CARL JUNG
1875 - 1961
Dr. C. George Boeree
Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to
nothing
from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to
abandon
exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study,
and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the
horrors
of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in
brothels
and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges,
socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects,
through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form
in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than
text-books
a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick
with
a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung
Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious
conscious.
He certainly made that the goal of his work as a theorist. And yet he
makes
the unconscious sound very unpleasant, to say the least: It is a
cauldron
of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous
cravings,
a burial ground for frightening experiences which nevertheless come
back
to haunt us. Frankly, it doesn't sound like anything I'd like to make
conscious!
A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to make the exploration
of
this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background
in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible
knowledge
of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially
knowledgeable
in the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism,
Alchemy,
Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If anyone
could
make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in
symbolic form, it would be Carl Jung.
He had, in addition, a capacity for very lucid dreaming and
occasional
visions. In the fall of 1913, he had a vision of a "monstrous flood"
engulfing
most of Europe and lapping at the mountains of his native Switzerland.
He saw thousands of people drowning and civilization crumbling. Then,
the
waters turned into blood. This vision was followed, in the next few
weeks,
by dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood. He was afraid that he
was becoming psychotic.
But on August 1 of that year, World War I began. Jung felt that
there
had been a connection, somehow, between himself as an individual and
humanity
in general that could not be explained away. From then until 1928, he
was
to go through a rather painful process of self-exploration that formed
the basis of all of his later theorizing.
He carefully recorded his dreams, fantasies, and visions, and drew,
painted, and sculpted them as well. He found that his experiences
tended
to form themselves into persons, beginning with a wise old man and his
companion, a little girl. The wise old man evolved, over a number of
dreams,
into a sort of spiritual guru. The little girl became "anima," the
feminine
soul, who served as his main medium of communication with the deeper
aspects
of his unconscious.
A leathery brown dwarf would show up guarding the entrance to the
unconscious.
He was "the shadow," a primitive companion for Jung's ego. Jung dreamt
that he and the dwarf killed a beautiful blond youth, whom he called
Siegfried.
For Jung, this represented a warning about the dangers of the worship
of
glory and heroism which would soon cause so much sorrow all over Europe
-- and a warning about the dangers of some of his own tendencies
towards
hero-worship, of Sigmund Freud!
Jung dreamt a great deal about the dead, the land of the dead, and
the
rising of the dead. These represented the unconscious itself -- not the
"little" personal unconscious that Freud made such a big deal out of,
but
a new
collective unconscious of humanity itself, an unconscious
that could contain all the dead, not just our personal ghosts. Jung
began
to see the mentally ill as people who are haunted by these ghosts, in
an
age where no-one is supposed to even believe in them. If we could only
recapture our mythologies, we would understand these ghosts, become
comfortable
with the dead, and heal our mental illnesses.
Critics have suggested that Jung was, very simply, ill himself when
all this happened. But Jung felt that, if you want to understand the
jungle,
you can't be content just to sail back and forth near the shore. You've
got to get into it, no matter how strange and frightening it might
seem.
Biography
Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in the small Swiss village
of Kessewil. His father was Paul Jung, a country parson, and his mother
was Emilie Preiswerk Jung. He was surrounded by a fairly well educated
extended family, including quite a few clergymen and some eccentrics as
well.
The elder Jung started Carl on Latin when he was six years old,
beginning
a long interest in language and literature -- especially ancient
literature.
Besides most modern western European languages, Jung
could read several ancient ones, including Sanskrit, the language of
the
original Hindu holy books.
Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who didn't care much for
school,
and especially couldn't take competition. He went to boarding school in
Basel, Switzerland, where he found himself the object of a lot of
jealous
harassment. He began to use sickness as an excuse, developing an
embarrassing
tendency to faint under pressure.
Although his first career choice was archeology, he went on to study
medicine at the University of Basel. While working under the famous
neurologist
Krafft-Ebing, he settled on psychiatry as his career.
After graduating, he took a position at the Burghoeltzli Mental
Hospital
in Zurich under Eugene Bleuler, an expert on (and the namer of)
schizophrenia.
In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach. He also taught classes at the
University
of Zurich, had a private practice, and invented word association at
this
time!
Long an admirer of Freud, he met him in Vienna in 1907. The story
goes
that after they met, Freud canceled all his appointments for the day,
and
they talked for 13 hours straight, such was the impact of the meeting
of
these two great minds! Freud eventually came to see Jung as the crown
prince
of psychoanalysis and his heir apparent.
But Jung had never been entirely sold on Freud's theory. Their
relationship
began to cool in 1909, during a trip to America. They were entertaining
themselves by analyzing each others' dreams (more fun, apparently, than
shuffleboard), when Freud seemed to show an excess of resistance to
Jung's
efforts at analysis. Freud finally said that they'd have to stop
because
he was afraid he would lose his authority! Jung felt rather insulted.
World War I was a painful period of self-examination for Jung. It
was,
however, also the beginning of one of the most interesting theories of
personality the world has ever seen.
After the war, Jung traveled widely, visiting, for example, tribal
people
in Africa, America, and India. He retired in 1946, and began to retreat
from public attention after his wife died in 1955. He died on June 6,
1961,
in Zurich.
Theory
Jung's theory divides the psyche into three parts. The first is the
ego,which
Jung identifies with the conscious mind. Closely related is the
personal
unconscious, which includes anything which is not presently
conscious,
but can be. The personal unconscious is like most people's
understanding
of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily
brought
to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason. But it
does
not include the instincts that Freud would have it include.
But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that makes his theory
stand
out from all others: the
collective unconscious. You could call
it your "psychic inheritance." It is the reservoir of our experiences
as
a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can
never
be directly conscious of it. It influences all of our experiences and
behaviors,
most especially the emotional ones, but we only know about it
indirectly,
by looking at those influences.
There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective
unconscious
more clearly than others: The experiences of love at first sight, of
deja
vu (the feeling that you've been here before), and the immediate
recognition
of certain symbols and the meanings of certain myths, could all be
understood
as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of
the collective unconscious. Grander examples are the creative
experiences
shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, or
the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels
in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales, and literature.
A nice example that has been greatly discussed recently is the
near-death
experience. It seems that many people, of many different cultural
backgrounds,
find that they have very similar recollections when they are brought
back
from a close encounter with death. They speak of leaving their bodies,
seeing their bodies and the events surrounding them clearly, of being
pulled
through a long tunnel towards a bright light, of seeing deceased
relatives
or religious figures waiting for them, and of their disappointment at
having
to leave this happy scene to return to their bodies. Perhaps we are all
"built" to experience death in this fashion.
Archetypes
The contents of the collective unconscious are called
archetypes.
Jung also called them dominants, imagos, mythological or primordial
images,
and a few other names, but archetypes seems to have won out over these.
An archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain
way.
The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an "organizing
principle" on the things we see or do. It works the way that instincts
work in Freud's theory: At first, the baby just wants something to eat,
without knowing what it wants. It has a rather indefinite yearning
which,
nevertheless, can be satisfied by some things and not by others. Later,
with experience, the child begins to yearn for something more specific
when it is hungry -- a bottle, a cookie, a broiled lobster, a slice of
New York style pizza.
The archetype is like a black hole in space: You only know its there
by how it draws matter and light to itself.
The mother archetype
The
mother archetype is a particularly good example. All of
our
ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an environment that included
a mother or mother-substitute. We would never have survived without our
connection with a nurturing-one during our times as helpless infants.
It
stands to reason that we are "built" in a way that reflects that
evolutionary
environment: We come into this world ready to want mother, to seek her,
to recognize her, to deal with her.
So the mother archetype is our built-in ability to recognize a
certain
relationship, that of "mothering." Jung says that this is rather
abstract,
and we are likely to project the archetype out into the world and onto
a particular person, usually our own mothers. Even when an archetype
doesn't
have a particular real person available, we tend to personify the
archetype,
that is, turn it into a mythological "story-book" character. This
character
symbolizes the archetype.
The mother archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or
"earth
mother" of mythology, by Eve and Mary in western traditions, and by
less
personal symbols such as the church, the nation, a forest, or the
ocean.
According to Jung, someone whose own mother failed to satisfy the
demands
of the archetype may well be one that spends his or her life seeking
comfort
in the church, or in identification with "the motherland," or in
meditating
upon the figure of Mary, or in a life at sea.
Mana
You must understand that these archetypes are not really biological
things, like Freud's instincts. They are more spiritual demands. For
example,
if you dreamt about long things, Freud might suggest these things
represent
the phallus and ultimately sex. But Jung might have a very different
interpretation.
Even dreaming quite specifically about a penis might not have much to
do
with some unfulfilled need for sex.
It is curious that in primitive societies, phallic symbols do not
usually
refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize
mana, or spiritual
power.
These symbols would be displayed on occasions when the spirits are
being
called upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or to heal someone.
The connection between the penis and strength, between semen and seed,
between fertilization and fertility are understood by most cultures.
The shadow
Sex and the life instincts in general are, of course, represented
somewhere
in Jung's system. They are a part of an archetype called the
shadow.
It derives from our prehuman, animal past, when our concerns were
limited
to survival and reproduction, and when we weren't self-conscious.
It is the "dark side" of the ego, and the evil that we are capable
of
is often stored there. Actually, the shadow is amoral -- neither good
nor
bad, just like animals. An animal is capable of tender care for its
young
and vicious killing for food, but it doesn't choose to do either. It
just
does what it does. It is "innocent." But from our human perspective,
the
animal world looks rather brutal, inhuman, so the shadow becomes
something
of a garbage can for the parts of ourselves that we can't quite admit
to.
Symbols of the shadow include the snake (as in the garden of Eden),
the dragon, monsters, and demons. It often guards the entrance to a
cave
or a pool of water, which is the collective unconscious. Next time you
dream about wrestling with the devil, it may only be yourself you are
wrestling
with!
The persona
The
persona represents your public image. The word is,
obviously,
related to the word person and personality, and comes from a Latin word
for mask. So the persona is the mask you put on before you show
yourself
to the outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time
we
are finished realizing it, it is the part of us most distant from the
collective
unconscious.
At its best, it is just the "good impression" we all wish to present
as we fill the roles society requires of us. But, of course, it can
also
be the "false impression" we use to manipulate people's opinions and
behaviors.
And, at its worst, it can be mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true
nature: Sometimes we believe we really are what we pretend to be!
Anima and animus
A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play.
For
most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung,
like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual
in
nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated
sex
organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become
male
or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are
neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately -- as
soon
as those pink or blue booties go on -- we come under the influence of
society,
which gradually molds us into men and women.
In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ,
usually
based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many
details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still
have
many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still
expected
to be more nurturant and less aggressive; men are still expected to be
strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these
expectations
meant that we had developed only half of our potential.
The
anima is the female aspect present in the collective
unconscious
of men, and the
animus is the male aspect present in the
collective
unconscious of women. Together, they are refered to as
syzygy.
The
anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and
intuitive,
or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated
with
deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be
personified
as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to
be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative.
The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate
with
the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into
touch
with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our
love
life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our
other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the
opposite
sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone
that
"fills" our anima or animus archetype particularly well!
Other archetypes
Jung said that there is no fixed number of archetypes which we could
simply list and memorize. They overlap and easily melt into each other
as needed, and their logic is not the usual kind. But here are some he
mentions:
Besides mother, their are other family archetypes. Obviously, there
is
father, who is often symbolized by a guide or an authority
figure.
There is also the archetype
family, which represents the idea
of
blood relationship and ties that run deeper than those based on
conscious
reasons.
There is also the
child, represented in mythology and art by
children, infants most especially, as well as other small creatures.
The
Christ child celebrated at Christmas is a manifestation of the child
archetype,
and represents the future, becoming, rebirth, and salvation. Curiously,
Christmas falls during the winter solstice, which in northern primitive
cultures also represents the future and rebirth. People used to light
bonfires
and perform ceremonies to encourage the sun's return to them. The child
archetype often blends with other archetypes to form the child-god, or
the child-hero.
Many archetypes are story characters. The
hero is one of
the
main ones. He is the mana personality and the defeater of evil dragons.
Basically, he represents the ego -- we do tend to identify with the
hero
of the story -- and is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the
form
of dragons and other monsters. The hero is, however, often dumb as a
post.
He is, after all, ignorant of the ways of the collective unconscious.
Luke
Skywalker, in the
Star Wars films, is the perfect example of a
hero.
The hero is often out to rescue the
maiden. She represents
purity,
innocence, and, in all likelihood, naivete. In the beginning of the
Star
Wars story, Princess Leia is the maiden. But, as the story
progresses,
she becomes the anima, discovering the powers of the force -- the
collective
unconscious -- and becoming an equal partner with Luke, who turns out
to
be her brother.
The hero is guided by the
wise old man. He is a form of the
animus,
and reveals to the hero the nature of the collective unconscious. In
Star
Wars, he is played by Obi Wan Kenobi and, later, Yoda. Notice that
they teach Luke about the force and, as Luke matures, they die and
become
a part of him.
You might be curious as to the archetype represented by Darth Vader,
the "dark father." He is the shadow and the master of the dark side of
the force. He also turns out to be Luke and Leia's father. When he
dies,
he becomes one of the wise old men.
There is also an
animal archetype, representing humanity's
relationships
with the animal world. The hero's faithful horse would be an example.
Snakes
are often symbolic of the animal archetype, and are thought to be
particularly
wise. Animals, after all, are more in touch with their natures than we
are. Perhaps loyal little robots and reliable old spaceships -- the
Falcon--
are also symbols of animal.
And there is the
trickster, often represented by a clown or
a
magician. The trickster's role is to hamper the hero's progress and to
generally make trouble. In Norse mythology, many of the gods'
adventures
originate in some trick or another played on their majesties by the
half-god
Loki.
There are other archetypes that are a little more difficult to talk
about. One is the
original man, represented in western religion
by Adam. Another is the
God archetype, representing our need
to
comprehend the universe, to give a meaning to all that happens, to see
it all as having some purpose and direction.
The
hermaphrodite, both male and female, represents the
union
of opposites, an important idea in Jung's theory. In some religious
art,
Jesus is presented as a rather feminine man. Likewise, in China, the
character
Kuan Yin began as a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), but
was
portrayed in such a feminine manner that he is more often thought of as
the female goddess of compassion!
The most important archetype of all is the
self. The self is
the ultimate unity of the personality and issymbolized by the circle,
the cross, and the
mandala figures that Jung was fond of
painting.
A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to
draw
your focus back to the center, and it can be as simple as a geometric
figure
or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personifications that
best represent self are Christ and Buddha, two people who many believe
achieved perfection. But Jung felt that perfection of the personality
is
only truly achieved in death.
The dynamics of the psyche
So much for the content of the psyche. Now let's turn to the
principles
of its operation. Jung gives us three principles, beginning with the
principle of opposites. Every wish immediately suggests its
opposite.
If I have a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me
somewhere
the opposite bad thought. In fact, it is a very basic point: In order
to
have a concept of good, you must have a concept of bad, just like you
can't
have up without down or black without white.
This idea came home to me when I was about eleven. I occasionally
tried
to help poor innocent woodland creatures who had been hurt in some way
-- often, I'm afraid, killing them in the process. Once I tried to
nurse
a baby robin back to health. But when I picked it up, I was so struck
by
how light it was that the thought came to me that I could easily crush
it in my hand. Mind you, I didn't like the idea, but it was undeniably
there.
According to Jung, it is the opposition that creates the power (or
libido)
of the psyche. It is like the two poles of a battery, or the splitting
of an atom. It is the contrast that gives energy, so that a strong
contrast
gives strong energy, and a weak contrast gives weak energy.
The second principle is the
principle of equivalence. The
energy
created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally. So, when
I held that baby bird in my hand, there was energy to go ahead and try
to help it. But there is an equal amount of energy to go ahead and
crush
it. I tried to help the bird, so that energy went into the various
behaviors
involved in helping it. But what happens to the other energy?
Well, that depends on your attitude towards the wish that you didn't
fulfill. If you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the
conscious
mind, then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your
psyche.
You grow, in other words.
But if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny
and
suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a
complex.
A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster
-- constellate -- around a theme provided by some archetype. If you
deny
ever having thought about crushing the little bird, you might put that
idea into the form offered by the shadow (your "dark side"). Or if a
man
denies his emotional side, his emotionality might find its way into the
anima archetype. And so on.
Here's where the problem comes: If you pretend all your life that
you
are only good, that you don't even have the capacity to lie and cheat
and
steal and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other side of
you goes into a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to
develop
a life of its own, and it will haunt you. You might find yourself
having
nightmares in which you go around stomping on little baby birds!
If it goes on long enough, the complex may take over, may "possess"
you, and you might wind up with a multiple personality. In the movie
The
Three Faces of Eve, Joanne Woodward portrayed a meek, mild woman who
eventually
discovered that she went out and partied like crazy on Saturday nights.
She didn't smoke, but found cigarettes in her purse, didn't drink, but
woke up with hangovers, didn't fool around, but found herself in sexy
outfits.
Although multiple personality is rare, it does tend to involve these
kinds
of black-and-white extremes.
The final principle is the
principle of entropy. This is the
tendency for oppositions to come together, and so for energy to
decrease,
over a person's lifetime. Jung borrowed the idea from physics, where
entropy
refers to the tendency of all physical systems to "run down," that is,
for all energy to become evenly distributed. If you have, for example,
a heat source in one corner of the room, the whole room will eventually
be heated.
When we are young, the opposites will tend to be extreme, and so we
tend to have lots of energy. For example, adolescents tend to
exaggerate
male-female differences, with boys trying hard to be macho and girls
trying
equally hard to be feminine. And so their sexual activity is invested
with
great amounts of energy! Plus, adolescents often swing from one extreme
to another, being wild and crazy one minute and finding religion the
next.
As we get older, most of us come to be more comfortable with our
different
facets. We are a bit less naively idealistic and recognize that we are
all mixtures of good and bad. We are less threatened by the opposite
sex
within us and become more androgynous. Even physically, in old age, men
and women become more alike. This process of rising above our
opposites,
of seeing both sides of who we are, is called
transcendence.
The self
The goal of life is to realize the
self. The self is an
archetype
that represents the transcendence of all opposites, so that every
aspect
of your personality is expressed equally. You are then neither and both
male and female, neither and both ego and shadow, neither and both good
and bad, neither and both conscious and unconscious, neither and both
an
individual and the whole of creation. And yet, with no oppositions,
there
is no energy, and you cease to act. Of course, you no longer need to
act.
To keep it from getting too mystical, think of it as a new center, a
more balanced position, for your psyche. When you are young, you focus
on the ego and worry about the trivialities of the persona. When you
are
older (assuming you have been developing as you should), you focus a
little
deeper, on the self, and become closer to all people, all life, even
the
universe itself. The self-realized person is actually less selfish.
Synchronicity
Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether
psychological
processes function in terms of
mechanism or
teleology.
Mechanism
is the idea that things work in through cause and effect: One thing
leads
to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past
determines
the present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas
about
a future state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on.
Mechanism
is linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is
linked with free will and has become rather rare. It is still common
among
moral, legal, and religious philosophers, and, of course, among
personality
theorists.
Among the people discussed in this book, Freudians and behaviorists
tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and
existentialists
tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part. But he
adds
a third alternative called
synchronicity.
Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked
causally,
nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Once, a client
was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle when, at that very
instant,
a very similar beetle flew into the window. Often, people dream about
something,
like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their
loved
one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up he
phone
to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the
line.
Most psychologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show
how they are more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed the were
indications of how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with
nature
in general, through the collective unconscious.
Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this
unusual
idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality.
In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We
look
out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities.
What
we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the
ocean
floor beneath the waters.
The outer world is called
maya, meaning illusion, and is
thought
of as God's dream or God's dance. That is, God creates it, but it has
no
reality of its own. Our individual egos they call
jivatman,
which
means individual souls. But they, too, are something of an illusion. We
are all actually extensions of the one and only
Atman, or God,
who
allows bits of himself to forget his identity, to become apparently
separate
and independent, to become us. But we never truly are separate. When we
die, we wake up and realize who we were from the beginning: God.
When we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious,
coming
closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is
in states like this that we are especially open to "communications"
from
other egos. Synchronicity makes Jung's theory one of the rare ones that
is not only compatible with parapsychological phenomena, but actually
tries
to explain them!
Introversion and extroversion
Jung developed a personality typology that has become so popular
that
some people don't realize he did anything else! It begins with the
distinction
between
introversion and
extroversion. Introverts are
people
who prefer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies,
dreams,
and so on, while extroverts prefer the external world of things and
people
and activities.
The words have become confused with ideas like shyness and
sociability,
partially because introverts tend to be shy and extroverts tend to be
sociable.
But Jung intended for them to refer more to whether you ("ego") more
often
faced toward the persona and outer reality, or toward the collective
unconscious
and its archetypes. In that sense, the introvert is somewhat more
mature
than the extrovert. Our culture, of course, values the extrovert much
more.
And Jung warned that we all tend to value our own type most!
We now find the introvert-extravert dimension in several theories,
notably
Hans Eysenck's, although often hidden under alternative names such as
"sociability"
and "surgency."
The functions
Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we need to deal with the
world,
inner and outer. And each of us has our preferred ways of dealing with
it, ways we are comfortable with and good at. Jung suggests there are
four
basic ways, or
functions:
The first is
sensing. Sensing means what it says: getting
information
by means of the senses. A sensing person is good at looking and
listening
and generally getting to know the world. Jung called this one of the
irrational
functions,
meaning that it involved perception rather than judging of information.
The second is
thinking. Thinking means evaluating
information
or ideas rationally, logically. Jung called this a
rational function,
meaning that it involves decision making or judging, rather than simple
intake of information.
The third is
intuiting. Intuiting is a kind of perception
that
works outside of the usual conscious processes. It is irrational or
perceptual,
like sensing, but comes from the complex integration of large amounts
of
information, rather than simple seeing or hearing. Jung said it was
like
seeing around corners.
The fourth is
feeling. Feeling, like thinking, is a matter
of
evaluating information, this time by weighing one's overall, emotional
response. Jung calls it rational, obviously not in the usual sense of
the
word.
We all have these functions. We just have them in different
proportions,
you might say. Each of us has a
superior function, which we
prefer
and which is best developed in us, a
secondary function, which
we
are aware of and use in support of our superior function, a
tertiary
function,
which is only slightly less developed but not terribly conscious, and
an
inferior
function,
which is poorly developed and so unconscious that we might deny its
existence
in ourselves.
Most of us develop only one or two of the functions, but our goal
should
be to develop all four. Once again, Jung sees the transcendence of
opposites
as the ideal.
Assessment
Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers found Jung's
types
and functions so revealing of people's personalities that they decided
to develop a paper-and-pencil test. It came to be called the
Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator, and is one of the most popular, and most studied,
tests
around.
On the basis of your answers on about 125 questions, you are placed
in one of sixteen types, with the understanding that some people might
find themselves somewhere between two or three types. What type you are
says quite a bit about you -- your likes and dislikes, your likely
career
choices, your compatibility with others, and so on. People tend to like
it quite a bit. It has the unusual quality among personality tests of
not
being too judgmental: None of the types is terribly negative, nor are
any
overly positive. Rather than assessing how "crazy" you are, the
"Myers-Briggs"
simply opens up your personality for exploration.
The test has four scales.
Extroversion - Introversion (E-I)
is
the most important. Test researchers have found that about 75 % of the
population is extroverted.
The next one is
Sensing - Intuiting (S-N), with about 75 %
of
the population sensing.
The next is
Thinking - Feeling (T-F). Although these are
distributed
evenly through the population, researchers have found that two-thirds
of
men are thinkers, while two-thirds of women are feelers. This might
seem
like stereotyping, but keep in mind that feeling and thinking are both
valued equally by Jungians, and that one-third of men are feelers and
one-third
of women are thinkers. Note, though, that society does value thinking
and
feeling differently, and that feeling men and thinking women often have
difficulties dealing with people's stereotyped expectations.
The last is
Judging - Perceiving (J-P), not one of Jung's
original
dimensions. Myers and Briggs included this one in order to help
determine
which of a person's functions is superior. Generally, judging people
are
more careful, perhaps inhibited, in their lives. Perceiving people tend
to be more spontaneous, sometimes careless. If you are an extrovert and
a "J," you are a thinker or feeler, whichever is stronger. Extroverted
and "P" means you are a senser or intuiter. On the other hand, an
introvert
with a high "J" score will be a senser or intuiter, while an introvert
with a high "P" score will be a thinker or feeler. J and P are equally
distributed in the population.
Each type is identified by four letters, such as ENFJ. These have
proven
so popular, you can even find them on people's license plates!
ENFJ (Extroverted feeling with intuiting): These people are
easy
speakers. They tend to idealize their friends. They make good parents,
but have a tendency to allow themselves to be used. They make good
therapists,
teachers, executives, and salespeople.
ENFP (Extroverted intuiting with feeling): These people love
novelty and surprises. They are big on emotions and expression. They
are
susceptible to muscle tension and tend to be hyperalert. they tend to
feel
self-conscious. They are good at sales, advertising, politics, and
acting.
ENTJ (Extroverted thinking with intuiting): In charge at
home,
they expect a lot from spouses and kids. They like organization and
structure
and tend to make good executives and administrators.
ENTP (Extroverted intuiting with thinking): These are lively
people, not humdrum or orderly. As mates, they are a little dangerous,
especially economically. They are good at analysis and make good
entrepreneurs.
They do tend to play at oneupmanship.
ESFJ (Extroverted feeling with sensing): These people like
harmony.
They tend to have strong shoulds and should-nots. They may be
dependent,
first on parents and later on spouses. They wear their hearts on their
sleeves and excel in service occupations involving personal contact.
ESFP (Extroverted sensing with feeling): Very generous and
impulsive,
they have a low tolerance for anxiety. They make good performers, they
like public relations, and they love the phone. They should avoid
scholarly
pursuits, especially science.
ESTJ (Extroverted thinking with sensing): These are
responsible
mates and parents and are loyal to the workplace. They are realistic,
down-to-earth,
orderly, and love tradition. They often find themselves joining civic
clubs!
ESTP (Extroverted sensing with thinking): These are
action-oriented
people, often sophisticated, sometimes ruthless -- our "James Bonds."
As
mates, they are exciting and charming, but they have trouble with
commitment.
They make good promoters, entrepreneurs, and con artists.
INFJ (Introverted intuiting with feeling): These are serious
students and workers who really want to contribute. They are private
and
easily hurt. They make good spouses, but tend to be physically
reserved.
People often think they are psychic. They make good therapists, general
practitioners, ministers, and so on.
INFP (Introverted feeling with intuiting): These people are
idealistic,
self-sacrificing, and somewhat cool or reserved. They are very family
and
home oriented, but don't relax well. You find them in psychology,
architecture,
and religion, but never in business.
INTJ (Introverted intuiting with thinking): These are the
most
independent of all types. They love logic and ideas and are drawn to
scientific
research. They can be rather single-minded, though.
INTP (Introverted thinking with intuiting): Faithful,
preoccupied,
and forgetful, these are the bookworms. They tend to be very precise in
their use of language. They are good at logic and math and make good
philosophers
and theoretical scientists, but not writers or salespeople.
ISFJ (Introverted sensing with feeling): These people are
service
and work oriented. They may suffer from fatigue and tend to be
attracted
to troublemakers. They are good nurses, teachers, secretaries, general
practitioners, librarians, middle managers, and housekeepers.
ISFP (Introverted feeling with sensing): They are shy and
retiring,
are not talkative, but like sensuous action. They like painting,
drawing,
sculpting, composing, dancing -- the arts generally -- and they like
nature.
They are not big on commitment.
ISTJ (Introverted sensing with thinking): These are
dependable
pillars of strength. They often try to reform their mates and other
people.
They make good bank examiners, auditors, accountants, tax examiners,
supervisors
in libraries and hospitals, business, home ec., and phys. ed. teachers,
and boy or girl scouts!
ISTP (Introverted thinking with sensing): These people are
action-oriented
and fearless, and crave excitement. They are impulsive and dangerous to
stop. They often like tools, instruments, and weapons, and often become
technical experts. They are not interested in communications and are
often
incorrectly diagnosed as dyslexic or hyperactive. They tend to do badly
in school.
Even without taking the test, you may very well recognize yourself
in
one or two of these types. Or ask others -- they may be more
accurate!
But, if you like, you can take my Jungian personality test on the
internet:
Just click
here!
Discussion
Quite a few people find that Jung has a great deal to say to them.
They
include writers, artists, musicians, film makers, theologians, clergy
of
all denominations, students of mythology, and, of course, some
psychologists.
Examples that come to mind are the mythologist Joseph Campbell, the
film
maker George Lucas, and the science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin.
Anyone
interested in creativity, spirituality, psychic phenomena, the
universal,
and so on will find in Jung a kindred spirit.
But scientists, including most psychologists, have a lot of trouble
with Jung. Not only does he fully support the teleological view (as do
most personality theorists), but he goes a step further and talks about
the mystical interconnectedness of synchronicity. Not only does he
postulate
an unconscious, where things are not easily available to the empirical
eye, but he postulates a collective unconscious that never has been and
never will be conscious.
In fact, Jung takes an approach that is essentially the reverse of
the
mainstream's reductionism: Jung begins with the highest levels -- even
spiritualism -- and derives the lower levels of psychology and
physiology
from them.
Even psychologists who applaud his teleology and antireductionist
position
may not be comfortable with him. Like Freud, Jung tries to bring
everything
into his system. He has little room for chance, accident, or
circumstances.
Personality -- and life in general -- seems "over-explained" in Jung's
theory.
I have found that his theory sometimes attracts students who have
difficulty
dealing with reality. When the world, especially the social world,
becomes
too difficult, some people retreat into fantasy. Some, for example,
become
couch potatoes. But others turn to complex ideologies that pretend to
explain
everything. Some get involved in Gnostic or Tantric religions, the kind
that present intricate rosters of angels and demons and heavens and
hells,
and endlessly discuss symbols. Some go to Jung. There is nothing
intrinsically
wrong with this; but for someone who is out of touch with reality, this
is hardly going to help.
These criticisms do not cut the foundation out from under Jung's
theory.
But they do suggest that some careful consideration is in order.
The positive things
On the plus side, there is the Myers-Briggs and other tests based on
Jung's types and functions. Because they do not place people on
dimensions
that run from "good" to "bad," they are much less threatening. They
encourage
people to become more aware of themselves.
The archetypes, at first glance, might seem to be Jung's strangest
idea.
And yet they have proven to be very useful in the analysis of myths,
fairy
tales, literature in general, artistic symbolism, and religious
exposition.
They apparently capture some of the basic "units" of our
self-expression.
Many people have suggested that there are only so many stories and
characters
in the world, and we just keep on rearranging the details.
This suggests that the archetypes actually do refer to some deep
structures
of the human mind. After all, from the physiological perspective, we
come
into his world with a certain structure: We see in a certain way, hear
in a certain way, "process information" in a certain way, behave in a
certain
way, because our neurons and glands and muscles are structured in a
certain
way. At least one cognitive psychologist has suggested looking for the
structures that correspond to Jung's archetypes!
Finally, Jung has opened our eyes to the differences between child
development
and adult development. Children clearly emphasize differentiation --
separating
one thing from another -- in their learning. "What's this?" " Why is it
this way and not that?" "What kinds are there?" They actively seek
diversity.
And many people, psychologists included, have been so impressed by this
that they have assumed that all learning is a matter of
differentiation,
of learning more and more "things."
But Jung has pointed out that adults search more for integration,
for
the transcending of opposites. Adults search for the connections
between
things, how things fit together, how they interact, how they contribute
to the whole. We want to make sense of it, find the meaning of it, the
purpose of it all. Children unravel the world; adults try to knit it
back
together.
Connections
On the one hand, Jung is still attached to his Freudian roots. He
emphasizes
the unconscious even more than Freudians do. In fact, he might be seen
as the logical extension of Freud's tendency to put the causes of
things
into the past. Freud, too, talked about myths --Oedipus, for example --
and how they impact on the modern psyche.
On the other hand, Jung has a lot in common with the neo-Freudians,
humanists, and existentialists. He believes that we are meant to
progress,
to move in a positive direction, and not just to adapt, as the
Freudians
and behaviorists would have it. His idea of self-realization is clearly
similar to self-actualization.
The balancing or transcending of opposites also has counterparts in
other theories. Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Andreas Angyal, David Bakan,
Gardner
Murphy, and Rollo May all make reference to balancing two opposing
tendencies,
one towards individual development and the other towards the
development
of compassion or social interest. Rollo May talks about the psyche
being
composed of many "daimons" (little gods) such as the desire for sex, or
love, or power. All are positive in their place, but should any one
take
over the whole personality, we would have "daimonic possession," or
mental
illness!
Finally, we owe to Jung the broadening of interpretation, whether of
symptoms or dreams or free-associations. While Freud developed
more-or-less
rigid (specifically, sexual) interpretations, Jung allowed for a rather
free-wheeling "mythological" interpretation, wherein anything could
mean,
well, anything. Existential analysis, in particular, has benefited from
Jung's ideas.
Readings
Most of Jung's writings are contained in
The Collected Works of
Carl
G. Jung. I have to warn you that most of his works are not easy
going,
but they are full of interesting things that make them worth the
trouble.
If you are looking for something a little easier, you might try
Analytic
Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, which is a collection of
lectures
and is available in paperback. Or read
Man and His Symbols,
which
is available in several editions ranging from large ones with many
color
pictures to an inexpensive paperback. If you want a smattering of Jung,
try a collection of his writings, such as Modern Library's
The
Basic
Writings of C. C. Jung.
The best book I've ever read about Jung, however, is the
autobiographical
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, written with his student Aniela
Jaffé.
It makes a good introduction, assuming you've read something like the
preceding
chapter first.
Copyright 1997, 2006 C. George Boeree
