Jung- The Key Ideas Read online

  Jung – The Key Ideas

  With thanks to Richard Chapman, the illustrator of this book.

  Teach®

  Yourself

  Jung – The Key Ideas

  Ruth Snowden

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  First published in UK 2006 by Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH.

  First published in US 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

  This edition published 2010.

  Previously published as Teach Yourself Jung

  The Teach Yourself name is a registered trade mark of Hodder Headline.

  Copyright © 2006, 2010 Ruth Snowden

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  Impression number

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Year

  2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

  Contents

  Meet the author

  Only got a minute?

  Only got five minutes?

  Only got ten minutes?

  Introduction

  1 Jung’s life and career

  Jung’s family background

  A brief outline of Jung’s career

  Jung’s private life and personality

  2 Jung’s early life

  Boyhood

  Education

  Scientific thinking at the turn of the last century

  Jung’s interest in spiritualism

  Burghölzli

  Jung and Freud

  3 Jung’s inner world

  Jung’s midlife crisis

  Creative play

  Dreams, visions and fantasies

  Discovering archetypes

  Mandalas

  The tower at Bollingen

  4 Exploring the psyche

  The structure of the psyche

  The personal unconscious

  The collective unconscious

  The ego and the Self

  The shadow and projection

  The persona

  Anima and animus

  5 The journey of the psyche

  The journey of the psyche

  Archetypal stages of development

  Individuation and the Self

  Sex and gender

  Rites of passage

  Midlife crisis

  Ageing

  6 Dreams and symbols

  The importance of dreams

  Symbols

  The origins of dreams

  Archetypes in dreams

  Analysing dreams

  Jung’s house dream

  7 The personality and relationships

  The psychology of consciousness

  Introversion and extroversion

  The four functions

  The eight psychological types

  What determines the psychological type

  Forming relationships

  8 The esoteric and the paranormal

  Gnosticism

  Alchemy

  The I-Ching

  Synchronicity

  Astrology

  As above so below

  9 Religion and spirituality

  Jung’s spiritual attitude

  The problem of evil

  The story of Job

  The journey towards the Self

  Hinduism

  Buddhism

  Changes in Christian thinking

  10 Jung the visionary

  Travels

  Jung and psychotherapy

  Key aspects of Jungian analysis

  Criticisms of Jung

  Into the future

  Glossary

  Taking it further

  Timeline of important events in Jung’s life

  Places to visit

  A list of Jung’s most important works

  Further reading

  Useful websites

  Index

  Meet the author

  Welcome to Jung – The Key Ideas!

  I first became interested in Jung while I was still at school and read his autobiography, ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’, which is an excellent introduction to his work. I was very interested in dreams and so I dipped into more of Jung’s work and also the writing of Sigmund Freud, who was Jung’s mentor early on in his career. Later on, as I studied for my BSc degree in Psychology at the University of Birmingham, I was disappointed to find that their work was only touched upon briefly in the curriculum, and so my reading was confined to obscure forgotten book stacks in the huge university library. After university, my career took me into teaching for the next few years, so I forgot all about Jung and Freud for a while. But meanwhile I gained plenty of experience in putting ideas into straightforward words that most people could understand – a very useful foundation for my later career as a writer.

  After having a career break while my children were small, I set up a complementary therapy practice offering personal development among other things. One approach that I used for this was dream-work and in 1998 my first book Working with Dreams was published by How to Books, under the name of Ruth Berry. My research for this project brought me back into the realms of Freud and Jung and, in 2000, I was commissioned by Hodder to write Freud, a Beginne
r’s Guide and Jung, a Beginner’s Guide. These were later followed by Teach Yourself Freud and Teach Yourself Jung.

  Since 2008 I have worked full time as a writer, focusing on spiritual and psychological matters, poetry and children’s fiction. I have a particular interest in the ancient links between the natural world, human culture and the psyche. Freud, and particularly Jung, both explored aspects of this area, with studies of ancient history, myth, dreams, synchronicities, the paranormal and world religions.

  Jung has been one of my greatest teachers, and while I was writing this book I often felt his wise presence, explaining obscure ideas and guiding my thinking. Even now, when I am mulling over a problem, I sometimes catch a whiff of his pipe-tobacco. I find that his extensive work is fascinating to read, particularly because he was not afraid to explore ideas that were not mainstream. Jung has gradually acquired a huge following and many therapists today are trained in the Jungian method. Far beyond the therapy field, his work also contains many important insights into the lives of humankind that are only just beginning to be more widely understood. He was one of the first great thinkers to try to bridge gaps between the thinking of East and West; Christian and pagan. He demonstrated ways in which Western culture, so bound up in science and logic, was often sadly deficient in the spiritual awareness and subjective insight shown in other cultures and at other times in history.

  Ruth Snowden, 2010

  1: Only got a minute?

  Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist. He is famous because he founded a system of psychology that he called analytical psychology.

  His work was influenced by his rural childhood in a religious family and later by his work with psychotic patients and his friendship with Sigmund Freud.

  Jung was especially interested in the unconscious mind, which he explored by studying dreams, myths and fantasies and through creative play.

  He emphasized the importance of balance and both the personal and the collective unconscious in the structure and dynamics of the psyche.

  Jung maintained that the psyche changes and develops throughout life, following archetypal patterns on its journey towards individuation.

  Dreams are of central importance in analytical psychology. They reflect many different aspects of life and can extend beyond the individual psyche.

  Jung identified two attitudes and four functions of the human psyche, combining to produce eight different psychological types.

  He studied many different cultures and philosophies, seeking universal truths to link up with his ideas about the collective unconscious.

  Jung saw spiritual experiences as being vital to the psyche’s health. He studied many different religions, searching for archetypal patterns.

  Jung has attracted plenty of critics, but his influence has extended far beyond his time, making him one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.

  5: Only got five minutes?

  1 Jung’s life and career

  Carl Jung (1875–1961) is famous because he founded a system of psychology called analytical psychology. He saw the spiritual aspects of his work as being vitally important, insisting that the world of the psyche was as real as the external world. In Jung’s view the integration of different facets of the personality is a vital life task, and the goal of analytical psychology.

  2 Jung’s early life

  Jung was bored by school, preferring to play solitary imaginative games. His parents were very different in outlook and this led to duality and conflict in his own psyche. He was drawn to study psychiatry and realised that a person’s symptoms often make sense in the light of their individual story. Early on in his career, Jung was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud.

  3 Jung’s inner world

  Jung worked extensively with dreams, visions and fantasies, realising that they often reflected ideas expressed in myths. This insight led him to develop theories about the collective unconscious (the deepest layer of the unconscious, extending beyond the individual psyche), and archetypes (recurring patterns of thinking which represent typical human experiences). He also used creative play as a way of unlocking the unconscious.

  4 Exploring the psyche

  Jung stressed that balance is of paramount importance in the psyche. For example the ego (who we think we are) and the shadow (aspects of ourselves that we deny) work together as a balancing pair. Jung did not find it helpful to identify separate driving instincts within the psyche as others had done. He preferred instead to use the term libido to describe a general psychic energy.

  5 The journey of the psyche

  Jung suggested that basic natural principles operated in the psyche:

  The principle of opposites – every aspect of the psyche naturally has its opposite.

  The principle of equivalence – equal amounts of energy are given to each of the opposites.

  The principle of entropy – all systems tend to ‘run down’ as energy is evenly distributed.

  The developing psyche follows archetypal patterns, reflected in rites of passage.

  6 Dreams and symbols

  Jung says that dreams are very important and may serve:

  to act as compensation for areas of consciousness which are deficient or distorted;

  to bring back archetypal memories from the collective unconscious;

  to draw attention to both inner and outer aspects of our lives.

  A dream can arise from many different sources but it always has a relevant meaning. Each dream is personal to the individual, but dream symbols may have relevance to society as well.

  7 The personality and relationships

  Jung identified two opposite and balanced attitudes in human personalities: introversion (where psychic energy is turned inwards) and extroversion (where it is turned towards the external world). He then established four different functions, called thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. He combined the two attitudes and the four functions to produce eight psychological types.

  8 The esoteric and the paranormal

  Jung studied the esoteric and the paranormal, searching for universal truths that linked up with his theories about the collective unconscious. In Gnosticism and alchemy, he discovered archetypal symbolism and mythology that supported his ideas. He was also fascinated by astrology and divination, and believed that events in the outer world are often reflected in the psyche and vice-versa.

  9 Religion and spirituality

  Jung saw the spiritual element as being vitally important to psychic health, emphasising the importance of individual experience. He grappled with the problem of evil, suggesting that the idea of a sinless God was unbalanced. He studied many religions, gaining insight into archetypal patterns in religious thinking. He believed that religions need to grow and evolve in order to answer the deep spiritual needs of ordinary people.

  10 Jung the visionary

  Jung used various therapeutic approaches:

  Exploring symbolism in dreams and fantasies.

  Amplification of symbols, by exploring connections with archetypes.

  Association – following trains of spontaneous connected thoughts.

  Active imagination using methods like drawing, painting, drama or writing.

  Balancing of opposites in order to achieve greater integration in the psyche.

  His influence has extended worldwide, making him one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.

  10: Only got ten minutes?

  1 Jung’s life and career

  Carl Jung (1875–1961), was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, famous for founding a system of psychology called analytical psychology. His early work was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

  Jung saw the spiritual aspects of his work as being vitally important and always maintained that the hidden world of the psyche was as real as the external world. He saw himself as having two personalities, one analytical and the other intuitive. From this he came to realise that integration of differ
ent facets of the personality is a very important life task, and the goal of analytical psychology. Like most pioneers, he was sometimes regarded as an eccentric by mainstream thinkers, but he was a powerfully charismatic person and gradually acquired world-wide acclaim.

  2 Jung’s early life

  Jung was a solitary, introspective child and school largely bored him. His father was a pastor but his mother’s thinking was rooted in ancient pagan beliefs. This led to duality and conflict in Jung’s own psyche. Throughout his life his deep interest in nature and spiritual matters was to have profound influences upon his work.

  Jung studied medicine at university and was soon drawn to psychiatry. His work with psychotic patients inspired an interest in human personality development. He realised that a person’s symptoms often make perfect sense in the light of their individual story. He was a friend of Sigmund Freud, who greatly influenced his thinking. Eventually differences of opinion, especially about the nature of the unconscious, led to a rift between them.

  3 Jung’s inner world

  After his rift with Freud, Jung went through a long period of depression and withdrew into his own inner world. He soon realised that his troubled dreams and visions were somehow connected to ideas expressed in myths. This insight led him to develop his theories about the collective unconscious (the deepest layer of the unconscious, which extends beyond the individual psyche), and archetypes (recurring images or patterns of thinking which represent typical human experiences).

  During his crisis Jung discovered creative play as a way of unlocking the unconscious. This was to become a very important aspect of Jungian analysis. He became fascinated by drawing mandalas (symbolic circular designs) to map his progress. He also worked with dreams, visions and fantasies, both his own and those of his patients, finding that these often gave insight into a person’s inner world.