It is certain that "Carl Gustav Jung" (Carl Gustav Jung) is one of the most famous and influential psychologists that Europe gave birth to, with his many theories about personality structure and self-formation, but the life of this lonely world was not without tragedies and difficulties that shaped his personality at a young age and affected on his theories as he grew up.
Religion and God had a pivotal role in Young's life, as he feared him as a child and attached to him as a great man, and searched for him in the primitive cultures of Africa and South America.
Young School
"Life's greatest and most important problems are fundamentally unsolvable. There is no way we can solve them, but we can get over them."
Jung was the first to introduce the term "collective unconscious" into psychology, and considered it a part of the psyche, and thus disagreed with Sigmund Freud's famous theory that divides the psyche into the id, the ego, and the superego.
The collective unconscious represents the memories and experiences of our ancestors who preceded us on Earth, from whom we inherit a set of archetypes that direct our growth and life. These archetypes are simply a set of characteristics that all humans are born with, and make them take the same reactions in certain situations without realizing they exist.
Because they are located in the unconscious part of themselves.
Young also developed a personality theory, which classifies personalities according to four functions: thinking, feeling, feeling, and intuition that intersect with two famous behavioral trends: extroverted behavior that loves to interact with the world, and introverted behavior that focuses on the inner world, to produce eight types of personality.
Unlike Freud, Jung did not care much about repressed childhood memories, but rather focused on one's present and future as a key to analyzing and treating neurosis.
Although Young was one of the first students of Freud, who was supposed to be his successor in the presidency of the International Association for Psychoanalysis that he founded, their relationship worsened after Young announced his rejection of some of Freud's ideas, and then founded the School of Analytical Psychology to be different from the School of Private Psychoanalysis Bfreud.
Carl Young.
(wikipedia)
Religion played a pivotal role in shaping Jung's personality from an early age, and influenced his later work and theories as well.
Despite his upbringing in a religious family, as his father was a priest, a series of successive incidents created within him panic towards the clergy, and he did not get rid of this feeling except at an advanced age, after he gradually restored his relationship with God, and got closer to different religions and their rituals, and the meanings of some of them were revealed to him. The strange dreams he had as a child.
Double childhood and scary dreams
"Dreams are the words that guide the soul. Why, then, should I not love my dreams from now on, and make their mystifying images a subject of daily contemplation?"
Young's relationship with "God" or "God" became complicated after he attended a funeral in which he saw priests wearing black coats, high hats, and black shoes, and this scene was associated in his head with "Christ" who "takes" children and the dead to be with him.
The matter got worse after the frightening dream that haunted Young in his childhood, and its events took place in the meadow near his parents' home in the Swiss municipality of Kiswil, while he was still a four-year-old.
The child saw in a dream inside a rectangular room a featureless being sitting on a great golden throne with one eye and staring at the ceiling, and he heard his mother's voice from somewhere saying: "Look at him, this is the man-eater," then he woke up in a state of panic.
Childhood home where Carl Jung was raised - Basel - Switzerland.
(wikipedia)
The little one linked this creature to Christ, so for a long time he was unable to accept or love religion, and even feared all the clergy who wore black, even though his father and eight of his uncles were priests.
This dream and these thoughts from childhood are what established the second half of his life, his work in psychoanalysis, his theories and his philosophy of life.
At the age of four, Young was separated from his mother for several months, who was ill and hospitalized during this time, and he stayed with an aunt throughout this period, and he developed the idea that women were unreliable while men were trustworthy, and while he embraced this The idea for a long time, life showed him examples of men who betrayed his trust, and women who proved worthy of it (1).
teenager
"Two personalities meeting is like two chemicals coming into contact: if any reaction occurs, they both transform."
The school also had a strong influence on Young Young's personality, as he dealt with his peers with an extroverted, fun-loving personality, while in fact he was an introverted child who loved loneliness and internal reflections.
Young felt threatened by this separation in his personality, and by this influence that the outside world had on him, and he faced this fear by carving a small statue representing the clergyman who feared him, which he hid in a small box in the attic of the house, and he never told anyone about it until he was over sixty years old.
The personalities of Young's parents greatly influenced his thoughts, just as he personally had two personalities, an extroverted personality and an introverted one that was closer to his truth. From his point of view, each of his parents also had two contradictory personalities, a kind personality in front of people, and a strange or aggressive personality at home.
Jung derived from these contradictions the eight personality types that result from the encounter of an extroverted or introverted character with one of the four functions of thinking versus feeling, and feeling versus intuition.
Thinking and feeling represent "rational functions", so either a person thinks about things carefully before making a decision, or he chooses based on his feelings about the subject of choice.
On the other hand, sensation and intuition represent "irrational functions", where the sensitive person prefers everything to be balanced and disciplined, while the intuitive person is indifferent to order and prefers randomness in decisions.
Although one can possess all these functions, he always tends towards a certain pattern in his personality that characterizes him, and Young considered himself an intuitive person in general (2).
Carl Young Young.
(wikipedia)
whatever
"Seeing her shook me so much, because I had only really seen her for a short time, but I knew immediately for sure that she was going to be my wife."
Young's intuitive personality was reflected in his choice of his life partner, as he saw her for the first time for a short time, and she was the daughter of the fourteen-year-old, and he was the son of twenty-one, but this glimpse was enough for him to decide that this girl must become his wife one day, which is what it was.
Jung married Emma Rauschenbach, the rich and intelligent girl, in 1903, and she was educated and knowledgeable to help her husband in his work in analytical psychology.
For Emma, Young was a complex person with a knowledge of life, as well as a soft-spoken.
But Young himself was not so confident, as he sank into a psychological crisis after his engagement to Emma, which prompted him to withdraw from public life and isolate far, restoring his introverted personality.
He felt inferior and ashamed of his social and material level, especially when he compared himself to his colleagues at the University Psychiatric Hospital in Zurich, who seemed confident of themselves, while he was lost in this new world for him (3).
Emma Young, wife of Carl Jung.
(wikipedia)
Despite this deep love, their marriage suffered a lot because of Jung's multiple relationships, especially his famous relationship with Sabina Spielrein, one of the first psychoanalysts, who was Jung's patient at first, then his student before becoming his colleague in the field.
It was their relationship in particular that aroused Emma's fury and jealousy the most, and this relationship was embodied in the movie "A dangerous method" starring Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender.
A Dangerous Way, which depicts Carl Jung's relationship with Sabina Spielrein.
(communication Web-sites)
Freud
“Awareness is not born without pain.”
Perhaps the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud is one of the most important relationships that influenced the course of his life, and Jung described him as "the first man of real importance in my life."
Young's reading of Freud's book "The Interpretation of Dreams" was the spark that ignited his interest in him, as he found agreement in their ideas, and their first meeting was in Vienna in 1907, shortly after the exchange of correspondence and ideas, and Freud was at that time looking for students to spread his approach Psychoanalysis.
Despite this, the differences between the two began from the first moment, as Young was not completely convinced of Freud's interpretation of all human actions and dreams that they have hidden sexual motives, so that he attributed spiritual tendencies in art and in people to the same reason, which did not please Young very much.
These differences did not prevent them from continuing to work together for several years, until Freud nominated him for the presidency of the International Psychoanalytic Association for life.
Controversies sharply increased when Jung published his work on personality development and the theory of the collective mind, in which he downplayed the importance of sex drive in the formation of human personality, and focused more on the legacy of psychological ancestors responsible for charting the way for humans.
When Jung's book "Unconscious Psychology" was published in 1912, this was the straw that broke the camel's back, as Freud could not accept the ideas of his student, and strongly rejected them, which led to the alienation of most of his colleagues from him, and his exile from the psychoanalytic community.
Carl Jung seated far right, Sigmund Freud far left (Wikipedia)
The four models
The theory in question says that humanity's collective unconscious contains "Jungian archetypes", which are images with unified meanings across cultures, and their influence appears on religion, art, dreams and literature.
Jung identified a large number of archetypes that underlie our personalities and attitudes in life, but he was particularly interested in four.
The first model is "The Persona", which is the mask that we wear in front of people and does not necessarily express our truth, such as the extraverted personality that Jung used to represent in his youth.
As for the second model, it is “the spirit” (The Anima / Animus), which means the female unconscious part of the man, or the masculine side of the woman’s unconscious, and he believes that this is the result of the long centuries that men lived with women, and each of them was affected by the other.
As for the third model, it is "The Shadow", which is the animal side of humans, and the "id" in Freud's theory agrees with it, and it contains desires, repressed thoughts, and one's weaknesses, and it is the side that we always want to hide from everyone like a secret that we are ashamed of.
Finally, there is "The Self", which represents the unity between consciousness and the subconscious, and the convergence of all the components of one's personality to achieve one's self and transcendence, and Young used to see it as a circle or a mandala (4).
Mandala (networking sites)
mystic
"For a young man it is almost a sin, or at least a dangerous thing, to occupy himself so much, but as for an old man, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself."
A new chapter in Young's life began when he visited Tunisia for the first time with a friend. Finally, he could observe a people different from him in language and culture, and he could see the other's view of the European man.
His many trips between some countries of Africa, India and South America, and he touched in each of them a life different from that of the European man. He saw that these simple peoples live closer to life, and think with their heart, not with their mind.
After this, Young decided to embrace solitude in a tower he called "Bollingen" on the borders of Zurich, away from his family, alone with his thoughts. In this tower he felt deeply himself. The second person he used to hide from everyone could live here freely.
He had to live a simple life without electricity or running water, and he made everything himself, but this put him in harmony with nature.
Besides, the mystical side that has always been there appeared, the side that believed in the existence of a higher power that governs human beings, even believing that religious myths in different cultures were not pure nonsense, and were not basically made by humans, but rather a word sent from God.
He returns again to his prototypes, and believes that myths are nothing but an exaggerated expression of a group of images that formulate the prototypes on which humans live.
Young continued to work as a professor of psychology until he became ill, and continued to write for several years, during which he released some of his last works, before he died in Zurich in 1961, after losing his wife and companion for only six years.
Carl Jung reading a book.
(communication Web-sites)
Young lived a rich life full of strange secrets, and the shaky self-confidence did not prevent him from sticking to his theories, opposing his teacher and accepting ostracism and loneliness, although loneliness was never a problem for Young, as his true personality preferred and aspired to it.
Jung left an indelible mark on the history of psychiatry as one of the founding fathers of analytical psychology, especially his revolutionary theories of the time on the collective mind and personality types.
"An aversion to death is unhealthy and unnatural," Young says. "It takes away the purpose of the second half of life."
——————————————————————————————-
Sources:
1- Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung
2- Chapter 3, Part 3: Jung's Personality Types – PSY321 Course Text: Theories of Personality
3- Labyrinths, Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
4- Carl Jung |
Simply Psychology