Key Concepts in the Psychology of Carl G. Jung

“Learn your theories as well as you can,
                              but put them aside when you touch the miracle of a living soul." CG Jung

Individuation:   Jung believed that a human being is inwardly whole, but that most of us have lost touch with important parts of our selves. Through listening to the messages of our dreams—and of our creative imagination—we can reach the lost or neglected parts of our selves and reintegrate them.  According to Jung, this integration is the goal of life. He called it individuation: the process of coming to know all the parts of oneself, and learning to give them harmonious expression. Jung saw each human being as having a specific nature and calling which is uniquely his or her own, and unless these are recognized and fulfilled through a union of conscious and unconscious, the individual can become dysfunctional and feel mentally unwell (see neurosis, below).

Myth or Story:  Assisted by his exhaustive cross-cultural study of myths and “fairytales,” Jung concluded that these stories, occurring as they do all over the world and in all times, contain relevant truths about real lives, and that everyone has a personal story.  If ones story is denied or rejected, some degree of derangement occurs. When a person discovers or rediscovers his or her own personal story and lives it, healing and integration come.  This is another way of expressing the idea of “individuation.”

Mystery:   A reality which we cannot fully grasp intellectually, or for which we have no reasoned explanation.  Before mystery one retains a certain awe along with the yearning to explore and comprehend.  For Jung, life itself and each individual was such a mystery.

The Unconscious:  The reality of the unconscious is a basic tenet in Jungian psychology, and it is considered the primary healing agent of the psyche. The presence of the unconscious in the psyche is two-fold.

1. Personal Unconscious: That aspect of the psyche which does not usually enter the individual's awareness and which appears in overt behavior or in dreams. It is the source of new thoughts and creative ideals, and produces meaningful symbols.

2. Collective Unconscious: That aspect of the unconscious that manifests the “inherited,” universal themes that run through all human life. It is the whole psychological history of the human race living on within us, the reservoir of our experiences as a species. Jung believed that this is as real in the psyche as the biological strands of evolution are in the body, and that it influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones.

Dreams:  Many of them are concerned simply with the day’s activities or preoccupations and have little to offer as symbolic expressions of the unconscious. However, many other dreams have  a definite,  purposeful structure, and their symbols point to an underlying idea or intention. These dreams are the language our unconscious uses to talk to our conscious mind. The general function of dreams that are rich in symbolic meaning is to restore one's psychological integrity, or wholeness. They fill in the gaps in our self-knowledge, making the unconscious, conscious.

Symbol:  Dream symbols can be images, words or objects, often with a familiar obvious meaning in daily life, but which in the dream represent or stand for something else, something that is hidden or only partially known.  Symbols in dreams are like metaphors in good poetry; they express what eludes the power of words to describe.

Archetypes: Symbolic images existing in the unconscious, which reflect universal themes and fundamental patterns of human thought and experience.  Examples:  The Mother, The Hero, The Wise Elder.    An archetype holds and carries humankind’s combined and accumulated understanding of a particular primordial reality. 

Self: The Archetype symbolizing the totality of the personality.  It is the regulating center of the psyche, which embraces both conscious and unconscious and represents the striving for unity, wholeness, and integration.  Jung believed there was no essential difference between the Self as an experiential, psychological reality and the traditional concept of a supreme deity. It might equally be called the “the goddess in every woman,” (Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, Jungian Analyst.)

Persona:  In Greek theater the “Persona” was a mask worn by actors to indicate the role they played. In Jungian psychology it refers to the “character” that is our public face, the self we present to the world. The Persona is a convenience in that it permits social interaction that is sufficiently personal while at the same time appropriately private.  Most of our associations with other people don’t benefit from—still less do they require—a detailed, complex knowledge of who we are.   Our public identities, like masks, are largely formulaic, often based on our role(s) in society.  The personal details that we add reveal only what we want others to see of us, often our own ideal for ourselves.  “In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality….” (CG Jung).   Jung perceived that the Persona might become less a convenience and more of a trap, if one so identifies with the public face that the deeper aspects of the real self are neglected or forgotten. 

Shadow:   The side of the personality that is largely unseen and unknown. It is in “darkness” because it is most deeply unconscious.  All the unconscious aspects of oneself, both positive and negative, are contained within the Shadow.   This includes those things about oneself one is not proud of, qualities one denies or disowns, or secretly prefers to “blame” on someone else; but it also includes personal characteristics that are simply unrecognized or underdeveloped. Hence the Shadow is the repository of abilities, creative instincts, and positive qualities that lie buried, waiting to be found and brought to light.

Anima:   Archetype in the male psyche that symbolizes and expresses the qualities and energies of his unconscious which are often thought of as "feminine."

           It is also expressed as “Yin.”

Animus:  Archetype in the female psyche that symbolizes and expresses the qualities and energies of her unconscious which are often thought of as “masculine.”

                It is also expressed as “Yang.”

Neurosis: Neurosis is the symptom of a lie we are telling ourselves. “When you are not quite at one with yourself. . .you are approaching a neurotic condition.” (CG Jung) In contemporary terms, Jungian psychology might be called a “wellness” model, which is to say, it more defines the picture of health than the nature of illness.  The perception of neurosis in Jungian psychology reflects a humanistic, wholistic, and essentially positive view of our mental state.  We are by nature whole and perfect; whatever there is in us, or whatever has happened to us that interferes with the realization of our wholeness may be called neurotic.  Jungian-based treatment, therefore, may be seen as an intensive phase in what is really an ongoing process of growing up in all ways, even to perfection of the true Self.

Psychological Types:  Jung found that while the fundamental “structure” and operation of human personalities are the same, people differ in certain ways based upon, first, their attitude or orientation to the world outside themselves, and, second, based upon their preferred or natural way of exercising some basic mental functions.  JUNG distinguished two general attitudes--introversion and extraversion; four basic functions--thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting; and what I call two processing styles or ways of holding what is real—random and linear.  Perhaps the most popularized of all Jung’s ideas is the system of identifying personality “types” according to which psychological attitudes and functions predominate in a person’s way of living. The simplest way to state these notions briefly may be in a set of tables.