Jung and the Human Psyche

An Understandable Introduction

Mary Ann Mattoon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317711100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Jung and the Human Psyche: An Understandable Introduction presents a comprehensive introduction to Jungian theory, taking the reader through the major themes of Jung's work in a clear way, relating such concepts to individual experience.

Drawing on her extensive experience in practicingandteaching Jungian psychology, Mary Ann Mattoon succeeds in making the fundamental insights of Jung's work accessible. The major topics of Jungian psychology are presented in a manner that is clear, emotionally engaging, well illustrated and non-dogmatic. Areas covered include:

• The visible psyche: ego, persona, typology.
• The hidden psyche: self, shadow, unconscious, archetypes, instincts.
• Becoming who we are: early development, gender.
• Obstacles and helps to growth: complexes, projection, psychopathology.
• Helps from the psyche: psychic energy, self-regulation/compensation, symbol, synchronicity, creativity.

Jung and the Human Psyche provides an original and imaginative introduction to Jung's work, and will appeal to students of Jungian psychology, those considering training in Jungian analysis, and anyone interested in Jungian psychology.

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Chapter 1
Introduction

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In my many years of studying Jungian psychology (otherwise known as Analytical Psychology) and working with clients as they reflect on their own experiences, I have been impressed with the psyche’s intricacy. For a newcomer to the field, it often seems difficult to fathom this complexity. But it need not be too difficult for someone who is willing to look inward. This book is an attempt to guide the newcomer through the psyche, as each experiences it.

For the newcomer, this book is designed to be more accessible than my earlier work, Jungian Psychology in Perspective. That book was written for my classes, which carried graduate credit. Readers had access for help to the instructor and to their classmates, many of whom were quite well informed about the field. This book also explains the concepts but fills the void of the lack of a classroom situation by including many more examples, especially clinical ones.

ORIGINS OF JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Although there were precursors in philosophy and various sciences, psychology as many of us understand it became a separate discipline in the late nineteenth century. First came experimental psychology beginning with Wilhelm Wundt, then dynamic psychology starting with Sigmund Freud, then C.G. Jung and many others.

Even in his 1902 dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Jung grappled with the concepts—in embryonic form—of complexes (see Chapter 5) and individuation (see Chapter 12). These concepts, along with that of the unconscious, were to become central to Jungian personality theory. Jung’s dissertation centered on clinical observation of a young woman’s mediumistic experiences. Then, as a hospital psychiatrist, he continued his empirical research, including a word association test. His interpretation of the findings furthered his understanding of complexes and their unconscious roots. Because he considered complexes to be crucial to understanding the unconscious, he wanted to call his body of theory “Complex Psychology.” Some of his associates argued for the broader term “Analytical Psychology,” and it prevailed.

Despite Jung’s psychiatric background, his theories evolved into a description of normal personality more than of psychopathology. Perhaps because of this fact, his theories are of use to many different disciplines, including literature and the humanities.

The idea of unconscious mental contents was not the unique discovery of Freud and Jung. Indeed, the idea has a trail as long as human history, in such millennia-old beliefs as the meaningfulness of dreams (see De Becker, 1968). Most of the “discoverers” before 1730 were philosophers and literary figures, with a sprinkling of physicians, mystics and theologians.

Until about 1800, philosophers and poets continued to be the most frequent hypothesizers of the unconscious, but scientists and identifiable psychologists exerted increasing influence (see Ellenberger, 1970). During this period F.A. Mesmer (1733–1815) developed the concept of hypnotism, which aroused the interest of the French psychiatrists who influenced Freud and Jung. Primary among those psychiatrists were Jean-Martin Charcot and Pierre Janet.

From 1800 to 1850, philosophers and poets, in about the same proportion as earlier, continued to advance the concept of the unconscious, but more medically trained scientists began to make contributions to the study. Between 1850 and 1880, the number of investigators was so great that it is not feasible to classify their professional fields. Because many of these contributors were German, it is not surprising that the pioneer psychologists of the unconscious—Freud and Jung—were inhabitants of German-speaking countries Austria and German Switzerland.

The nineteenth century in Europe was a period of intense interest in psychological phenomena. Philosophers, theologians, physiologists and neurologists, as well as psychiatrists, all speculated on the determinants of human behavior and the etiology of mental illness; some advanced organic theories, others emotional. Despite lack of agreement on the causes of mental illness, major advances were made in the care of mentally ill persons. Sexuality and psychopathology were discussed rather widely in literature and in scientific treatises. The psychology of children began to be explored, and investigations were undertaken in the significance of dreams and occult experiences.

Jung was influenced profoundly by the prevailing intellectual climate and interests of his time. Not only was he familiar with the classical Greek and Latin philosophers and the Christian theological tradition but also the works of contemporary anthropologists, historians and philosophers. He was impressed, especially, by the eighteenth and nineteenth-century philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. Undergirding all of Jung’s theories, however, was his work with psychotic, borderline and neurotic patients and, most of all, his own inner life and self-analysis.

JUNG’S LIFE

Carl Gustav Jung’s homeland, Switzerland, is a country of high mountains, secluded valleys and many lakes. It is a federation of cantons, each with its own dialect, customs and traditions. The culture and language are predominantly Germanic in the northern part of the country (sixteen cantons out of twenty-two total), where it has a common border with Germany. Other regions’ languages are French, Italian and Romansch. To the north-east the boundary is Lake Constance, the second largest body of water in the Alpine region. It was on the southern shore of this lake, in the small town of Keswil, that Jung was born on July 26, 1875.

He was named after his paternal grandfather, a German-born physician who had fled Prussia to escape the political oppression of university students advocating a united Germany. In Switzerland, the elder Carl Jung became a professor of surgery at the University of Basel. His son, Johann Paul, was a parson in the Swiss Reformed Church by vocation and a student of the classics and Oriental religions by avocation. When Carl Gustav was four years old, his father became pastor of a new church and the family moved to Klein-Hüningen, a suburb of Basel. It was there that Carl’s schooling began and his only sibling, his sister Gertrud, was born in 1884.

At age six Carl began to receive instruction in Latin from his father. An apt pupil, he continued the study of the language until he became proficient in reading ancient texts with ease. At an even earlier age he was introduced to comparative religions, through an illustrated book from which his mother, Emilie Preiswerk Jung, read to him often. He never tired of studying the pictures of exotic Hindu gods.

As a student in a gymnasium (roughly equivalent to an American high school and junior college) and later at the University of Basel, Jung was attracted to a career in archaeology. When he realized that he could not afford to attend a university offering such a course of study, he sought an alternative, one in which he could pursue his interest in science while making an adequate living. The study of medicine met both conditions. In the spring of 1895 Jung matriculated at the University of Basel with the financial assistance of his father and a university stipend. When his father died the following year, Jung was forced to take various jobs to continue his medical course.

The medical curriculum required studies in psychiatry, but the subject did not interest Jung until his last year, when he was introduced to Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (Textbook of Psychiatry; first published in 1879). At once he saw the specialty as a way of combining his philosophical interests with his commitment to the natural sciences.

During Jung’s last year in medical school two experiences brought to the fore what was to be a life-long fascination with parapsychology (the study of phenomena that cannot be explained by natural laws). Bleuler shared Jung’s interest in and experience with the phenomena; Freud did not. (Interest was widespread, with some organizations devoted to it, but not all.)

The first experience occurred one day while he was studying at home. He heard a loud noise, like a pistol shot, from the dining room, which was next to his room. The noise had issued from a seventy-year-old solid walnut, round table, which had split from the rim to beyond the center. No explanation could be found for the occurrence.

The second experience came two weeks later. Upon his return home one evening, Jung found the household in great distress. His mother, sister and the maid had heard another loud report in the dining room but they could find nothing broken. Jung searched the room. Finally, in a cupboard, he discovered the bread knife broken into four pieces, each piece lying in a different corner of the breadbasket. The improbability of a natural explanation for the explosive break and the distribution of the pieces impressed him deeply; he kept the pieces of the knife all his life as evidence of

Jung’s concern with parapsychology intensified a few weeks after the knife incident, when he observed a fifteen-year-old girl of little education who, while in trances, saw visions and received mediumistic communications. The trances, according to Jung’s description, were spontaneous. While in such states she spoke stilted High German instead of her accustomed Swiss dialect. Jung’s notes on the girl and the séances in which she participated formed an important part of his doctoral thesis. The paper was published in 1902 under the title “Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogennanter occulter Phänomene” (“On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena”—Jung CW-1).

Upon the award of his medical degree in 1900, Jung was appointed assistant physician (equivalent to a psychiatric resident in the United States) at the respected Burghölzli Hospital, a public psychiatric institution in Zurich in which Eugen Bleuler was the chief psychiatrist. Two years later Jung was promoted to senior physician (equivalent to a staff physician in the United States) and appointed lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Zurich.

During the winter of 1902–3 Jung studied in Paris with Pierre Janet, who “was the first to found a new system of dynamic psychiatry aimed at replacing those of the nineteenth century” (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 331). Janet’s influence on Jung was profound. Years later, Jung stated that he had had “only two teachers”— Bleuler and Janet (Campbell, 1971, p. xi). In his memoirs, Jung mentioned Freud also.

At the Burghölzli, before and after Jung’s sojourn in Paris, Bleuler took considerable interest in Jung’s career. Jung was always grateful, especially for the example Bleuler set of “total respect for his vocation as a psychiatrist. Above all, Jung felt indebted to the exacting methods of observation of all forms of hallucination and derangement he acquired from [Bleuler]” (van der Post, 1975, p. 108). Bleuler helped Jung set up a laboratory in the hospital for his work in parapsychology and encouraged the investigations by accompanying Jung to séances.

It was at Bleuler’s suggestion, also, that Jung began in 1904 to lead some colleagues in experiments with a word association test (see Chapter 7). Bleuler’s encouragement of Jung’s investigation is especially interesting because most Swiss psychiatrists of the period considered mental illness to be organic in etiology. Indeed, Jung spent considerable time examining brains to test the hypothesis. Unfortunately, the study of brain chemistry was not yet a known science. Jung’s work on the word association test led to his friendship with Freud. The account of that friendship and its erosion comprise a later section of this chapter.

Jung had married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903; they had four daughters and a son. Carl and Emma built a house in Küsnacht, a suburb of Zurich, where they lived for their remaining years (until 1955 for Emma, 1961 for Carl).

Like his early hospital and university colleagues, Jung carried on a private practice, as did Emma when she had moved to less responsibility for the children. Carl’s practice became sufficiently time-consuming and remunerative to enable him to resign from his hospital post in 1909 and from the university in 1913.

Jung’s seminars and supervision of prospective analysts were the basis for the founding, in 1948, of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He was its first president. Students came to it, and continue to do so, from many countries. Some of the Institute’s courses are open to students who are not analyst-candidates; other courses are available only to participants who have been accepted into candidacy.

Institutes for the training of Jungian analysts have been established in many places. (In some instances there are two or even more institutes in a given city.) Jungian psychology is disseminated, also, by an increasing number of journals. The earliest of these, The Journal of Analytical Psychology, began publication in London in 1955.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis, Jung investigated many aspects of human life, which, generally, have been considered to be outside the purview of science. His investigations reflected his view that all human phenomena are products of the psyche and, hence, subject to psychological investigation (see Chapter 9).

Jung’s capacity for stirring his analysands and students to their depths produced reports that make him sound godlike, but the general agreement is that he was an intensely human person. In physical appearance he was tall, broad-shouldered, strong and healthy-looking, with a “cheerful open face” (Bennet, 1962, p. 5). A mountain climber and expert sailor, he always lived next to a river or a lake. He was a good listener and conversationalist, but he did not waste time in trivialities. He had a keen sense of humor, which was equaled, perhaps, by his quick temper.

Jung’s family was important to him, yet he had a great need for solitude. He spent weeks at a time away from home, many of them in his “tower” at Bollingen (up the Lake of Zurich from Küsnacht), much of which he built himself. His power of concentration was prodigious, as evidenced by his encyclopedic knowledge and the quantity of his writings.

After the break with Freud, Jung was able to pursue more freely his own theory of the contents of the unconscious mind. His work rapidly lost whatever Freudian cast it had and revealed increasingly his interest in archetypal symbolism. For the next six years (1913–19) he went through a period of what he termed “inner uncertainty” or “disorientation” (MDR, p. 170). The historian Henri Ellenberger (1970) called the experience a “creative illness.” During this period, Jung spent considerable time working on his dreams and fantasies and seeking to understand them, as far as possible, in terms of his daily life (see MDR, Chapter VI). The investigation of these contents led Jung to develop many of his psychological theories. From 1919 until he was halted by a severe illness in 1944, he wrote most of his major works, many in the form of individual essays that were gathered later into the Collected Works.

In addition to his prodigious writing, Jung traveled a great deal, often to lecture but frequently to gather information regarding dreams and other aspects of his theories. He journeyed to Africa and India, made numerous trips to England, and several to the United States. Also, when he was at home, he held weekly seminars in Zurich, some in German and some in English.

The students were his analysands and analysands of his close associates from England, the United States and Europe. Some of them became the first Jungian analysts. The didactic study and case supervision were informal, but Jung initiated and held to the principle that all prospective analysts must undergo personal analysis. The principle has been adopted, also, by all Freudian analytic institutes and many schools of psychiatry. Jung’s openness to new ideas reflected the non-dogmatism that is expressed in his oft-quoted statement: “Thank God that I am Jung and not a Jungian.” His fascination with his own inner life, so apparent in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, resembled that of a scientist with a specimen and affected all aspects of his psychological theories. This fascination was especially evident in the large proportion of time and effort he spent studying archetypal materials.

When he reached the age of seventy, in 1945, Jung began to see a decreasing number of patients and concentrated on writing and teaching. He died at home on June 6, 1961, a few weeks short of his eighty-sixth birthday.

JUNG AND FREUD

Jung’s intellectual development reflected the social climate of Basel at the turn of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The visible psyche
• 3 The hidden psyche
• 4 Becoming who we are
• 5 Challenges to self-understanding
• 6 Relationships to others
• 7 How can we change?
• 8 How our dreams can help us
• 9 Helps from the psyche
• 10 Finding our way in the outer world
• 11 Religion in the psyche
• 12 Individuation—a life-long process
• References
• Index