The analytical psychology of Carl Jung

Carl Jung was an early supporter of Freud due to his interest in the less conscious motivations for our behaviors. However, their relationship reached a critical point in 1912, when during a lecture tour of the United States, he strongly criticized Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex and his emphasis on infantile sexuality.

Much of Jung’s analytical psychology postulates reflect the differences he had with Sigmund Freud.. For example, while Jung agreed with Freud that a person’s past and childhood experiences determined future behavior, he also believed that the future has the potential to shape and determine present actions.

Jung had a near-death experience that he defined as “the greatest and most fascinating thing he has ever experienced.”

Principles of analytical psychology

Analytical psychology is a psychotherapeutic current that gives a leading role to human life, adopting a prospective approach to the issues or problems that the patient brings to consultation. This means that, although past experiences are important for understanding current circumstances, the present is also relevant, as it contains the seeds for future growth and development.

Next, we will examine the fundamental principles of Carl Jung’s analytical psychology.

1. Self-regulation of the psyche

To understand the reality of the world, our mind understands the various forms of life that exist as a struggle between opposing forces that cause tensions. The relief of this internal tension allows us to develop as human beings.

Jung believed that the psyche was a system capable of self-regulation and that it strived to maintain balance between antagonistic tendencies. Instruments to maintain this balance would be dreams and fantasies..

2. The structure of the psyche

The Jungian model of the psyche can be represented as a circular structure composed of three basic parts: consciousness, the personal unconscious (made up of our complexes) and the collective unconscious (made up of archetypes).

In this model, the I It is located between consciousness and the personal unconscious. For Jung, complexes were always a personification of archetypes.

3. The personal unconscious

In analytical psychology, he I It is always the center of our consciousness and makes its appearance from the archetype of the itself, which is understood as the true and authentic foundation of our personality. In this way, the I It stops being a governing entity and becomes just another complex that, unlike others, has an identity.

The personal unconscious is the result of the interaction between society and the collective unconscious.. Unlike Freud’s unconscious, this is much broader, since it not only houses what is repressed, but also what is not thought about, what has been forgotten, the subliminal…

4. The complexes

Unlike Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jung’s analytical psychology does not understand complexes as pathological, but as fundamental parts of the mind. Thus, these are present in both healthy and sick people.

A key characteristic of complexes is that they appear to act independently of the I, that is, as if they had their own personality. Under normal conditions, this autonomy produces the lapses that we have in our daily lives, however, in pathological conditions, they generate auditory and visual hallucinations.

5. The collective unconscious

Jung delves into the concept of the collective unconscious thanks to the confusion generated by some phenomena that he identified in his patients and that could not be explained by the action of the personal unconscious. Many of the contents of these phenomena had similarities with mythological and religious themes from the past of the peoples.. This led Jung to believe that it was the echo of a collective component that manifested itself in a symbolic way.

6. The archetypes

Within Jung’s vision, we can think of archetypes as potential images, as thematic containers without content. They, in themselves, are nothing more than tendencies and potential entities. Jung (as cited in Sharp, 1994) defines them as “factors and motives that organize the psychic elements in certain images… but in such a way that they can only be recognized by the effects they produce».

Differences between Jung and Freud

Jung’s analytical psychology has many differences from Freud’s. Let’s look at some of them.

Libido as neutral energy

In his first formulations, Freud understood libido as a psychic energy of a sexual nature, while Jung understood it as a neutral vital force that could manifest itself in different ways depending on the contentment of each person.

The nature of the unconscious

For Jung, the unconscious stores the repressed memories of both the person and their ancestors. On the other hand, for Freud the unconscious is the warehouse of the repression of unacceptable desires that inhabit the individual.

Another difference is that For Jung, the unconscious was also a positive source that can generate benefits. While for Freud it had a negative connotation that represents the unacceptable, that which the person repudiated in his consciousness.

The transrational dimension

Jung, unlike Freud who stuck to the scientific method, was interested in that dimension of the human being that is beyond the rational. He always had his mind open to what science ignored, because he believed that leaving it aside was sacrificing an essential part of one’s personality.

The finalist principle

Another crucial difference between both thinkers is that for one (Jung) the activities of the mind would have an objective (finalist and teleological principle), while for the other (Freud) they would be highly conditioned by certain past experiences, with the of childhood.

For Jung, the past is important and determining, but he also accepts that human life is projected into the future. and that it is not governed solely by the past.

The break between Freud and Jung occurred in 1910.

Stages of treatment in analytical psychology

Jung differentiates four phases that a person goes through in analytic treatment: confession, explanation, education and transformation.

1. Confession

Seeks that the individual Become aware of the repressed things that cause you guilt and lead you to distance yourself from society. This stage involves the acceptance of the shadow, which is nothing more than that dark side of our personality.

2. Explanation

In this stage the therapist helps the patient become aware of the transference by reliving the repressed relationship he had with his parents. Unlike the previous phase, this one attempts to bring to consciousness fantasies that have never been there, using techniques such as dream interpretation.

3. Education

It consists of teaching the patient to continue with the therapeutic work independently. For Jung, this was of vital importance because it gives people the possibility of continuing in their daily lives with the process of continuous self-education that will lead them to transform into true social subjects.

4. Transformation

Jung did not recommend this phase for everyone; According to him, there would be people for whom the achievement of social adaptation is nothing more than an unsatisfactory collective neurosis.. So this stage would be aimed at very specific individuals, based on an ethical transformation in life that leads them to find their own goals on the moral level.

To conclude, Jung’s analytical psychology is an alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis that recognizes the existence of a collective unconscious in our psyche, so that our consciousness is not only faced with the tensions of the contents of our personal unconscious, but also the transpersonal and collective content that lies within us.

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