Carl Jung: main directions of work. C. Jung and analytical psychology

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Carl Gustav Jung was born in $1875$ on $26$ July in Switzerland in the village of Kessvile. Karl's father was a pastor, but he also had a philosophical background. Carl Jung spent his childhood almost alone, it was not easy enough. At the same time, he had a desire to know people. This applied, first of all, to his environment, and especially to his father. Carl tried to study his behavior and explain his unwavering faith in God. On the basis of this, the future classic of psychoanalysis began to oppose personal views and opinions about the higher mind to church judgments. Jung son and Jung father couldn't find mutual language between themselves. These contradictions led to the fact that, regardless of the wishes of the family, Karl decided to get a medical education and become a psychologist.

From $1895 to $1900 Jung studied at the University of Basel. And in $1902$ he continued his studies in Zurich. In Zurich, the group in which Carl Jung studied was led by chief physician psychiatric hospital. This allowed Jung to test the system of associative tests developed by him that explores the personality and reveals its pathologies. Through stimulus questions, he explored unusual and illogical responses. As a result of associative testing, Jung identified anomalous ways of thinking by associating such phenomena with sexual experiences or disturbances. When certain associations are suppressed in oneself, certain complexes begin to develop in a person.

These studies are known throughout the world. In $1911, Carl Jung became president of the International psychological society, but already in $ 1914 $ he left this position.

A lot was said at one time about the friendly relations of Jung and Sigmundt Freud, they were constantly compared. They had indeed known each other since $1907, but the two eminent psychologists had never been friends. Although in certain cases their judgments were the same. In $1912$, their paths finally parted, as Sigmund Freud devoted himself entirely to the study of neuroses.

The main ideas of Carl Jung

After three years of research, in $1906, Jung published The Psychology of Dementia praecox, which revolutionized psychiatry. Jung's position on dementia praecox was based on a synthesis of the ideas of many scientists. Jung not only integrated existing theories, but also became the pioneer of the psychosomatic experimental model of the early stages of dementia, in which the brain is the object of emotional influences. Jung's concept, set out in his writings, is as follows: the result of affect is the production of a toxin that affects the brain and paralyzes mental functions so that the complex, being released from the subconscious, causes symptoms characteristic of dementia praecox. It should be noted that Carl Jung later abandoned his toxin hypothesis and adopted the modern concept of chemical metabolism disorders.

Remark 1

Carl Gustav Jung first proposed the division of people into introverts and extroverts. Subsequently, he identified four main functions of the brain:

  1. thinking,
  2. perception,
  3. feeling
  4. intuition.

Depending on the predominance of any of these four functions, people can be classified into types. These studies are presented in his work "Psychological Types".

Throughout his life, Jung implemented his ideas quite successfully. He opened his own school of psychoanalysis.

One of the ideas developed by the psychologist was that Christianity is an integral part of the historical process. Heretical views he considered an unconscious manifestation of the Christian religion.

Carl Jung, engaged in historical research, began to study the elderly and help those who have lost the meaning of life. His research showed that most of these people are atheists. The psychologist believed that if they begin to express their fantasies, this will give them the opportunity to find their place in life. He called it the process of individualization.

Surprisingly, Carl Jung actively supported the idea of ​​fascism, believing that Germany occupies an exceptional place in world history. Such views originated in him in $1908, but in progressive circles his sympathy for fascism was not supported and criticized.

Carl Gustav Jung Born July 26, 1875 in Switzerland in the family of a Lutheran pastor. A passion for knowledge developed early in him, but he studied mediocre at school.

Entered the university at the Faculty of Medicine. Later, he became interested in psychiatry (parapsychological phenomena) and wrote a dissertation "On the psychology and pathology of the so-called occult phenomena." In 1900, Jung was accepted as an intern at the Bürkkeltsev hospital (Zurich) directed by E. Blekler, which in those years was one of the most progressive psychiatric centers in Europe. Undoubtedly, Jung as a scientist was influenced in these years by the famous French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, with whom he studied.

In 1904, Jung organized essentially the first psychological laboratory in the world) on the basis of a psychiatric clinic, where he developed and applied his associative test for diagnostic purposes. In 1905, at the age of thirty, he became a professor at the University of Zurich.

The works had an undeniable influence on Jung's scientific thinking - they helped Jung find his own approach to the analysis of dreams and symbolism, come to the idea of ​​"archetypes", "collective unconscious", "individuation". In 1911, Jung founded the International Psychoanalytic Society, of which Jung became the first chairman.

Significant differences in the views of these two eminent scientists soon emerged: Jung could not fully accept Freud's nansexualism, and Freud had a negative attitude towards Jung's understanding of mythology and occult phenomena. The final break came in 1912, after Jung published his Symbols of Transformation, in which his disagreement with Freud was more pronounced. Jung was very upset, but went his own way, because in everything related to scientific beliefs, he was as uncompromising as Freud.

The range of Jung's scientific interests was quite wide: he was fond of alchemy, parapsychology, mythology, oriental culture...

To this end, he made two trips to Africa, went to New Mexico to the Pueblo Indians, and was in India. He seriously studied Indian, Chinese and Tibetan philosophy.

In 1944, at the age of 69, Jung suffered a severe heart attack, but gradually recovered and lived a long and fruitful life thereafter.
It was this period (from 70 to 85 years) that was the most highly productive in his creative life. During this time he wrote the most interesting work, a number of which were published after his death: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961), Approach to the Unconscious (1964), Analytical Psychology (1968), etc.

The main provisions of Jung's teachings

The concept of introversion and extraversion. Each individual can be turned mainly to his inner self (introversion) or, conversely, to the outside world (extraversion). Usually a person is not a pure intro- or extrovert, although he is inclined to one or another orientation.

Mental functions. Jung identifies four main mental functions: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Jung regarded thinking and feeling as ways of making a decision, sensation and intuition as ways of obtaining information. Thinking type - the ability to generalize, abstract, logical constructions. Sensual type - preference for emotions. The feeling is based on concrete facts, on what you can see, smell, touch with your hands. Intuition is a way of processing information accumulated mainly in the unconscious. A harmonious assessment of the external and internal world, according to Jung, is possible with a harmonious combination of all four mental functions.

Collective unconscious. In addition to the personal unconscious, there is also a collective unconscious, which contains the experience of the development of all mankind and is transmitted from generation to generation. The psyche of a child at birth contains certain structures (archetypes) that further influence the development of the child, the formation of his Self and his interaction with the external environment.

Archetypes. Archetypes form the basis of the collective unconscious. An archetype is a form without its own content (imprint), which organizes and directs mental processes. Archetypes manifest themselves in the form of symbols: in the images of heroes, myths, folklore, rituals, traditions, etc. There are many archetypes, since this is a generalized experience of our ancestors. The main ones are: the archetype I, the archetype of the mother, the archetype of the father.

Personality structure: persona, ego, shadow, anima (in men), animus (in women) and self. A person is a character, a social role, the ability to express oneself in society. Ego - the center of consciousness, plays a major role in conscious life. The ego, being on the verge of the unconscious, is responsible for the connection (fusion) of the conscious and the unconscious. The shadow is the center of the personal unconscious (desires, tendencies, experiences that are denied by the individual as incompatible with existing social standards, concepts of ideals, etc.). Anima and Animus are ideas about oneself as a man or woman, repressed into the unconscious as undesirable for a given individual. Anima (for men) usually has a feminist content, and Animus (for women) has a masculine content. The self is the archetype of the integrity of the individual. The Self unites the conscious and the unconscious, it is the center of the integrity of the Self, as the Ego is the center of consciousness.

Individualization and analytical psychotherapy. Jung called the ability of a person to self-knowledge and self-development, the fusion of his conscious and unconscious, the process of individuation. Stage 1 of indie-vision is the analysis of the person. Stage 2 - awareness of the shadow. Stage 3 - meeting with Anima and Animus. Stage 4 - analysis of the self. In the process of individuation, consciousness expands and "complexes" from the unconscious are transferred to the conscious.

According to Jung, the conscious and the unconscious are in constant interaction, and the imbalance between them "is manifested by neurosis." Based on this, analytical psychotherapy is mainly aimed at balancing the conscious and the unconscious, optimizing their dynamic interaction.

Refers to "Mystical Worlds"

Carl Gustav Jung


Carl Gustav Jung wrote his works between 1930 and 1960. At that time, when scientific methodology was just emerging, there was still no generalizing book by Imre Lakatos, Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programs, and it was only still being understood how much the mystical had the right to exist, what gives knowledge: faith or reason.
Of course, as today, mysticism attracted with tempting ideas, and people plunged headlong into it, selflessly exploring what seemed to be the most important, the most important thing in life. Carl Jung was just such a researcher, pushing himself to the limits of psychosis and experiencing severe crises in connection with this. He sincerely and seriously tried to find all the interconnections between the real and the mystical in such a way as to be able to explain the observed phenomena of the psyche. Anyway, that's where he started. Leaving behind a huge mark, he influenced with his ideas, methods, classifications on the development of not so much psychology as philosophy and esotericism of all kinds, and also feeds the imagination of many near-scientific theorists (see for example). He considered the psyche and everything mystical that connected with it, including God, really knowable and therefore sought to know it, and was not limited to religious faith. In On the Nature of the Psyche, he writes:
"The psyche is not chaos, consisting of random whims and circumstances, but objective reality, which the researcher can access using the methods of natural science. There are indications and signs that put psychological processes in some kind of energetic relationship with the physiological substrate. Since they are objective events, they can hardly be explained by anything else than energy processes, or to put it another way: despite the immeasurability of mental processes, the perceptible changes that occur in the psyche can only be understood as phenomena of energy.
And, at the same time, practicing mysticism and actually replacing mysticism with psychological phenomena(he did not interpret or substantiate them in any other way, which will be extremely clear later) in principle could not contribute to genuine knowledge, but led deeper and deeper into unknowable religiosity, which completely determined his beliefs and activities in the later years of his life.
Initially, considering the psyche as a black box and trying to guess its fundamental principles and mechanisms from its external manifestations, K. Jung, like all other psychologists in such a situation, had the opportunity to compare only directly, empirically and observed, but in the case of the psyche this is the least productive way of its cognition, due to the main property and purpose of the psyche: the constant adaptation of behavior to new conditions, which means the fundamental inconsistency of its external manifestations in different conditions. Empirically found regularities and methods for the psyche are not justified because they depend on the specific conditions in which they were obtained, and as soon as these conditions are different in some way, generalizations cease to correspond to the real (see On the Science of Psychology). That is why they cannot be accepted as scientific basis(axioms) for further development. In practice, the use of his methods and what they were modified by followers gave controversial results, and if you do not consider only success (in his case, determined by his authority and charisma), and if you take into account failures, they could not claim sufficient reliability, although and are still widely used, while necessarily supported by loud authority and sonorous names.
Due to non-reproducibility, insufficient certainty, the "empirical patterns" found by K. Jung and his methods have always caused considerable criticism, and the more the more mystical was involved in their justification. K. Jung wrote:
"It is strange that my critics, with a few exceptions, hush up the fact that I, as a doctor, proceed from their empirical facts, which everyone can verify. Instead, they criticize me as if I were a philosopher or a Gnostic who claims that he possesses supernatural knowledge. As a philosopher and as an abstract heretic, of course, I am easily defeated. Perhaps for this reason, they prefer to hush up the facts that I have discovered."(German edition of the writings of C. G. Jung: Gesammelte Werke. Zurich, 1958. Bd. 11, S. 335)
However, if the methods were really effective enough, and the patterns found could claim the role of axioms, the fate of this heritage would be strikingly different, and all this would not only be applied with efficiency, but would also develop, bringing even greater results. . And these "regularities" were not correctly summarized and systematized from the standpoint of scientific methodology. Having chosen faith at the expense of reason, K. Jung received the corresponding, inadequate reality results.
On the whole, Jung's psychology found its followers more among philosophers, poets, religious figures than in the circles of medical psychiatrists. Training centers analytical psychology according to Jung, although the curriculum in them is not worse than that of Freud, they also accept non-medical students. Jung admitted that he "never systematized his research in psychology" because, in his opinion, the dogmatic system slipped too easily into a pompous and self-confident tone. Jung argued that the causal approach is finite and therefore fatalistic. His teleological approach expresses the hope that a person should not be absolutely slavishly enslaved by his own past.- from the book 100 great scientific discoveries.
The name of Carl Jung, having become extraordinarily popular for one reason or another, thereby, by its authority, gave special weight to the ideas associated with it and, as happens in all such cases, sometimes made them unquestioningly true in the opinion of many, so much so that it is regarded as sacrilege in general to expose doubt their greatest significance (see Richard Knoll's The Jungian Cult: The Origins of the Charismatic Movement). Of course, those who are engaged in research in related subject areas of science should be more sober in this regard and spend some time assessing the real practical value of Carl Jung's legacy and the possibility of using it.
The purpose of this article is to show how and where certain ideas of Carl Jung developed, where they prevail today, how legitimate they can be in describing real mental processes.
For this, an abstract review of books and articles about Jung was compiled, a comparison of the information received was made, and material was provided for considering individual ideas of Carl Jung from the standpoint of modern knowledge. As an illustration of how completely unnecessary (and erroneous) Carl Jung's ideas and ideas about the mechanisms of mental phenomena, let the review On Systemic Neurophysiology, which summarizes the extensive factual material accumulated to date, serve as an illustration.
My comments in the text of the authors are in blue.

First, I offer excerpts from three books by Carl Jung, the original text of which can be read at the links provided.
From the book of Carl Jung Memories, Dreams, Reflections I
Before I discovered alchemy, I had several dreams with the same plot.
...
In 1926, I had a startling dream that anticipated my studies in alchemy.
It is very characteristic of all the texts of K. Jung that he constantly refers to his subjective, listening to sensations, feelings, impressions from dreams and attaching such great importance to all this that this subjectivism becomes the basis of his "scientific" reasoning.
...
Wasting no time, I immediately rushed to leaf through the thick volumes on the history of religion and philosophy, although I did not hope to clarify anything. But after a while it turned out that this dream also points to alchemy, its heyday just fell on the 17th century. Surprisingly, I completely forgot everything that Herbert Silberer wrote about alchemy. When his book came out, I perceived alchemy as something alien and curious, although I highly valued the author himself, I considered his view of things quite constructive, about which I wrote to him. But, as the tragic death of Zilberer showed, constructiveness did not turn out to be prudence for him [He committed suicide. - ed.]. He mainly used late material, in which I was not well versed. The late alchemical texts are baroque and fantastical and had to be deciphered first before their true value could be determined.
Pretty soon I discovered a striking similarity between analytical psychology and alchemy. The experiences of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences, their world was my world. The discovery made me happy: at last I found a historical analogue of my psychology of the unconscious and found a firm footing. This parallel, as well as the restoration of an unbroken spiritual tradition from the Gnostics, gave me some support. When I read through the medieval texts, everything fell into place: the world of images and visions, the experimental data that I had collected in the past, and the conclusions I had come to. I began to understand them in historical connection. My typological studies, which began with my studies in mythology, received a new impetus. Archetypes and their nature have moved to the center of my work. Now I have gained confidence that without history there is no psychology - and this primarily applies to the psychology of the unconscious. When it comes to conscious processes, it is quite possible that individual experience will be enough to explain them, but already neuroses in their anamnesis require deeper knowledge; when a doctor is faced with the need to make a non-standard decision, his associations alone are clearly not enough.
...
In my book, I argued that every way of thinking is due to a certain psychological type and that every point of view is in some way relative. At the same time, the question arose about the unity necessary to compensate for this diversity. In other words, I came to Taoism.
This is the belief that the type determines the way of thinking for life, despite the fact that a person can change dramatically due to circumstances, becoming in fact a different person, that by recognizing the type you can say a lot about a person and predict his reactions, regardless of the circumstances - the basis typologies - tenacious to this day. This belief presupposes some kind of initial predisposition, a hereditary quality, which, in fact, has no serious justification, but is very attractive to those who would like to have a theory that allows them to approach knowledge of a person in such a simple way, to predict and modify his behavior (See Personality and society).
...
In physics we are talking about energy and which manifests itself in various ways, be it electricity, light, heat, etc. The same is true in psychology, where we first of all encounter energy (of greater or lesser intensity), and it can manifest itself in a variety of forms. Understanding libido as energy allows you to get a single and integral knowledge about it. In this case, all sorts of questions about the nature of libido - whether it is sexuality, the will to power, hunger, or anything else - fade into the background. My goal was to create in psychology a universal energy theory, such as exists in the natural sciences. This task was the main one in writing the book On Psychic Energy (1928). I have shown, for example, that human instincts are various forms energy processes, and, as forces, they are analogous to heat, light, etc.
it is worth remembering such an unambiguous explanation of the essence of psychic energy and - as a kind of analogue of physical energy and, only in its form specialized for the psyche, which completely echoes esoteric ideas about it. The strongest focus of K. Jung on mysticism is constantly and directly reflected in his reasoning and conclusions.
...
From the very beginning, an important place in my work was occupied by the problems of worldview and the relationship between psychology and religion. I dedicated the book "Psychology and Religion" (1940) to them, and later I presented my point of view in sufficient detail in "Paracelsica" (1942), in its second chapter "Paracelsus as a spiritual phenomenon." There are many original ideas in the writings of Paracelsus, the philosophical attitudes of the alchemists are clearly visible in them, but in a late, baroque expression. After meeting Paracelsus, it seemed to me that I finally understood the essence of alchemy in its connection with religion and psychology - in other words, I began to consider alchemy as a form of religious philosophy. My work "Psychology and Alchemy" (1944) is devoted to this problem, in which I was able to refer to my own experience of 1913-1917. The process that I experienced during those years corresponded to the process of alchemical transformation, which was discussed in this book.
Naturally, at that time, the question of the connection between the symbols of the unconscious with Christian symbols, as well as with symbols of other religions, was no less important for me.
...
All that I can tell about the other world, about life after death, all these are memories. These are the thoughts and images that I lived with that haunted me. In a certain sense, they are the basis of my work, because my work is nothing but a relentless attempt to answer the question: what is the relationship between what is "here" and what is "there"? However, I have never allowed myself to talk about life after death expressis verbis (quite clearly. - Lat.), otherwise I would have to somehow substantiate my considerations, which I am not able to do.
...
Parapsychology considers a certain manifestation of the dead to be quite satisfactory proof of the afterlife: they declare themselves as ghosts or through a medium, transmitting to the living what only they can know. But even when this is verifiable, questions remain whether this ghost or voice is identical to the deceased, or is it some kind of projection of the unconscious, were the things that the voice spoke about known to the dead, or again passed through the department of the unconscious?
Even if we put aside all the rational arguments that essentially forbid us to speak with confidence about such things, there are still people for whom the certainty that their life will continue beyond the present existence is very important. Thanks to her, they try to live more reasonably and calmly. If a person knows that he has an eternity before him, is this senseless haste necessary?
...
The unconscious gives us a chance by communicating something or hinting at something with its images. It can give us knowledge that is not subject to traditional logic. Try to remember the phenomena of synchronism, premonitions or dreams that came true!
... We receive warnings quite often, but we do not know how to recognize them.
The most characteristic statement for esotericists, completely unfounded by a serious study of the issue, is pure faith.
...
I dare say that, besides the proper mathematical expressions, there are others that are correlated with reality in the most incomprehensible way. Take, for example, the creations of our imagination; due to their high frequency, it is quite possible to consider them as consensus omnium (general opinion. - Lat.), Archetypal motifs. Just as there are mathematical equations about which it is impossible to say which physical realities they correspond to, so there is also a mythological reality about which we cannot say to which psychic reality it corresponds. For example, the equations that make it possible to calculate the turbulence of heated gases were known long before these processes were thoroughly studied. In a similar way, for a long time there have been mythologemes that determined the course of certain processes hidden from consciousness, the names of which we could only give today.
Not understanding the essence of human abstractions, but replacing everything with ideas about archetypes, K. Jung does not even make an attempt to understand that the same outwardly similar formulas, descriptions, formalizations can be suitable for a variety of real processes within a certain framework of their abstraction, and found by themselves do not at all signify their correlation with any reality until the person himself gives them such a correlation.
...
Although no one has yet presented satisfactory evidence of the immortality of the soul and the continuation of life after death, there are phenomena that make one think about it. I can accept them as possible references, but, of course, I do not dare to attribute them to the realm of absolute knowledge.
...
The unconscious, due to its spatio-temporal relativity, has much better sources of information than consciousness - the latter only directs our sense of new perception, while we are able to create our myths about life after death thanks to a few mean hints from our dreams and similar spontaneous manifestations of the unconscious. .
...
Assuming that "there" life continues, we cannot imagine any other form of existence than the psychic, since the soul does not need either space or time. And it is she who generated internal images then become material for mythological speculations about the other world, I see it exclusively as a world of images. The soul should be understood as something that belongs to the other world, or "the land of the dead." And the unconscious and land of the dead are synonyms.
Here is such a revelation - for those who seriously believe that the meaning that K. Jung actually puts (and not covering it with masks of decency, as discussed below) in the concepts of the unconscious, etc. - in fact - pure esotericism.
...
Since the Creator is one, then His creation and His Son must be one. The doctrine of Divine unity does not allow deviations. And yet the limits of light and darkness appeared without the knowledge of consciousness. This outcome was predicted long before the appearance of Christ - among other things, we can find this in the book of Job or in what has come down to us from pre-Christian times. famous book Enoch. In Christianity, this metaphysical split deepened: Satan, who in the Old Testament was with Yahweh, is now turning into a diametrical and eternal opposition to God's world. It is impossible to remove it. And it is not surprising that already at the beginning of the 11th century a heretical doctrine appeared that it was not God, but the devil who created this world. Such was the entry into the second half of the Christian eon, despite the fact that earlier the myth of the fallen angels had already arisen, from which man received a dangerous knowledge of science and art. What would these ancient authors say about Hiroshima?
...
Since the god-image from a psychological point of view is an obvious basis and a spiritual principle, the deep dichotomy that defines it is already recognized as a political reality: there is already a certain mental compensation. It manifests itself in the form of spontaneously arising rounded images, which are a synthesis of opposites inherent in the soul. Here I would include rumors about UFOs - unidentified flying objects that have been widely spread since 1945.
...
I prefer the term "unconscious" as you see, although I know I could just as well say "god" or "demon" if I want to express something mythological. Using a mythological mode of expression, I remember that "mana", "demon" and "god" are synonymous with "unconscious" and that we know as much as little about them. People believe they know much more; and in a certain sense, this belief is perhaps more useful and effective than scientific terminology.
...
I do not at all claim that my reflections on the essence of man and his myth are the last and final word, but, in my opinion, this is exactly what can be said at the end of our era - the era of Pisces, and possibly on the eve of the upcoming era of Aquarius, which has a human appearance. Aquarius, following two opposite Pisces, is a kind of coniunctio oppositorum and, perhaps, a person - a self.
...arguing about "god" as an "archetype", we do not say anything about his real nature, but we admit that "god" is something in our mental structure that was before consciousness, and therefore He is in no way cannot be regarded as generated by consciousness. Thus, we do not reduce the likelihood of His existence, but approach the possibility of knowing Him. The last circumstance is extremely important, since a thing, if it is not comprehended by experience, can easily be classified as non-existent.
...
If the energetic concept of the psyche is correct, then the assumptions that contradict it, such as, for example, idea of ​​some metaphysical reality must seem, to put it mildly, paradoxical. !!!
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Archetypal statements are based on instinctive premises that have nothing to do with reason - they can neither be proved nor refuted by common sense a. They have always represented a certain part of the world order - representations collectives (collective representations. - fr.), as defined by Levy-Bruhl. Of course, the ego and its will play a huge role, but what the ego wants, in an incomprehensible way, crosses out the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. The area of ​​their practical existence is the sphere of religion, and to the extent that religion, in principle, can be considered from the point of view of psychology.

Although this book is primarily about Jung's ideas, and not about Jung as a person, it is impossible, especially in the field of dynamic psychology, to separate ideas from the person with whom they are deeply connected, so the presentation of the foundations of analytical psychology is preceded by a short creative biography of Jung.

Carl Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Canton Thurgau, on the shores of the picturesque Lake Konstanz, in the family of a pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church; his paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were doctors.

From childhood, Jung was immersed in the study of religious and spiritual matters. The boy was introduced to the Bible, in addition, his father taught him Latin, and his mother taught him prayers and read him a book about "exotic" religions with fascinating drawings of the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Jung, 19946, p. 22). In his autobiography, Jung describes two strong childhood experiences that later influenced his attitude towards religion. One was connected with a dream he had at the age of three or four.

I was in a large meadow [near the priest's house] and suddenly noticed a dark rectangular pit lined with stones from the inside. Never before had I seen anything like it. I ran up to her and looked down curiously. Seeing the stone steps, I descended them in fear and uncertainty. At the very bottom, behind a green curtain, was an entrance with a round arch. The curtain was big and heavy self made, it looked like brocade and looked very luxurious. Curiosity pushed me to find out what was behind it, I parted the curtain and saw in front of me in the dim light a rectangular chamber, ten meters long, with a stone vaulted ceiling. The floor was also paved with stone slabs, and in the center lay a large red carpet. There, on a dais, stood a golden throne, surprisingly ornate. I'm not sure, but there may have been a red cushion on the seat. It was a majestic throne - indeed, a fabulous royal throne. Something stood on it, and at first I thought it was a tree trunk (about four or five meters high and half a meter thick). It was a huge mass, reaching almost to the ceiling, and it was made of a strange alloy - skin and naked meat, on top there was something resembling a head without a face and hair. At the very top of the head was one eye, directed motionlessly upwards. The room, despite the absence of windows or other visible source of light, was quite light. From the "head", however, a bright glow emanated in a semicircle. What stood on the throne did not move, and yet I had the feeling that it could slide off the throne at any moment and, like a worm, move towards me. I was paralyzed with terror. At that moment I heard from outside, from above, the voice of my mother. She exclaimed, “Just look at him. It's a cannibal!" This only added to my horror, and I woke up sweating, scared to death. Many nights after that I was afraid to fall asleep because I was afraid of having another dream like this (Jung, 19946, p. 24).

He left the Basel gymnasium, where he was then studying, in the afternoon, and drew attention to the sun, the rays of which sparkled on the roof of the neighboring cathedral. The boy thought about the beauty of the world, the greatness of the church and God, sitting high in heaven on a golden throne. Suddenly he was terrified, and his thoughts took him where he did not dare to go, because he felt something sacrilegious in them. For several days he struggled desperately, suppressing forbidden thoughts. But finally he decided to “look through” his own image: the beautiful Basel Cathedral and God again appeared before him, sitting on a magnificent throne high in the sky, and suddenly he saw a huge piece of feces falling from under God’s throne right onto the roof of the cathedral, breaking it and crushing the walls of the cathedral. One can only imagine the frightening power of this vision for a boy from a godly pastoral family.

But one way or another, as a result of such visualization, Jung felt a great relief and instead of the expected curse, he experienced a feeling of grace.

I cried with happiness and gratitude. The wisdom and goodness of God has been revealed to me now that I have submitted to His inexorable will. It seemed that I experienced enlightenment. I understood a lot that I did not understand before, I understood what my father did not understand - the will of God. He resisted her out of the best of intentions and out of the deepest faith. Therefore, he never experienced the miracle of grace, the miracle that heals everyone and makes everything understandable. He accepted the biblical commandments as a guide, he believed in God, as the Bible prescribed and as his father taught him. But he did not know the living God who stands, free and omnipotent, above the Bible and the Church and who calls people to become just as free (Jung, 19946, p. 50).

Partly as a result of these inner experiences, Jung felt isolated from other people, sometimes unbearably alone. The gymnasium bored him, but developed a passion for reading; He also had favorite subjects: zoology, biology, archeology and history.

In April 1895, Jung entered the University of Basel, where he studied medicine, but then decided to specialize in psychiatry and psychology. In addition to these disciplines, he was deeply interested in philosophy, theology, the occult.

After graduating from medical school, Jung wrote a dissertation, "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena," which turned out to be a prelude to his creative period that lasted almost 60 years. Based on carefully prepared séances with an extraordinarily gifted mediumistic cousin, Helen Preiswerk, Jung's work presented a description of her communications in a state of mediumistic trance. It is important to note that from the very beginning professional activity Jung was interested in the unconscious products of the psyche and their meaning for where he gave a course of lectures on the method of word associations. Clark University in Massachusetts, inviting European psychoanalysts and celebrating its twentieth anniversary, awarded Jung and his colleagues an honorary doctorate.

International fame, and with it a private practice that brought a good income, gradually grew, so that in 1910 Jung left his post at the Burgholzli clinic (by that time he had become the head physician) and completely focused on private practice, taking more and more patients. in Kusnacht, on the shores of Lake Zurich. At this time, Jung becomes the first president of the International Association for Psychoanalysis and plunges into his deep research into myths, legends, fairy tales in the context of their interaction with the world of psychopathology.

Publications appear that quite clearly outline the area of ​​Jung's subsequent life and academic interests. By this time, the boundaries of his ideological independence from Freud in his views on the nature of the unconscious psyche were more clearly defined.

The ensuing "apostasy" of Jung led eventually to the break in 1913 of personal relations with Freud, and then each went his own way, following his own creative genius.

Jung was very sensitive to his break with Freud. In fact, it was a personal drama, a spiritual crisis, a state of internal discord on the verge of a deep nervous breakdown. “He not only heard unknown voices, played like a child, or wandered around the garden in endless conversations with an imaginary interlocutor,” notes one of the biographers in his book on Jung, “but he seriously believed that his house was haunted” (Stevens, 1990, p. 172).

At the time of his break with Freud, Jung was 38 years old. Life noon - pritin (or akme) - turned out to be at the same time a turning point in mental development. The drama of parting turned into an opportunity for greater freedom to develop one's own theory of the contents of the unconscious psyche. In his writings, Jung is increasingly interested in archetypal symbolism. In personal life, this meant a voluntary descent into the "abyss" of the unconscious. Over the next six years (1913–1918), Jung went through a phase that he himself described as a time of "internal uncertainty" or "creative sickness" (Ellenberger, 2001). Jung spent much of his time trying to understand the meaning and meaning of his dreams and fantasies and to describe it as best he could in terms of Everyday life(see Jung, 19946, ch. 6). The result was a voluminous manuscript of 600 pages, containing many drawings (images of dreams) and called the "Red Book". (For personal reasons, it was never published.) After passing through personal experience confrontation with the unconscious, Jung enriched his analytical experience, described a new structure of the mental and created a new system of analytical psychotherapy.

In the creative destiny of Jung, a certain role was played by his "Russian meetings" - communication in different time and on various issues with people from Russia: students, patients, doctors, philosophers, publishers*. The beginning of the “Russian theme” can be attributed to the end of the first decade of the 20th century, when medical students from Russia began to appear among the participants in the psychoanalytic circle in Zurich. We know the names of some of them: Faina Shalevskaya from Rostov-on-Don (1907), Esther Aptekman (1911), Tatyana Rosenthal from Petersburg (1901–1905, 1906–1911), Sabina Spielrein from Rostov-on-Don (1905–1911) and Max Eitinggon. All of them later became specialists in the field of psychoanalysis. Tatyana Rozental returned to St. Petersburg and later worked at Bekhterev's Brain Institute as a psychoanalyst, and was the author of a little-known

Here we do not touch upon the important for us topic of the emergence, prohibition and the current revival of depth psychology in Russia. We only note that now it is becoming even more obvious: along with Freud, Jung was and remains one of the most striking and influential figures, the interest of Russian readers in his works and the ideas expressed in them is constantly growing. In 1921, at the age of 36, she committed suicide. A native of Mogilev, Max Eitingon, at the age of 12, moved with his parents to Leipzig, where he later studied philosophy before embarking on a medical path. He worked as Jung's assistant at the Burgholzli clinic and, under his direction, received his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1909. Another "Russian girl" Sabina Spiel-rein was a patient of the beginning doctor Jung (1904), and later became his student. After completing her education in Zurich and receiving her medical degree, Spielrein survived a painful break with Jung, moved to Vienna, and joined Freud's psychoanalytic circle. For some time she worked in clinics in Berlin and Geneva, where the famous psychologist Jean Piaget began his psychoanalysis course. In 1923 Spielrein returned to Russia. She became a member of the leading psychoanalysts of the State Psychoanalytic Institute formed in those years in Moscow. Her further fate was very tragic. After the closure of the Psychoanalytic Institute, Sabina Nikolaevna moved to Rostov-on-Don to her parents. Further - a ban on psychoanalytic activity, the arrest and death of three brothers in the dungeons of the NKVD, and, finally, her own death in Rostov, when she, along with her two daughters, shared the fate of hundreds of Jews who were shot in the local synagogue by the Germans in December 1941*.

Vienna and Zurich have long been considered centers of advanced psychiatric thought. The beginning of the century brought them fame in connection with the clinical practice of Freud and Jung, so there was nothing surprising in the fact that there

See: Issues of studying and educating personality: Sat. Art. - Petrograd, 1920. No. 1. S. 88–107.

For more on S. Spielrein and others, see: Etkind A. Eros of the impossible. History of psychoanalysis in Russia. - St. Petersburg, 1993; LeybinV. M. Psychoanalysis, Jung, Russia // Russian Psychoanalytic Bulletin. 1992. No. 2; Ovcharenko V.I. The fate of Sabina Spielrein // There.

the attention of those Russian clinicians and researchers who were looking for new means of treating various mental disorders and striving for a deeper penetration into the human psyche rushed. And some of them specially came to well-known psychoanalysts for an internship or for a brief acquaintance with psychoanalytic ideas.

In 1907-1910, Jung was visited at various times by Moscow psychiatrists Mikhail Asatiani, Nikolai Osipov and Alexei Pevnitsky*.

Of later acquaintances, Jung's meeting with the publisher Emil Medtner and the philosopher Boris Vysheslavtsev should be especially noted. During the period of Jung's "direct meeting" with the unconscious (see Jung, 19946, p. 7) and work on "Psychological Types", Emilius Karlovich Medtner, who fled to Zurich from warring Germany, turned out to be almost the only interlocutor capable of perceiving Jung's ideas . (Jung left the post of president of the Psychoanalytic Association, and with it he lost many personal ties with his colleagues.) While still living in Russia, Medtner founded the Musa-get publishing house and published the philosophical and literary journal Logos. According to Jung's son, Medtner's psychological support had great importance for the father. Abroad, Medtner suffered from frequent sharp noises in the ears, in connection with which he first turned to the Viennese Freudians. They could not help in any way, except for the urgent advice to marry. It was then that the meeting with Jung took place. Medtner was preparing for a long-term treatment, but the painful symptom disappeared after a few sessions. The patient-analyst relationship developed into a friendly and at first almost daily relationship. Then, for a number of years, Jung and Medtner met once a week, in the evening, and discussed certain philosophical and psychological issues.

For material about their stay, see the journals: Psychotherapy. 1QOR v 3 "Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry S. S. Korsakov. 190". Book 6; Review of Psychiatry, Neurology and Experimental Psychology. 1911. No. 2.

Jung's son remembered that his father called Medtner "the Russian philosopher."

Years later, Medtner publishes the first review of the published book Psychological Types, and later becomes the publisher of Jung's works in Russian, writes prefaces to them. Medtner's death prevented him from completing the publication of Jung's four-volume collection of works. This work was completed by another "Russian" - the philosopher Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev (1877-1954). Exiled by the Bolsheviks from Russia in 1922, Vysheslavtsev initially worked at the Religious and Philosophical Academy founded by N. A. Berdyaev; later lectured at the Paris Theological Institute. In 1931, he published the book The Ethics of Transformed Eros, in which, influenced, in particular, by Jung's ideas, he put forward the theory of the ethics of the sublimation of Eros. In those years, a correspondence began between him and Jung, in which Vysheslavtsev declared himself a student of Jung. In the late 1930s, through the efforts of Vysheslavtsev, the four-volume collection of Jung's works was completed. On the eve of the end of the war, in April 1945, Jung helped Vysheslavtsev and his wife move from Prague to neutral Switzerland.

After the publication of "Psychological Types"**, the 45-year-old master of psychology entered a difficult stage of strengthening the positions he had won in the scientific world.

Gradually, Jung is gaining more and more international fame not only among colleagues - psychologists and psychiatrists, his name begins to cause serious interest.

Oral communication by A. Rutkevich.

The 1920s are generally rich in the appearance of works devoted to the typology of people. In the same year as Jung’s “Psychological Types”, Ernest Kretschmer’s “Body Structure and Character” and Hermann Rorschach’s Physique and Character were published, and in 1929 (the time the Russian edition of “Psychological Types” appeared in Zurich) a book by Vladimir Wagner appeared in Leningrad "Psychological types and collective psychology", which already in the 30s was hidden in a special depository and was even forbidden to be mentioned.

more among representatives of other areas of humanitarian knowledge: philosophers, cultural historians, sociologists, etc.

In the 1920s, he made a series of exciting long journeys to various parts of Africa and to the Pueblo Indians in North America. “Here, for the first time, an immense world opened up to him, where people live, not knowing the inexorable regularity of hours, minutes, seconds. Deeply shocked, he came to a new understanding of the soul of the modern European” (Campbell, 1973, p. xxix). An account of these exploratory trips (including a later trip to India, in 1938) - a kind of cultural and psychological essay - was later included in the chapter "Journeys" of his autobiographical book *.

Unlike carefree tourists, Jung was able to look at another culture from the point of view of revealing the meaning contained in it. There are two main themes of Jung here: as a psychologist and psychotherapist and as a culturologist. This is the theme of personal development - individuation and the theme of the collective unconscious. Jung considered individuation as a being directed towards the achievement of mental integrity, and used numerous examples from alchemy, mythology, literature, Western and Eastern religions, as well as his own clinical observations to characterize it.

As for the collective unconscious, this concept is also the key to all analytical psychology and, according to many reputable scientists and thinkers, is the most revolutionary idea of ​​the 20th century, an idea from which no serious conclusions have been drawn until now.

Jung objected to the fact that a person is completely determined by his experience, training and environmental influences.

He argued that each individual is born with a "holistic personality blueprint...presented in potency from birth" and that "environment

Rus per. see also: Asia and Africa today. 1989. No. 11 12: 1990. No. 1.

does not at all give the individual the opportunity to become one, but only reveals what was already in it [the individual]”. According to Jung, there is a certain inherited structure of the psyche, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, that makes us experience and realize our life experience in a very specific way. And this certainty is expressed in what Jung called archetypes influencing our thoughts, feelings and actions.

... The unconscious, as a collection of archetypes, is the sediment of everything that has been experienced by mankind, up to its darkest beginnings. But not a dead sediment, not an abandoned field of ruins, but a living system of reactions and dispositions, which determines individual life in an invisible, and therefore more effective way. However, this is not just some kind of giant historical prejudice, but the source of instincts, since archetypes are nothing but forms of manifestation of instincts (Jung, 1994, p. 131).

In the early 1920s, Jung met the famous sinologist Richard Wilhelm, the translator of the Chinese treatise The Book of Changes, and soon invited him to give a lecture at the Psychological Club in Zurich. Jung had a keen interest in Eastern divinatory methods and experimented with them himself with some success. He also participated in those years in a number of mediumistic experiments in Zurich, together with Bleuler. The sessions were led by Rudi Schneider, a well-known Austrian medium in those years. However, Jung for a long time refused to draw any conclusions about these experiments and even avoided any mention of them, although he subsequently openly admitted the reality of these phenomena. He also showed a deep interest in the works of the medieval alchemists, whom he perceived as heralds of the psychology of the unconscious. Later, thanks to an extensive circle of friends, he had in his hands a completely new and completely modern model of an alchemical retort - an open-air lecture hall, among the blue

water surface and majestic peaks near Lago Maggiore. Every year since 1933, entire constellations of scientists have come here from all over the world to make presentations and take part in discussions on the most diverse issues, consonant with Jung's thought. We are talking about the annual meetings of the Eranos Society, held in Switzerland on the estate of its founder, Frau Olga Freubs-Kaptein, in Ascona.

In 1923, Jung purchased a small plot of land on the shores of Lake Zurich in the town of Bollingen, where he built a tower-type building that changed its shape over the years, and where he spent Sundays and holidays in silence and solitude. There was no electricity, no telephone, no heating. Food was cooked on the stove, water was taken from the well. As Ellenberger aptly noted, the transition from Küsnacht to Bollingen symbolized for Jung the path from the ego to the self, or, in other words, the path of individuation (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 682).

In the 1930s, Jung became famous international character. He was awarded the title of Honorary President of the Psychotherapeutic Society of Germany. In November 1932, the Zurich City Council awarded him the Literature Prize with a check for eight thousand francs.

In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. The Psychotherapeutic Society was immediately reorganized in accordance with National Socialist principles, and its president, E. Kretschmer, resigned. Jung became the president of the International Society, but it itself began to act on the principle of an organization that gathered under its wing national societies(among which there was a German one) and individual psychotherapists. As Jung himself later explained, this was a kind of subterfuge that allowed Jewish psychotherapists, excluded from German society, to remain within the organization itself. In this regard, Jung rejected all accusations regarding his sympathies for Nazism and indirect manifestations of anti-Semitism.

In 1935, Jung was appointed professor of psychology at the Swiss Polytechnic School in Zurich; in the same year he founded the Swiss Society for Practical Psychology. As the international situation grew worse, Jung, who had never before shown any obvious interest in world politics, became increasingly interested in it. From the interviews that he gave in those years to various magazines, one can understand that Jung tried to analyze the psychology of state leaders, especially dictators. On September 28, 1937, during a historic visit to Berlin by Mussolini, Jung happened to be there and had the opportunity to closely observe the behavior of the Italian dictator and Hitler during a mass parade. Since that time, the problems of mass psychoses also began to attract Jung's attention.

Another turning point in Jung's life must be attributed to the end of World War II. He himself notes this moment in his autobiographical book (see the chapter "Visions"). In early 1944, Jung broke his leg and suffered a heart attack during which he lost consciousness and felt he was dying. He had a cosmic vision in which he viewed our planet from the side, and imagined himself only as the sum of what he said and did during his life. The next moment, when he was about to cross the threshold of a certain temple, he saw his doctor coming towards him. Suddenly, the doctor assumed the traits of the king of the island of Kos (the birthplace of Hippocrates) in order to bring him back to earth, and Jung had the feeling that something threatened the doctor's life, while his, Jung's, own life was saved (and indeed, a few weeks later, his doctor died unexpectedly). Jung noted that he first felt bitter disappointment when he came back to life. From that moment something changed in him irrevocably, and his thoughts took a new direction, which can be seen from his works written at that time. He became "a wise old man from Kusnacht"...

In April 1948, the C. G. Jung Institute opened its doors in Zurich. His task was to teach Jungian theories and methods of analytical psychology. The institute conducted training in German and English and provided educational (personal) analysis for the trainees. The Institute had a library and a research center.

In the last years of his life, Jung was less and less distracted by the external vicissitudes of everyday events, more and more directing his attention and interest to global problems. Not only a threat nuclear war, but also the ever-growing population of the Earth and the barbaric destruction natural resources along with the pollution of nature deeply worried him. Perhaps for the first time in history, the problem of human survival as a whole in the second half of the 20th century began to be felt most acutely, and Jung was able to feel it much earlier than others. Since the fate of humanity is at stake, it is natural to ask: is there not an archetype that represents, so to speak, the whole of humanity and its fate? Jung saw that in almost all world religions, and in a number of other religious denominations, such an archetype exists and reveals itself in the form of the so-called first man or cosmic man, anthropos. Anthropos, the giant space man, represents life principle and the meaning of all human life on Earth (Ymir, Purusha, Pan-ku, Guyomart, Adam). In alchemy and gnosticism we find a similar motif of the Man of Light who falls into darkness or is dismembered by darkness and must be "collected" and returned to the light. In the texts of these teachings, there is a description of how a Man of Light, equal to God, first lives in the Pleroma *, then he is defeated by the forces of evil (as a rule, these are star gods, or Archons), then he falls or “slips” down and turns out to be scattered in the form of many sparks, after which he will have to wait for his salvation. His redemption or liberation lies in the gathering of all the scattered parts

Pleroma is a term coined by the Gnostics. Denotes a "place" beyond space-time representations, in which all tension between opposites fades or is resolved. Cm.: Zelensky V.V. Explanatory Dictionary of Analytical Psychology. - SPb., 2000.

and return to the Pleroma. This drama symbolizes the process of individuation of the individual; at first each consists of such chaotic diverse particles, but gradually it can become unified personality by collecting and realizing these particles. This drama can also be understood as an image of the gradual slow development of mankind towards higher consciousness, which Jung described in great detail in his works "Answer to Job" and "AION".

Jung's confidence in the absolute unity of all that exists led him to the idea that the physical and mental, like space and time, are human, mental categories that do not reflect reality with the necessary accuracy. Because of the very nature of their thoughts and language, people are inevitably forced unconsciously to divide everything into their opposites. Hence the antinomy of any statements. In fact, opposites can turn out to be fragments of the same reality. Jung's collaboration in the last years of his life with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli led both to the conviction that the study of the depths of matter by physicists and the depths of the psyche by psychologists can only be different ways of approaching a single hidden reality. Neither psychology can be "objective" enough, since the observer inevitably influences the observed effect, nor physics, which is not capable of simultaneously measuring the momentum and speed of a particle at the subatomic level. The principle of complementarity, which has become the cornerstone of modern physics, is also applicable to the problems of soul and body.

Throughout his life, Jung was impressed by apparently unrelated events that happened simultaneously for no reason. Let's say the death of a person and his disturbing dream close relative that happened at the same time. Jung understood that such coincidences required some additional explanation, other than the assertion of some kind of “accident”. This additional principle of explanation he called synchrony, or synchronicity. According to Jung, synchrony is based on the universal order of meaning, which is in addition to causality. Synchronic phenomena are associated with archetypes. The nature of the archetype is neither physical nor mental, it belongs to both areas. So archetypes are able to manifest both physically and mentally at the same time. In this respect, an indicative example is the case of Swedenborg mentioned by Jung. Swedenborg experienced a vision of fire at the very moment when the fire was actually raging in Stockholm. According to Jung, certain changes in the state of Swedenborg's psyche gave him temporary access to "absolute knowledge" - an area where the boundaries of time and space are overcome. The perception of ordering structures is realized in the psyche and is subjectively experienced as the acquisition of meaning.

In 1955, in honor of Jung's eightieth birthday, the International Congress of Psychiatrists was held in Zurich, chaired by Manfred Bleuler, son of Eugene Bleuler (with whom Jung began his career as a psychiatrist at Burgholzli). Jung was invited to make a presentation on the topic with which his Scientific research in 1901, on the psychology of schizophrenia. At the same time, his loneliness increased. In 1953, his closest student, Toni Wolfe, died, and in November 1955, Emma Young, his wife, a constant companion for more than half a century, died. Of all the great pioneers of depth psychology, Jung was the only one whose wife became his student, adopted his methods and techniques, and practiced his psychotherapeutic method.

As the years passed, Jung weakened physically, but his mind remained alert and responsive. He amazed his guests with subtle reflections on the secrets of the human soul and the future of mankind. At this time, Jung completed 30 years of alchemical studies with the Mysterium Coniunctionis; here, he noted with satisfaction, “the place in reality is finally determined and the historical foundations of my psychology are established. Thus my task is done, my work is done, and now I can stop” (Jung, 19986, p. 221).

At the age of 85, Carl Gustav Jung received the title of honorary citizen of Kusnacht, where he settled back in 1909. The mayor solemnly presented the "wise old man" with a ceremonial letter and seal, and Jung made a response speech, addressing the audience in his native Basel dialect.

Shortly before his death, Jung completed his autobiographical book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which became a bestseller in the Western world, and, together with his students, wrote the fascinating book Man and His Symbols, a popular exposition of the foundations of analytical psychology.

Carl Gustav Jung died at his home in Küsnacht on June 6, 1961. The farewell ceremony took place in the Protestant church of Kusnacht. The local pastor, in his funeral speech, called the deceased "a prophet who managed to resist the all-encompassing onslaught of rationalism and gave man the courage to regain his soul." Two other students of Jung - theologian Hans Scher and economist Eugene Buhler - noted the scientific and human merits of their spiritual mentor. The body was cremated and the ashes buried in the family grave at the local cemetery.

On July 26, 1875, the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, was born. About the discoveries that made the psychiatrist famous all over the world, AiF.ru told psychologist Anna Khnykina.

Complexes, archetypes and the collective unconscious

Carl Gustav Jung known as a follower of Freud, who continued the development of psychoanalytic theory. True, he did not follow the Freudian traditions, but went his own way. Because their cooperation was not so long. The concept of the collective unconscious was the main reason for the differences of opinion between them.

According to Jung, the structure of the personality (he called it the soul) consists of the Ego, the Personal Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious. Ego is what we used to call consciousness, or whatever we mean when we say "I". The personal unconscious is personal experience, for some reason forgotten or repressed, as well as everything that we do not seem to notice around us. The personal unconscious consists of complexes - these are emotionally charged groups of thoughts, feelings and memories. Each of us has maternal and paternal complexes - emotional impressions, thoughts and feelings associated with these figures and scenarios of their life and interaction with us. A power complex that is widespread in our time is when a person devotes a lot of his psychic energy to thoughts and feelings about control, domination, duty, submission. The inferiority complex is also well known, etc.

The collective unconscious contains the thoughts and feelings common to all people that are the result of our shared emotional past. As Jung himself said: "The collective unconscious contains all the spiritual heritage of human evolution, reborn in the structure of the brain of each individual." Thus, the collective unconscious is passed down from generation to generation and is common to all people. An example is mythology, folk epic, as well as the understanding of good and evil, light and shadow, etc.

By analogy, as complexes make up the content of the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes - primary images that all people imagine in the same way. For example, we all react in much the same way to parents or strangers, death or a snake (danger). Jung described many archetypes, among which are the mother, child, hero, sage, rogue, God, death, etc. In his writings, much is devoted to the fact that archetypal images and ideas are often found in culture in the form of symbols used in painting, literature and religion. Jung emphasized that the symbols characteristic of different cultures often show a striking similarity precisely because they go back to archetypes common to all mankind.

How is it applied today?

Today, this knowledge is widely used in the work of psychologists and psychotherapists of all directions. It is quite difficult to underestimate the word "complex" or "archetype" in the work of a psychologist, agree? At the same time, the analyst does not hang a label on you, but knowing about the nature and scenario of the archetypes and your complexes helps to better understand your personal "psychic kaleidoscope".

Analytical psychology

After receiving a medical degree in psychiatry from the University of Basel, the young Jung became an assistant in a clinic for the mentally ill under the direction of Eugène Bleuler, the author of the term "schizophrenia". Interest in this mental illness led him to the work of Freud. Soon they met in person. The education and depth of Jung's views made a tremendous impression on Freud. The latter considered him his successor, and in 1910 Jung was elected the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. However, already in 1913 they broke off relations due to the difference in views on the unconscious, as I said above - Jung singled out the collective unconscious, with which Freud did not agree, and also expanded and supplemented the concept of "complex" to the form in which it has survived to this day. And further Jung went his own inner way. His autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, begins with the statement: "My life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious."

As a result of this "self-realization of the unconscious", Jung had a whole complex of ideas from such different fields of knowledge as philosophy, astrology, archeology, mythology, theology and literature and, of course, psychology, superimposed on his psychiatric education and Freud's ideas about the unconscious. The result was what is today called analytical psychology.

In addition, Jungians (as psychologists who adhere to the theory of Dr. Jung call themselves - analytical psychologists) actively use a spectrum of other psychological methods: art therapy, psychodrama, active imagination, all kinds of projective techniques (such as the analysis of drawings), etc. Jung was especially fond of art therapy - creativity therapy. He believed that through continuous creative activity, one can literally prolong one's life. With the help of creativity (art therapy), any spontaneous types of drawing, especially mandalas (a schematic representation or design used in Buddhist and Hindu religious practices), deep layers of the psyche are released.

How is it applied today?

Psychoanalysts around the world are divided into Freudians and Jungians. An orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst will put you on the couch, sit at the head of the head and listen to you with a minimum manifestation of his presence 2-3 times a week for 50 minutes. All visits, including missed ones, are paid. Time does not change and does not move, even if you work in three days and do not have the opportunity to comply with the agreements on your work schedule. But when you express a desire to find out why the analyst is so unfair to you and does not want to enter into your position, you will be asked a couple of questions about why everything is so uncomfortable in your life? And also who is usually in real life inclined to enter into your circumstances and adjust to you?

Jungians take things differently. As a rule, this is once a week, and conditions can be negotiated and be more flexible. For example, missed sessions for valid reasons can be worked out at another time. It is not at all necessary to lie down on the couch, you can sit on chairs and talk, as you are used to in ordinary life. Also, in addition to the dialogue, you may be asked to comment on the image, fantasize aloud, and then draw your fantasy or feeling, imagine someone in front of you and talk to him, changing to his place, then back to yours, they may offer to blind what something made of clay or sand ...

The boundaries and rules of communication between the analyst and the patient still remain quite rigid, which determines the quality of contact and, accordingly, the quality of work.

Today we can safely say that all areas of psychotherapy and practical psychology are rooted in analytical and projective practice. Thus, analytical psychology is something that combines basic knowledge of psychoanalytic practice, the collective centuries-old experience of people working with their inner world and its self-expression, and modern achievements in the science of the soul - psychology.

The concept of psychological types

Jung introduced the concepts of extraversion and introversion as the main types of personality orientation (ego-orientation). According to his theory, which has been richly supported by practice all over the world for about 100 years, both orientations exist in a person simultaneously, but one of them usually leads. Everyone knows that an extrovert is more open and sociable, and an introvert is all in himself. This is the popular version of these concepts. In fact, everything is not quite so, extroverts are also closed. In an extrovert, psychic energy is directed outward - to the situation and the surrounding people, partners. He influences all this himself, as if bringing the situation and the environment into the “right form”. The introvert, on the other hand, acts in the exact opposite way, as if the situation and the environment influence him, and he is forced to retreat, justify or defend himself all the time. In his book Psychological Types, Jung gives a possible biological explanation. He says that there are two ways of adapting to the environment in animals: unlimited reproduction with suppressed defense mechanisms (as in fleas, rabbits, lice) and few offspring with excellent defense mechanisms (as in elephants, hedgehogs and most large mammals). Thus, in nature, there are two possibilities for interacting with the environment: you can protect yourself from it by building your life as independently as possible (introversion), or you can rush into the outside world, overcoming difficulties and conquering it (extraversion).

Later, Jung supplements his theory of psychotypes with four main mental functions. These are thinking and feeling (rational), sensation and intuition (irrational). Each of these functions is in each of us, in addition, each function is oriented outward or inward and is extraverted or introverted. In total, 8 different mental functions are obtained. One of them is the most convenient for adaptation, therefore it is considered the leading one and determines the personality type of the same name according to Jung: thinking, feeling, sensing or intuitive (extrovert or introvert).

How is it applied today?

The leading personality type for a practicing psychologist is not difficult to determine, and this gives a lot of information about a person, in particular about his way of perceiving and issuing information and adapting to reality.

For example, if a person has a leading function - thinking, it will be difficult for him to talk about his feelings and sensations, he will reduce everything to facts and logic. A person with leading extraverted thinking lives under the yoke of a sense of justice. Most often these are the military, directors, teachers (mathematics, physics). All of them, as a rule, are tyrants, since they have strong causal relationships, it is difficult for them to imagine that for some reason they can be violated, they always focus on the objective facts of the world around them that are of practical importance.

But for example, a person with a leading introverted intuition will be focused on the inner world and his own ideas about external reality, he calmly relates to the people and objects around him, preferring to live his life inside rather than make an impression on the outside.

On the basis of Jung's typology, a lot of simplified similarities have been created, the most famous of which is socionics.

Associative method

It all started with Freud's free association method. According to Freud, you must associate with an association that has just arisen. For example, you are disturbed by a black raven outside the window (A), you should tell the psychoanalyst what pops up in your memory in connection with this image (B). Then the analyst will ask you to find an association (C) for an association (B) that has arisen, and so on along the chain. As a result, you are supposed to come to your Oedipus complex.

Jung once drew attention to the fact that people think about some words in the associative series longer than others. He thought that strong emotions cause a stupor or "mess in the head", and for this reason it is more difficult to give a sharp reaction. This is how Jung's associative experiment was born, which is beautifully shown in the film " dangerous method". In this experiment, Jung proves that the key value is precisely the time spent on building an association. Later, the words that make you think are analyzed (usually for more than 4 seconds), and the meanings of the associations are interpreted.

How is it applied today?

Later, on the basis of his associative experiment and Freudian free association, Jung created the amplification method, when around one image (a raven in our example) a lot of associations gather, images from cultural heritage, mythology, art, leading the patient to awareness of the complex behind it.

dream theory

From the point of view of Jung's theory, the impact of dreams constantly compensates for and complements the vision of reality by a person in consciousness. Therefore, the awareness and interpretation of dreams in the analytical process with a psychologist allows you to pay explicit attention to the unconscious in the psyche. For example, a person may become angry with his friend, but his anger quickly passes. In a dream, he may feel intense anger at this friend. The dream that remains in the memory returns the person's consciousness to the already experienced situation in order to draw his attention to a strong feeling of anger, which was suppressed for some reason.

One way or another, the dream is seen as a breakthrough of unconscious content into consciousness.

When a patient tells his dream to a psychoanalyst, the latter can use not only the patient's associative array, but also knowledge about the archetypes, hierarchy and structure of symbols. Also, fabulous, mythological scenarios also allow interpreting dreams.

How is it applied today?

Psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists interpret dreams, and this is part of their job, just like the initial interview, active imagination, or association test. You may be asked in your first psychoanalysis session about your most important dreams or about what you may have dreamed about on the eve of your first visit. For the analyst, this will be very important information, not only of a diagnostic, but also of a prognostic nature - often the first dream in the analysis describes future work.