconscious". This essay distinguishes between the "personal", Freudian unconscious, filled with fantasies (e. g. sexual) and repressed images, and the "collective" unconscious encompassing the soul of humanity at large.
In "The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology" (November 1929), Jung wrote:
Given that in his day he lacked the advances of complexity theory and especially complex adaptive systems (CAS), it has been argued that his vision of archetypes as a stratum in the collective unconscious, corresponds to nodal patterns in the collective unconscious which go on to shape the characteristic patterns of human imagination and experience and in that sense, "seems a remarkable, intuitive articulation of the CAS model".
Individuation
Individuation is a complex process that involves going through different stages of growing awareness through the progressive confrontation and integration of personal unconscious elements. This is the central concept of analytical psychology first introduced in 1916. It is the objective of Jungian psychotherapy to the extent that it enables the realisation of the Self. As Jung stated: Jung started experimenting with individuation after his split with Freud as he confronted what was described as eruptions from the collective unconscious driven by a contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation. According to Jung, individuation means becoming an individual and implies becoming one's own self. Unlike individuality, which emphasizes some supposed peculiarity, Jung described individuation as a better and more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities of the human being. Prior to individuation, the analysand is carefully assessed to determine if the ego is strong enough to take the intensity of this process. The elements to be integrated include the persona which acts as the representative of the person in her/his role in society, the shadow which contains all that is personally unknown and what the person considers morally reprehensible and, the anima or the animus, which respectively carry their feminine and masculine values. For Jung many unconscious conflicts at the root of neurosis are caused by the difficulty to accept that such a dynamic can unbalance the subject from his habitual position and confronts her/him with aspects of the self they were accustomed to ignore. Once individuation is completed the ego is no longer at the centre of the personality. The process, however, does not lead to a complete self-realization and that individuation can never be a fixed state due to the unfathomable nature of the depths of the collective unconscious.
Shadow
The shadow is an unconscious complex defined as the repressed, suppressed or disowned qualities of the conscious self. According to Jung, the human being deals with the reality of the shadow in four ways: denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation. Jung himself asserted that "the result of the Freudian method of elucidation is a minute elaboration of man's shadow-side unexampled in any previous age." According to analytical psychology, a person's shadow may have both constructive and destructive aspects. In its more destructive aspects, the shadow can represent those things people do not accept about themselves. For instance, the shadow of someone who identifies as being kind may be harsh or unkind. Conversely, the shadow of a person who perceives himself to be brutal may be gentle. In its more constructive aspects, a person's shadow may represent hidden positive qualities. This has been referred to as the "gold in the shadow". Jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness to avoid projecting shadow qualities on others.
The shadow in dreams is often represented by dark figures of the same gender as the dreamer.
The shadow may also concern great figures in the history of human thought or even spiritual masters, who became great because of their shadows or because of their ability to live their shadows (namely, their unconscious faults) in full without repressing them.
Persona
thumb |upright=1.0 |[[Persona is a social representation of the self, drawn from the Latin term for "mask". It serves as a public face.]]
Just like the anima and animus, the persona (derived from the Latin term for a mask, as would have been worn by actors) is another key concept in analytical psychology. It is the part of the personality which manages an individual's relations with society in the outside world and works the same way for both sexes.