Jung

A very long explanation of Jung! Hopefully there should be a more accessible one coming soon.

Jung agreed with Freud about the idea of the personal unconscious basically being lost or repressed memories. However he differed on the different parts of the psyche. He said it was made up of the ego, or conscious, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious are made up of primordial images, or inherited early ideas from when man was a relatively new species. For example, Jung would say that the main reason why so many people have phobias of spiders are because in prehistoric times, as cavemen and women we learnt that spiders were often poisonous so could make a person fatally ill or die. From the collective unconscious Jung said we have a tendency to act like our ancestors. The collective unconscious is passed down from the generations and is universal. Jung’s research on the collective unconscious is most notable is the Miss Miller case.

This has led to archetypes. The Archetypes are ‘manifestations of the deepest level of the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious’. Their archetypal form, though unknowable can be expressed through the archetypal content that are mythological motifs that can be found all over the world. Many characters in pop culture such as the hero or villain derives from this, showing how the archetypes impact us. Religious stories also feature and provide archetypes. Jung identified four key archetypes.

The persona firstly is often called the mask. It is the side of us that we show to the world and is the image that we want people to know as us. For example, we may want to be seen as hardworking. When we worry too much about our persona, or refusing to change our persona, it results in anxiety dreams such as being naked at a meeting.

The side that we don't show is called the shadow and is made up of the negative qualities of us, such as greed, spite or envy. Jung would say that our fascination with watching crime documentaries about murders satisfies our shadow because the shadow is as Palmer in Freud and Jung on Religion says ‘the human capacity for evil’.

Jung also believed that each person has certain qualities that referred to the opposite sex. For example, a woman might have certain qualities that might be considered more masculine. These are attitudes and behaviour that is part of the animus archetype. Similarly, a man might have a quality that is considered feminine that would be part of the Anima archetype. For a man, the first contact with the Anima is with the mother and for women, the Animus is experienced through the father. The Anima is most present in the character of the maiden or goddess in stories and myths, whereas the Animus is seen as the hero or wise man. They are also present in animals, such as the bull as a representation of the Animus and the cat as a representation of the Anima.

More importantly though was the self. For Jung, this was the midpoint of the personality that balanced the conscious and the unconscious as well as the different qualities that make up the psyche. For this reason, it is called the ‘organising principle’. Jung said that each person's goal in life was to achieve this 'self-hood'. If we are not able to balance the opposite and achieve equilibrium between the sides of the psyche, neurosis occurs. Often the Self might be represented in the form of something like a mandala. It is from this archetype that the idea of a deity/deities comes from . For example, the archetype of the Self is particularly present in Buddhism, because it teaches that Buddha was able to balance ignorance and enlightenment. Jesus also was an expression of the self because he was between God and humans.

The process of reaching the Self is called individuation and involves balancing out positive and negative traits of a person. For this reason, it can also be considered 'uniting good and evil'. It can also be called 'self development'. A good way of reflecting this is the symbol of the lotus. The lotus provides huge importance in Asian religions because it reflects the union of the opposite of good and evil through the placement of the roots in the dirty water, but also the flower in the clean air. Jung might have also likened the Self to alchemy due to his personal interest. The process of trying to change base materials into gold and the quest for ‘lapis philosophorum’ expresses the bringing together of the opposing qualities that the archetype of the Self stands for.

Jung said that the archetypal symbols are found in Christianity such as Christ, the Eucharist and The Trinity. For example, the Trinity is the belief that God is three people, but still one God. However, as the Trinity is seen as exclusively masculine, Jung said that the Virgin Mary could also be an addition in terms of balance needed for the process of individuation, and in turn the Self. As the Trinity is also forces of good, Jung said that the opposition needed for balance would be Satan.

Jung’s work has shown that from the collective unconscious, the archetypes emerge. Jung then said that God himself is an archetype. The reason for this is as follows; The archetypes are a produce of our mind, from our shared collective unconscious. Because archetypes are a product of the mind, it is logical that God must be too. God is a manifestation of the deepest level of the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious. God for Jung was a deep inner reality, or a psychic phenomenon, brought into existence by an individual’s response to the archetypes. When you experience God, you actually experience the depth of who you are. For Jung, this was ‘the God within’. Jung believed that God was real because he believed that reality in the mind was more powerful, resulting in the famous quote ‘I know. I don’t need to believe’ when he was interviewed in 1959. As Jung believed that every individual needed to achieve the state of ‘self -hood’ by balancing the unconscious and conscious, God was essential. Religion was also essential because it provided the archetypes that were needed for psychological well being.

I'm really proud of this essay because it got an A*. 29/30!