Carl Jung’s personality theory focuses on the interplay between the conscious and unconscious mind, universal archetypes, the process of individuation, and psychological types.
The theory emphasizes the integration of various aspects of personality to achieve self-realization and encompasses universal and individual dynamics.
It forms the foundation for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a widely-used personality test.
Jung’s Model of the Psyche
Like Freud (and Erikson) Jung regarded the psyche as made up of a number of separate but interacting systems. The three main ones were the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.
According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind as it comprises the thoughts, memories, and emotions a person is aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity.
Like Freud, Jung (1921, 1933) emphasized the importance of the unconscious in relation to personality. However, he proposed that the unconscious consists of two layers.
The first layer called the personal unconscious is essentially the same as Freud’s version of the unconscious. The personal unconscious contains temporality forgotten information and well as repressed memories.
Jung (1933) outlined an important feature of the personal unconscious called complexes. A complex is a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and memories that focus on a single concept.
The more elements attached to the complex, the greater its influence on the individual. Jung also believed that the personal unconscious was much nearer the surface than Freud suggested and Jungian therapy is less concerned with repressed childhood experiences.
It is the present and the future, which in his view was the key to both the analysis of neurosis and its treatment.
Personal Unconscious
The personal unconscious, a concept developed by Carl Jung, refers to all the information and experiences of an individual’s lifetime that have been forgotten or repressed but continue to influence their behavior and attitudes on an unconscious level.
This aspect of the unconscious mind contains memories, perceptions, and thoughts that may not be consciously accessible but can potentially become conscious. It also includes complex combinations of such contents, which Jung referred to as “complexes”.
These are emotionally charged associations or ideas that have a powerful influence over an individual’s behavior and attitudes.
For instance, a person might have a fear of dogs due to a forgotten childhood incident. This fear, while not consciously remembered, is stored in the personal unconscious and could cause an irrational response whenever the person encounters dogs.
In Jung’s model of the psyche, the personal unconscious exists alongside the conscious mind and the collective unconscious, the latter of which contains universal archetypes shared among all humans. These three components interact with each other and contribute to an individual’s overall personality and behavior.
“Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious” (Jung, 1921).
It’s important to note that the contents of the personal unconscious are not always negative. They can also be positive or neutral aspects of experience that have simply fallen out of conscious awareness.
Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious, a concept by Carl Jung, refers to shared, inherited unconscious knowledge and experiences across generations, expressed through universal symbols and archetypes common to all human cultures.
The collective unconscious consists of pre-existent forms, or archetypes, which can surface in consciousness in the form of dreams, visions, or feelings, and are expressed in our culture, art, religion, and symbolic experiences.
These archetypes are universal symbols and themes that are shared across all human cultures and epochs. Some examples of these archetypes include the Mother, the Hero, the Child, the Wise old man, the Trickster, and so on. Each archetype represents common aspects of human experience.
The collective unconscious is a universal version of the personal unconscious, holding mental patterns, or memory traces, which are shared with other members of the human species (Jung, 1928).
These ancestral memories, which Jung called archetypes, are represented by universal themes in various cultures, as expressed through literature, art, and dreams.
‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’ (Jung, 1953, p. 188).
According to Jung, the human mind has innate characteristics “imprinted” on it as a result of evolution. These universal predispositions stem from our ancestral past.
Fear of the dark, or of snakes and spiders might be examples, and it is interesting that this idea has recently been revived in the theory of prepared conditioning (Seligman, 1971).
However, more important than isolated tendencies are those aspects of the collective unconscious that have developed into separate sub-systems of the personality. Jung (1947) called these ancestral memories and images archetypes.
Jungian Archetypes
Jungian archetypes are defined as images and themes that derive from the collective unconscious, as proposed by Carl Jung.
Archetypes have universal meanings across cultures and may show up in dreams, literature, art, or religion.
According to Jung (1921):
‘the term archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermudas. In other words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype, the purely biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’.
Jung (1947) believes symbols from different cultures are often very similar because they have emerged from archetypes shared by the whole human race which are part of our collective unconscious.
For Jung, our primitive past becomes the basis of the human psyche, directing and influencing present behavior. Jung claimed to identify a large number of archetypes but paid special attention to four.
Jung labeled these archetypes the Self, the Persona, the Shadow and the Anima/Animus.
The Persona
The persona (or mask) is the outward face we present to the world. It conceals our real self and Jung describes it as the “conformity” archetype.
This is the public face or role a person presents to others as someone different from who we really are (like an actor).
The Persona, as explained by Carl Jung, is the aspect of our personality that we present to the world as a means of social adaptation and personal convenience.
The term originates from the Greek word for the masks that ancient actors used, symbolizing the roles we play in public. You could think of the Persona as the ‘public relations representative’ of our ego, or the packaging that presents our ego to the outside world.
A well-adapted Persona can greatly contribute to our social success, as it mirrors our true personality traits and adapts to different social contexts.
However, problems can arise when a person overly identifies with their Persona, unable to differentiate between their professional role and their authentic self.
An example would be a teacher who continuously treats everyone as if they were their students, or someone who is overly authoritative outside their work environment.
While this can be frustrating for others, it’s more problematic for the individual as it can lead to an incomplete realization of their full personality.
The Persona is shaped during childhood, driven by the need to conform to the expectations of parents, teachers, and peers.
This usually results in the Persona encompassing the more socially acceptable traits, while the less desirable ones become part of the Shadow, another essential part of Jung’s personality theory.
The Anima/Animus
Another archetype is the anima/animus. The “anima/animus” is the mirror image of our biological sex, that is, the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine tendencies in women.
Each sex manifests the attitudes and behavior of the other by virtue of centuries of living together.
For men, there exists an Anima (a feminine inner personality), and for women, an Animus (a masculine inner personality). These archetypes are derived both from collective ideas of femininity and masculinity and from individual experiences with the opposite sex, beginning with the person’s parents.
The Anima and Animus exist in the unconscious as counterbalances to a person’s conscious sexual identity, serving to complement their experience and understanding of their own gender.
Like the Shadow, the Anima and Animus are often first encountered through projection. For example, the phenomenon of “love at first sight” can be explained as a man projecting his Anima onto a woman (or vice versa), which leads to an immediate and intense attraction.
Jung acknowledged that so-called “masculine” traits (like autonomy, separateness, and aggression) and “feminine” traits (like nurturance, relatedness, and empathy) were not confined to one gender or superior to the other.
Instead, he saw them as parts of a holistic psychological spectrum present in every individual, opposing Freud’s predominantly masculine-centric theory.
The Anima and Animus represent our ‘otherness’, connecting the ego to the broader psyche, thus forming bridges to the unconscious.
Engaging with these complexes can enrich an individual’s understanding of their gender and self.
The Shadow
The Shadow archetype, as defined by Carl Jung, encapsulates the parts of ourselves that we may reject, disown, or simply don’t recognize.
Rooted in both our personal and collective unconscious, the Shadow contains traits that we consciously oppose, often contrasting those presented in our Persona – the outward ‘mask’ we show to the world.
This is the animal side of our personality (like the id in Freud).
It is the source of both our creative and destructive energies. In line with evolutionary theory, it may be that Jung’s archetypes reflect predispositions that once had survival value.
The Shadow isn’t merely negative; it provides depth and balance to our personality, reflecting the principle that every aspect of one’s personality has a compensatory counterpart.
This is symbolized in the idea: “where there is light, there must also be shadow”. Overemphasis on the Persona, while neglecting the Shadow, can result in a superficial personality, preoccupied with others’ perceptions.
Shadow elements often manifest when we project disliked traits onto others, serving as mirrors to our disowned aspects. Engaging with our Shadow can be challenging, but it’s crucial for a balanced personality.
This process, which can involve recognizing and integrating these ‘dark’ elements into our conscious self, aids in fostering a well-rounded personality.
This interplay of the Persona and the Shadow is often explored in literature, such as in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, where characters grapple with their dual natures, further illustrating the compelling nature of this aspect of Jung’s theory.
The Self
Finally, there is the self which provides a sense of unity in experience. For Jung, the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of selfhood (similar to self-actualization), and in this respect, Jung (like Erikson) is moving in the direction of a more humanist orientation.
That was certainly Jung’s belief and in his book “The Undiscovered Self” he argued that many of the problems of modern life are caused by “man’s progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation.” One aspect of this is his views on the significance of the anima and the animus.
Jung argues that these archetypes are products of the collective experience of men and women living together.
However, in modern Western civilization men are discouraged from living their feminine side and women from expressing masculine tendencies. For Jung, the result was that the full psychological development both sexes was undermined.
Together with the prevailing patriarchal culture of Western civilization, this has led to the devaluation of feminine qualities altogether, and the predominance of the persona (the mask) has elevated insincerity to a way of life which goes unquestioned by millions in their everyday life.
Psychological Types
Carl Jung’s psychological types theory suggests that people experience the world using four principal psychological functions – sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking – and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time.
Each of these cognitive functions can be expressed primarily in an introverted or extroverted form. Let’s delve deeper:
Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F): This dichotomy is about how people make decisions. ‘
Thinking’ individuals make decisions based on logic and objective considerations, while ‘Feeling’ individuals make decisions based on subjective and personal values.
Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N): This dichotomy concerns how people perceive or gather information. ‘Sensing’ individuals focus on present realities, tangible facts, and details.
They are practical and literal thinkers. ‘Intuitive’ individuals focus on possibilities, interconnections, and future potential. They are often abstract and theoretical thinkers.
Extroversion (E) vs. Introversion (I): This pair concerns where people derive their energy from.
Extroverts are oriented towards the outer world; they tend to be more outgoing and sociable, deriving energy from interaction with others and the external environment.
Introverts are oriented towards the inner world; they tend to be quiet and reserved, deriving energy from reflection, inner feelings, ideas, and experiences.
In the context of these pairs, everyone has a ‘dominant’ function that tends to predominate in their personality and behavior, along with an ‘auxiliary’ function that serves to support and balance the dominant.
The other two functions are less prominent and constitute the ‘tertiary’ and ‘inferior’ or ‘fourth’ functions.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality inventory based on these ideas of Jung.
The MBTI uses a questionnaire to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions, assigning a type composed of four letters, like ‘INFJ‘ or ‘ESTP‘, based on their answers.
Each letter corresponds to one preference in each of the dichotomous pairs.
It’s important to note that, while these categories help us understand different personality types, human behavior is complex and can’t be wholly captured by these categorizations.
People often exhibit different traits in different situations, and this fluidity is not fully accounted for in such models.
Individuation
Jung proposed that the goal of a person’s psychological development is individuation – a process of becoming aware of oneself, integrating different aspects of personality, and realizing our inherent potential.
It involves integrating the conscious and unconscious parts of our mind and reconciling our many inner contradictions.
Individuation is a central concept in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and it represents the lifelong process of self-realization and self-understanding. It’s about becoming the person that you are innately meant to be, realizing and fulfilling your unique potential.
In the process of individuation, the individual strives to integrate various aspects of their psyche. This includes reconciling and integrating opposites within the self, such as the conscious and unconscious mind, as well as different aspects of the personality, such as the persona (the mask or role we present to the world) and the shadow (the unconscious, less desirable aspects of ourselves).
The concept also involves acknowledging and integrating the anima (the unconscious feminine aspect in men) and the animus (the unconscious masculine aspect in women), and incorporating the wisdom of the self archetype (the unifying center of the psyche). Through this process, a person seeks to achieve a state of wholeness and harmony.
In practical terms, the process of individuation might involve self-reflection, dream analysis, exploration of personal symbols and themes, and conscious engagement with the unconscious parts of the self. It is often a transformative journey that can involve significant psychological changes and growth.
However, individuation is not about achieving some form of perfection. Instead, it is about recognizing, acknowledging, and integrating different aspects of the self.
This includes embracing the paradoxes and complexities of human nature and developing an understanding and acceptance of oneself, warts and all.
It’s important to note that, according to Jung, individuation is a natural process and an inherent goal of human life.
However, it also requires conscious effort and active engagement with the unconscious to fully realize this potential.
Theory of the Libido
Carl Gustav Jung (1948) developed a nuanced understanding of the concept of libido, differing from his mentor Sigmund Freud.
While Freud largely defined libido as sexual energy and considered it a primary motivator of human behavior, Jung diverged from this interpretation, broadening the definition of libido.
Jung saw the libido not merely as sexual energy, but as a generalized life force or psychic energy. According to his theory, this energy is not only the driver behind our sexual desires but also fuels our spiritual, intellectual, and creative pursuits.
It encapsulates the totality of the energy of life, incorporating all our drives and motivations.
In Jungian psychology, the libido is an important component of individuation, which is the process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining one’s individuality.
This process is key to the overall psychological development and mental health of an individual, and the libido, as the motivating psychic energy, plays a central role in it.
When it comes to conflict and pleasure-seeking, Jung’s theory views these as parts of psychic self-regulation. The psyche uses the libido to balance out conflicts within the individual, striving towards a state of equilibrium.
This energy is directed towards areas of conflict to facilitate growth, development, and adaptation, reducing internal tension and dissatisfaction.
Furthermore, this psychic energy or libido also drives us towards seeking pleasure and fulfillment, which are integral to our self-realization and growth.
This can be seen in our desires for creativity, intellectual stimulation, and spiritual experiences, among others.
The libido in Jung’s theory, therefore, encompasses a more holistic understanding of human motivational dynamics.
Freud vs. Jung
Carl Jung was an early supporter of Freud because of their shared interest in the unconscious. He was an active member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (formerly known as the Wednesday Psychological Society).
When the International Psychoanalytical Association was formed in 1910, Jung became president at the request of Freud.
However, in 1912 while on a lecture tour of America, Jung publicly criticized Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex and his emphasis on infantile sexuality.
The following year this led to an irrevocable split between them and Jung went on to develop his own version of psychoanalytic theory.
Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung were two pioneering figures in the field of psychology, and while they shared some common ground, they also had significant differences in their theories. Here are some of them:
The Unconscious Mind
Freud believed that the unconscious mind is a reservoir of repressed experiences and desires. He saw it as primarily personal and filled with content that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed.
Jung, on the other hand, proposed the idea of a collective unconscious that contains archetypes or universal symbols and themes. This is in addition to the personal unconscious that parallels Freud’s conception.
Human Motivation
Freud’s theory emphasized the importance of sexual drive (libido) in shaping human behavior. He proposed that psychic energy was primarily derived from sexual instinct.
Jung, however, suggested that human motivation was not only driven by sexuality but also by a more general life force encompassing other motivations, such as creativity, spirituality, and intellectual pursuits.
Psychosexual Stages
Freud developed a theory of psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) which asserted that early childhood sexual experiences greatly influenced the development of adult personality.
Jung didn’t follow this model and instead proposed a lifelong process of psychological development, which he termed individuation.
Dream Analysis
Both Freud and Jung placed emphasis on dreams as keys to understanding the unconscious mind. However, Freud saw dreams as wish fulfillment and a way to delve into an individual’s hidden desires.
Jung viewed dreams as a tool for the psyche to communicate with the conscious mind, offering solutions to problems and revealing parts of the self through the use of universal symbols.
Religion and Spirituality
Freud was quite critical of religion, viewing it as an illusion and a form of neurosis.
Jung, conversely, saw religion and spirituality as crucial components of the human experience, often associated with the process of individuation and the expression of archetypes from the collective unconscious.
Critical Evaluation
Jung’s (1947, 1948) ideas have not been as popular as Freud’s. This might be because he did not write for the layman and as such his ideas were not a greatly disseminated as Freud’s. It may also be because his ideas were a little more mystical and obscure, and less clearly explained.
On the whole modern psychology has not viewed Jung’s theory of archetypes kindly. Ernest Jones (Freud’s biographer) tells that Jung “descended into a pseudo-philosophy out of which he never emerged” and to many his ideas look more like New Age mystical speculation than a scientific contribution to psychology.
However, while Jung’s research into ancient myths and legends, his interest in astrology, and his fascination with Eastern religion can be seen in that light, it is also worth remembering that the images he was writing about have, as a matter of historical fact, exerted an enduring hold on the human mind.
Furthermore, Jung himself argues that the constant recurrence of symbols from mythology in personal therapy and in the fantasies of psychotics support the idea of an innate collective cultural residue. In line with evolutionary theory, it may be that Jung’s archetypes reflect predispositions that once had survival value.
Jung proposed that human responses to archetypes are similar to instinctual responses in animals. One criticism of Jung is that there is no evidence that archetypes are biologically based or similar to animal instincts (Roesler, 2012).
Rather than being seen as purely biological, more recent research suggests that archetypes emerge directly from our experiences and are reflections of linguistic or cultural characteristics (Young-Eisendrath, 1995).
However, Jung’s work has also contributed to mainstream psychology in at least one significant respect. He was the first to distinguish the two major attitudes or orientations of personality – extroversion and introversion (Jung, 1923).
He also identified four basic functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting) which in a cross-classification yield eight pure personality types.
Psychologists like Hans Eysenck and Raymond Cattell have subsequently built upon this. As well as being a cultural icon for generations of psychology undergraduates Jung, therefore, put forward ideas that were important to the development of modern personality theory.
Most of Jung’s assumptions of his analytical psychology reflect his theoretical differences from Freud. For example, while Jung agreed with Freud that a person’s past and childhood experiences determined future behavior, he also believed that we are shaped by our future (aspirations) too.
References
Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological types. The collected works of CG Jung, Vol. 6 Bollingen Series XX.
Jung, C. G. (1923). On The Relation Of Analytical Psychology To Poetic Art 1 . British Journal of Medical Psychology, 3 (3), 213-231.
Jung, C. G. (1928). Contributions to analytical psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of his soul.
Jung, C. G. (1947). On the Nature of the Psyche. London: Ark Paperbacks.
Jung, C. G. (1948). The phenomenology of the spirit in fairy tales. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 9(Part 1), 207-254.
Jung, C. G. (1953). Collected works. Vol. 12. Psychology and alchemy.
Roesler, C. (2012). Are archetypes transmitted more by culture than biology? Questions arising from conceptualizations of the archetype. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 57(2), 223-246.
Seligman, M. E. P. (1971). Preparedness and phobias. Behavior Therapy, 2(3), 307-20.
Young-Eisendrath, P. (1995). Struggling with jung: The value of uncertainty. Psychological Perspectives, 31(1), 46-54.
further Reading
