More on Jungian Archetypes
Analytical Psychology, Collective Unconscious, and Why Jung and Freud Went Their Separate Ways.
Last week, in a post about individuation, I talked about Jung’s analytical psychology, aka Jungian Archetypes. But I didn’t include how his specific psychoanalytic approach came to be.
So, allow me to clarify here:
Definitions of archetype
The original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.
In Jungian psychology, a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., is universally present in individual psyches.1
Sigmund Freud
Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, the clinical method for evaluating and treating psychological problems of the psyche through talk therapy.
He’s considered to be one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century and is referred to as the father of modern psychology.
Carl Jung was a disciple of Freud, and they had a working relationship that lasted for decades. However, Jung’s criticism and rejection of Freud’s emphasis on sexuality during development caused them to part company.
Analytical Psychology
Jung developed his own psychoanalytic approach, analytical psychology. This method expanded on Freud’s idea of the personal unconscious to include the collective unconscious. He believed the psyche included three parts:
The ego (conscious mind)
The personal unconscious
The collective unconscious
While the ego contains thoughts that we are aware of, the personal unconscious contains memories, including those that are suppressed.
Jung felt that the collective unconscious was a psychological inheritance containing the knowledge and experiences that the human race shares as a species. It was here that he believed the archetypes originated. He suggested they are innate and hereditary and classify how we experience certain things in life.
I discussed the main archetypes last week: persona, shadow, anima/animus, and the self.
Jung held that archetypes play a role in personality and symbolize basic human motivations, values, and personalities.
Of the main four, he considered one to be dominant and the other three to be able to overlap, combine, and possibly give rise to another one. These additional ones include the following:
Ruler
Creator/artist
Sage
Innocent
Explorer
Rebel
Hero
Wizard
Jester
Everyman
Lover
Caregiver
Jung’s work hasn’t been viewed favorably in modern psychology; it’s more complicated and tends to move into the mystical and pseudoscientific.
Therefore, it’s studied more as a historical remnant in literary criticism and pop culture applications of mythology than as a major contribution to the science of the mind and behavior.
Here’s a timely (and short) warning from Carl Jung himself about why we need to understand human nature better:
LAST WEEK’S POLL RESULTS:
When asked which of the three life stages (childhood, adolescence, adulthood) they preferred, respondents favored adulthood (75%) and childhood (25%). It appears that being a teenager was tough on everybody… 😉
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