Post Published on June 3, 2012.
Last Updated on April 28, 2016 by davemackey.
I have been fascinated for some time for Carl G. Jung. I am not sure where I was first introduced to him – but he has been a person who has repeatedly “popped up” unexpected and unsought in various diverse areas of my studies. When I saw a copy of the book Man and His Symbols at a thrift store I decided to purchase it. The book consists of chapters on Jungian (analytical) psychology not only by C.G. Jung but also by some of his followers – M.-L. von Franz, Joseph L. Henderson, Jolande Jacobi, and Aniela Jaffe.
The volume was at turns fascinating and ridiculous, intriguing and uncharacteristically verbose and dry. Understandable and foreign. I have just finished the volume – all nearly 400 pages – and I am unsure what to say or think about it. There are some ideas which clearly make sense to me, but overall I find the volume hard to believe – the interpretations of signs and dreams seeming too subjective and random. Yet at the same time I hesitate to write the book off, how is it that Jung who seems in many ways so strange and mystical has so deeply affected contemporary thought? Am I simply missing the depth?
I’ve attempted to purchase a biography of Jung twice off of Amazon and both times was sent the wrong book…I feel it may be necessary for me to try yet again, as I have not yet drawn full conclusions on Jung’s thoughts.
I would note that whatever the work may be it has numerous “jumping off” points for further research at it discusses frequently ancient mythology, literature spanning the ages, science, and the arts – mentioning repeatedly names which ring faint bells within my head, those individuals and concepts which I have said, “Someday, I will read more about x.”
What do you think of C.G. Jung? His writings? His followers? Analytical psychology? What works would you recommend reading by him? Was he crazy? A genius? Psychologist or occultist?
[I’ve decided to add below a brief explanation of Jung’s psychology after reading Man and His Symbols below. I welcome comments or corrections on my perception.]
Jung was originally a follower of Freud, but eventually branched off with his own innovations in psychology. Particularly, he did not see almost everything going back to sexual impulses as Freud did. Rather, he suggested that our minds consisted of the conscious and the unconscious – and that the unconscious, while in many sense primal was also in many senses healthier than the conscious modern mind.
Jung did not advocate a return to the primal, but rather the intertwining and interfunctioning of the conscious and the unconscious. Either by themselves was dangerous and would not allow man to function correctly and holistically – but in appropriate balance together they resulted in a whole person.
Jung believed that our dreams where our unconscious’ way of communicating to us important truths that we needed to know. Thus, the analytical psychology which resulted looked for meaning within dreams. This opposed the then common understanding that dreams were simply the random reactions of the brain – without meaning.
For me, it seems logical that dreams may carry meaning with them. As someone who works in IT and sometimes performing application development I have experienced numerous instances in which I will face an “unfixable” problem which after a night’s sleep suddenly has new solutions in my mind. It seems to me that something productive is occurring within my mind during sleep – and I don’t see any reason to believe that similar productivity might occur via the actual dream content themselves.
I know that when I can remember my dreams (not very frequently) they oftentimes relate to real crises within my life. For example, I frequently experience dreams in which I am placed against an implacable (real or imagined) foe. No matter how many times and how many ways in which I oppose the foe (e.g. violence, logic, escape, etc.) the foe always reappears. This connects significantly with multiple situations in my life in which my health (e.g. OCD) or relationships seem to be permanently and unalterably broken. No matter the methods I use to rectify the issues, they remain broken…even if I seem to “overcome” the issue temporarily.
That said, I have several problems with Jung’s psychology. First, I find his use of archetypes unconvincing. I do not doubt that Jung may have actually helped those who came to him overcome their issues in many cases…but I ponder whether his interpretation of their dreams which helped these individuals process and grow was not based upon his own intuitions about their personality and needs which he then imposed upon the dreams. Jung notes that for each individual the content of the dreams has different meaning – that one cannot expect the archetypes to carry the same meaning in different individuals dreams. If this is the case, then how is Jung determining the meaning of the dreams? It seems, imho, that he is interpreting the dreams based on an analysis of the individual…thus the dreams “mean” the solution Jung believes to the problem the individual is struggling with.
Further, I find Jung and his followers use of archetypes and various literary sources loose and disconcerting. It reminds me in many ways of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. As a Christian there were several times within Man and His Symbols that I knew that Jung or his followers weren’t playing fair with Christianity – that is, they were undermining the actual meaning for their own meaning…
It seems to me that the archetypes exist to the extent and depth they do across cultures and religions b/c Jung forced them to exist as such. The connections between some of the archetypes were far too tenuous.
To summarize: I think it is reasonable that our dreams are productive and informative in some sense, but I think Jung’s psychology over-emphasizes the importance of the dream and warps the meaning of things by undermining the explicit truths for perceived underlying truths.
Enjoyed reading your impressions on Man and His Symbols and glad I found your blog. I’m guessing you might have jumped off another jumping off point into Jung’s work since you wrote this post!
I can understand why his writing both resonated and also evoked some skepticism, especially around archetypes and his concept of the collective unconscious. It’s such a far-reaching idea and claim that it provokes the same skepticism in many people, but once you have some experiences and run-ins with archetypal dreams, a shift in perspective may occur.
Many Jungian analysts will ask a patient on a first appointment what dream has brought them into analysis, and this is because a dream has likely brought them in; whether that is because of its numinous qualities, the wildly uncanny synchronicities it’s connected to, or the uncomfortable truths and deep veins that have been touched by the dream and need working through. Every so often we have a dream in our life that demands us to look further into where it came from. These are like a force of their own.
Jung’s approach to his research was phenomenological and experiential. He grappled with difficult ideas with philosophical rigour and only published his theories once he had thoroughly examined his own experiences, undergone extensive self reflection and practical experimentation on his personal journey of individuation, along with many cases of patients (and colleagues patients) over of the years contributing and corroborating significant experiential evidence in relation to his theories. Analytical Psychology also influenced other psychological thinkers who diverged, like James Hillman (Archetypal Psychology) and Arnold Mindell (Process-oriented Psychology). As someone vitally interested in the mysteries of dreams since childhood, I certainly have not encountered any researcher/thinker who has probed anywhere as curiously, deeply, ethically, and as imaginatively as Jung did, in regards to understanding the unconscious.
If you’re still interested in getting further into the topic of Jung and the collective unconscious, my suggested jumping off point would be to get hold of a journal, a pen (or a phone) and to begin to meticulously documenting your dreams on waking, consistently for at least a month. The unfolding encounter with the unconscious that this will eventually trigger would lead you to some interesting places indeed!