Jungian Psychology Essay
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and brief colleague of Sigmund Freud who parted ways over a personal dispute over the unconscious mind. Jung was a rarely understood independent thinker who rejected Freud’s deduction that the primary motivation behind behavior was sexual urges such as that all women have penis envy. Jung instead believed that people are motivated by a psychological energy that inspires people to achieve psychological growth, self-realization and harmony.
I honestly agree with Jung more than I do Freud. To me Freud was a megalomaniac who saw women as inferior beings. All I have to say to that, women are capable of having several orgasms for every one their male partner has, given that he’s considerate. Freud experimented in drugs and homosexuality and I assume that his obsession with behavior being driven with sexual energies was probably fueled by his erectile disfunction and/or him being trapped in that 4-5 boy mind set where, according to Freud, boys reject their father for their mother but for Frued it was most likely in a sexual manner.
The collective unconscious (universally innate knowledge) is a part of the psyche is inherited and not acquired through life experience. Jung presented this universal knowledge in the form of motifs, which he referred to as archetypes. We often encounter these archetypes in dreams i.e. the shadow is the natural self untarnished by society and anima and animus the male/female counterpart of ourselves which represent our ideal mate. I remember being 13 years old and waking from a dream where I found a person who was the perfect complement to myself and even…well cried a little after waking for fear of never finding that someone in reality. We encounter these archetypes in dreams hence the reason why many cultures that have had little contact with one another share certain similarities in their myths and legends. Examples of this are evident in many pagan religions such as the God of war, a symbol military dominance: the Vikings Thor, the Romans Mars, and the Greeks Aries. Some Native American tribes believe that dreams are the conscious mind trying to solve what the subconscious mind can’t, which I believe the answers come to you in the forms of Jung’s archetypes.
Imagine a yin yang, on one side you have your personal conscious which is knowledge acquired through ones life span which distinguishes you as an individual and on the other side you have collective nature identical to all individuals. The uniting or integration of the conscious (thinking) and Unconscious (instinctual) creates the bases for Jungian Psychology. These two forces are in constant conflict. The beliefs that every person starts out as a canvas ready to be molded and shaped by the world and that everything has an explanation has created this conflict. An example is the destruction of the pagan religions with the expansion of Christianity, which is symbolized in the story of David and Goliath and are apparent historically ages of enlightenment (science/mathematical) and renaissance’s (art/history).
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