CH4: Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology

• Jung believed that each of us is motivated not only by repressed experiences but also by certain emotionally toned experiences inherited from our ancestors. These inherited images make up what Jung called the collective unconscious.
• The most inclusive archetype is the notion of self-realization, which can be achieved only by attaining a balance between various opposing forces of personality.
• People are both introverted and extraverted; rational and irrational; male and female; conscious and unconscious; and pushed by past events while being pulled by future expectations.
• Conscious images are those that are sensed by the ego, whereas unconscious elements have no relationship with the ego.
• ung saw the ego as the center of consciousness, but not as the core of personality. Ego is not the whole personality, but must be completed by the more comprehensive self, the center of personality that is largely unconscious.
• In a psychologically healthy person, the ego takes a secondary position to the unconscious self.
• Healthy individuals are in contact with their conscious world, but they also allow themselves to experience their unconscious self and thus to achieve individuation, a concept we discuss in the section titled Self-Realization.
• The personal unconscious embraces all repressed, forgotten, or subliminally perceived experiences of one particular individual.
• A complex is an emotionally toned conglomeration of associated ideas. For example, a person’s experiences with Mother may become grouped around an emotional core so that the person’s mother, or even the word “mother,” sparks an emotional response that blocks the smooth flow of thought
• Complexes are largely personal, but they may also be partly derived from humanity’s collective experience. In our example, the mother complex comes not only from one’s personal relationship with mother but also from the entire species’ experiences with mother.
• In contrast to the personal unconscious, which results from individual experiences, the collective unconscious has roots in the ancestral past of the entire species. It represents Jung’s most controversial, and perhaps his most distinctive, concept.