Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is a term referring to the psychological practices of Carl Jung. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.
The history of analytical psychology is intimately linked with the biography of Jung. At the start, it was known as the "Zurich school", whose chief figures were Eugen Bleuler, Franz Riklin, Alphonse Maeder and Jung, all centred in the Burghölzli hospital in Zurich. It was initially a theory concerning psychological complexes until Jung, upon breaking with Sigmund Freud, turned it into a generalised method of investigating archetypes and the unconscious, as well as into a specialised psychotherapy.
Analytical psychology, or "complex psychology", from the, is the foundation of many developments in the study and practice of psychology as of other disciplines. Jung has many followers, and some of them are members of national societies around the world. They collaborate professionally on an international level through the International Association of Analytical Psychologists and the International Association for Jungian Studies. Jung's propositions have given rise to a multidisciplinary literature in numerous languages.
Among widely used concepts specific to analytical psychology are anima and animus, archetypes, the collective unconscious, complexes, extraversion and introversion, individuation, the Self, the shadow and synchronicity. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is loosely based on another of Jung's theories on psychological types. A lesser known idea was Jung's notion of the Psychoid to denote a hypothesised immanent plane beyond consciousness, distinct from the collective unconscious, and a potential locus of synchronicity.
The approximately "three schools" of post-Jungian analytical psychology that are current, the classical, archetypal and developmental, can be said to correspond to the developing yet overlapping aspects of Jung's lifelong explorations, even if he expressly did not want to start a school of "Jungians". Hence as Jung proceeded from a clinical practice which was mainly traditionally science-based and steeped in rationalist philosophy, anthropology and ethnography, his enquiring mind simultaneously took him into more esoteric spheres such as alchemy, astrology, gnosticism, metaphysics, myth and the paranormal, without ever abandoning his allegiance to science as his long-lasting collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli attests. His wide-ranging progression suggests to some commentators that, over time, his analytical psychotherapy, informed by his intuition and teleological investigations, became more of an "art".
The findings of Jungian analysis and the application of analytical psychology to contemporary preoccupations such as social and family relationships, dreams and nightmares, work–life balance, architecture and urban planning, politics and economics, conflict and warfare, and climate change are illustrated in several publications and films.
Origins
Jung began his career as a psychiatrist in Zürich, Switzerland. Already employed at the Burghölzli hospital in 1901, in his academic dissertation for the medical faculty of the University of Zurich he took the risk of using his experiments on somnambulism and the visions of his mediumistic cousin, Helly Preiswerk. The work was entitled, "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena". It was accepted but caused great upset among his mother's family. Under the direction of psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, he also conducted research with his colleagues using a galvanometer to evaluate the emotional sensitivities of patients to lists of words during word association. Jung has left a description of his use of the device in treatment. His research earned him a worldwide reputation and numerous honours, including honorary Doctorates from Clark and Fordham Universities in 1909 and 1910 respectively. Other honours followed later.In 1907, Jung travelled to meet Sigmund Freud in Vienna, Austria; they had begun corresponding a year earlier. At that stage, Jung, aged thirty-two, had a much greater international renown than the forty-nine-year-old neurologist. For a further six years, the two scholars worked and travelled to the United States together. In 1911, they founded the International Psychoanalytical Association, of which Jung was the first president. However, early in the collaboration, Jung had already observed that Freud would not tolerate ideas that were different from his own.
Unlike most modern psychologists, Jung did not believe in restricting himself to the scientific method as a means to understanding the human psyche. He saw dreams, myths, coincidence, and folklore as empirical evidence to further understanding and meaning. So although the unconscious cannot be studied by using direct methods, it acts as a useful working hypothesis, according to Jung. As he said, "The beauty about the unconscious is that it is really unconscious." Hence, the unconscious is 'untouchable' by experimental researches, or indeed any possible kind of scientific or philosophical reach, precisely because it is unconscious.
The break with Freud
It was the publication of a book by Jung which provoked the break with psychoanalysis and led to the founding of analytical psychology. In 1912 Jung met "Miss Miller", brought to his notice by the work of Théodore Flournoy and whose case gave further substance to his theory of the collective unconscious. The study of her visions supplied the material which would go on to furnish his reasoning which he developed in Psychology of the Unconscious . At this, Freud muttered about "heresy". It was the second part of the work that brought the divergence to light. Freud mentioned to Ernest Jones that it was on page 174 of the original German edition, that Jung, according to him, had "lost his way". It is the extract where Jung enlarged on his conception of the libido. The sanction was immediate: Jung was officially banned from the Vienna psychoanalytic circle from August 1912. From that date the psychoanalytic movement split into two obediences, with Freud's partisans on one side, Karl Abraham being delegated to write a critical notice about Jung, and with Ernest Jones as defender of Freudian orthodoxy; while on the other side, were Jung's partisans, including Leonhard Seif, Franz Riklin, Johan van Ophuijsen and Alphonse Maeder.Jung's innovative ideas with a new formulation of psychology and lack of contrition sealed the end of the Jung-Freud friendship in 1913. From then, the two scholars worked independently on personality development: Jung had already termed his approach analytical psychology, while the approach Freud had founded is referred to as the Psychoanalytic School.
Jung's postulated unconscious was quite different from the model proposed by Freud, despite the great influence that the founder of psychoanalysis had had on him. In particular, tensions manifested between him and Freud because of various disagreements, including those concerning the nature of the libido. Jung the importance of sexual development as an instinctual drive and focused on the collective unconscious: the part of the unconscious that contains memories and ideas which Jung believed were inherited from generations of ancestors. While he accepted that libido was an important source for personal growth, unlike Freud, Jung did not consider that libido alone was responsible for the formation of the core personality. Due to the particular hardships Jung had endured growing up, he believed his personal development and that of everyone was influenced by factors unrelated to sexuality.
The overarching aim in life, according to Jungian psychology, is the fullest possible actualisation of the "Self" through individuation. Jung defines the "self" as "not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind". Central to this process of individuation is the individual's continual encounter with the elements of the psyche by bringing them into consciousness. People experience the unconscious through symbols encountered in all aspects of life: in dreams, art, religion, and the symbolic dramas enacted in relationships and life pursuits. Essential to the process is the merging of the individual's consciousness with the collective unconscious through a huge range of symbols. By bringing conscious awareness to bear on what is unconscious, such elements can be integrated with consciousness when they "surface". To proceed with the individuation process, individuals need to be open to the parts of themselves beyond their own ego, which is the "organ" of consciousness. In a famous dictum, Jung said, "the Self, like the unconscious is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is... an unconscious prefiguration of the ego. It is not I who create myself, rather I happen to myself'.
It follows that the aim of psychotherapy is to assist the individual to establish a healthy relationship with the unconscious so that it is neither excessively out of balance in relation to it, as in neurosis, a state that can result in depression, anxiety, and personality disorders or so flooded by it that it risks psychosis resulting in mental breakdown. One method Jung applied to his patients between 1913 and 1916 was active imagination, a way of encouraging them to give themselves over to a form of meditation to release apparently random images from the mind to bridge unconscious contents into awareness.
"Neurosis" in Jung's view results from the build up of psychological defences the individual unconsciously musters in an effort to cope with perceived attacks from the outside world, a process he called a "complex", although complexes are not merely defensive in character. The psyche is a self-regulating adaptive system. People are energetic systems, and if the energy is blocked, the psyche becomes sick. If adaptation is thwarted, the psychic energy stops flowing and becomes rigid. This process manifests in neurosis and psychosis. Jung proposed that this occurs through maladaptation of one's internal realities to external ones. The principles of adaptation, projection, and compensation are central processes in Jung's view of psyche's attempts to adapt.