What is Jungian Therapy?

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Basel, Switzerland. Throughout his life, he was a great student of the human soul. Interested in a wide variety of books since his childhood, he graduated in psychiatric medicine in 1900. His career quickly evolved and he began his first research works, always having as a central interest to unravel what was going on in the mind of the mentally ill. Unlike other doctors of his time, he treated each patient with humanity, as an individual and not as a diagnosis to be discovered.

After a period of close coexistence with Freud, followed by an abrupt breakup, caused by basic differences in positions, Jung took a dive into his inner world, a dive that drove the realization of most of his work. For this reason, we can say that Jung’s work is practical, as it starts from his experiences with his patients and from the confrontation with his own unconscious.

A concept widely used in Jungian practice is that of the unconscious. The unconscious, according to Jung, is “the totality of all psychic phenomena lacking the quality of consciousness” (The archetypes and the collective unconscious, p.69). It contains everything that was once conscious and then repressed as too painful to remain in consciousness, as well as rudimentary memories that were lost because they were too primitive to become conscious. These contents, Jung called “personal unconscious”, and stated that it is constituted mostly by complexes.

However, and this is where the differential of analytical psychology is found, there are contents of the unconscious that never passed through consciousness. They are contents – instincts, functions and forms – that are present at all times and in all places. They form what Jung called the “collective unconscious”, because they are universal and uniform and do not participate in the individuality of the human being.

In the collective unconscious are all the archetypes. They represent all typified situations in our life and are activated depending on the situations we experience. For example: maternal and paternal archetype – when we experience the relationship with our parents or our children; archetype of marriage – when we unite lovingly with someone; archetype of the wise old man – when faced with a teaching/learning situation; archetype of the child – situations that awaken the ludic within us; and so on.
Every archetype has a positive side and a negative side and depending on our personal experiences, we value one or the other pole more. This imbalance is harmful to our mental health, in addition to disrupting our social and personal relationships. Consciousness, according to Jung, “provides a well-ordered work of adaptation, that is, it puts the brakes on the instincts and, therefore, is indispensable. Only when man has the capacity to be conscious does he truly become a man” (The archetypes and the collective unconscious, p.147).

To increase our awareness and promote healing, this Jungian model of the unconscious gives archetypes creative energy. In this way, by accessing archetypal contents, we begin a creative process of transformation. To access the archetypes, the psyche uses symbols. Symbols are manifested through significant experiences in our daily lives, through our dreams and drawings, when we read mythology or fairy tales. This is the language of the unconscious. Through the symbols, we activate creative ways of resolving conflicts, contained in the archetypes themselves.

The function of the symbol is to be an intermediary, a “mediator” between the conscious and the unconscious. Once the symbol arises from the creative side of the archetype, it is pregnant with meaning. The conscious part of the psyche captures this meaning to use it in conflict resolution, or in the individual’s own maturation process.

In addition, the symbol is also a psychic energy transformer. This means that it has a healing and restorative character. He is responsible for the movement of the psyche, since it relieves the tensions of a content of the collective unconscious that wants to manifest itself, giving meaning and reaching the conscious, thus avoiding the formation of new agglomerations of energy.

In certain moments of life, it becomes difficult to find this communication with the unconscious because we are very involved with daily and bureaucratic activities, or because we have experienced some deep suffering, or because this communication was never valued in our environment.

The Jungian therapist, through verbal and non-verbal expressive methods – dreams, drawings, sand play, mythology, fairy tales, among others – helps the patient to access his unconscious, finding the path to healing. These methods need to be used precisely because the language of the unconscious is symbolic and the two together – therapist and patient – ​​will decode it, approaching the unconscious and generating a process of true transformation.

Author: Luciana Ximenez

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