'Carl Jung’s Theory: Personality Types and How They Help Therapists Essay\r'

'In this essay I aim to disembowel and evaluate Carl Jung’s surmisal concerning mental im erality types and pose how they might usefully help a healer to determine therapeutic goals. I will withal look at the origins and characteristics of attitudes and work ons and show how these fanny be related to mental derangement. Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 to a reverend who had lost his faith and was the scarcely surviving son; which lent him to a earlier solitary baby birdhood which was emotion each(prenominal)y deprived.\r\nHis m new(prenominal) had bouts of kind anguish and illness and spent abundant periods of period in hospital. He was a lazy scholarly somebody and pretended to faint regularly to avoid shoal work, solely after hearing his father voice concerns he would amount to nothing in life, he stopped this and engaged with his studies. This is relevant in that he use this experience of his own behaviour as an grammatical case of how neurotic behaviour dejection be over issue when papered to the realities of life.\r\nJung studied medicine at University, whence trained as a psychiatrist specialising in schizophrenia. He spent time studying with Freud, with Freud level off seeing Jung as his main tallytisan, save he strugg guide with Freud’s supposition of everything cosmos influenced by innerity and they split their on the wholeiance in 1913. Jung was deeply stirred by this split and experienced his own mental ‘crisis’ rooting in him withdrawing to Zurich for six years, exploring his own unconscious mind.\r\nPatients equable visited him further and he became renowned instaurationwide for his skills as a psychoanalyst. â€Å"During this period, Jung spent considerable time working on his dreams and fantasies and seeking to understand them as further as possible, in terms of his everyday life” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections p. 170, unex ampereled York Vintage Books), this led to Jung developing his own theories and he travelled far and wide becoming fascinate with how culture take ups the psyche (the word he uses for iconlity).\r\nThis fascination with culture greatly influenced the theory Jung created. According to hay (1994, pg. 233), Jung â€Å"saw libido as being the basic zipper of motivation and pleasures besides Jung’s concept of libido was a non-sexual life fury encompassing religious admiration and mystical life affirming experiences as tumefy as sexuality. ” Although diametric to Freud’s interpretation of libido, the influence of Freud when Jung created his theory is evident.\r\nThis was the beginning of his journey investigating unlike factors which affect the personality; which he believed were influences of a higher order. sick by his split with Freud and to help him understand the melodic theme stick of their difficulties Jung tried analysing cardinalness patient’s case history from the posts of Freud and besides from Alfred Adler, who saw the origins of psychoneurosis as being due to how one relates to caller and in crabby, the desire for power.\r\nThe outcome was that dsepite both methods being incompatible with apiece other, both were valid and do sense in the understanding of the patient’s pathology. Jung reasoned this was due to the diametric personalities of Freud and Adler and the expression each viewed the world antithetically, subject matter that different personality types rag people be spend a penny and think in different ways because their privateity influences their attitudes. Jung’s theory is found upon structures within the psyche, the egotism, the Personal Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious and Archetypes.\r\nThe Ego (different to the one identified by Freud) is the ‘ ego’ or the total personality including the conscious and unconscious. This is the part which combines all mental processes, characteristi cs, contents, positivity and negativity as well as constructive to destructive thinking and behaviour. The ‘Self’ encloses conscious thoughts and feelings well-nigh our own behaviour and feelings, our memories of by experiences and our inner sense of our identity. Jung claimed that the Self is not continuously achieved and never occurs until middle age.\r\nThe Personal Unconscious Jung believed contain our personal experiences which we be unaw be of, blocked or pent-up because we find them unacceptable, unless memories which can be revived through hypnosis or psychoanalysis. The ‘ corporate unconscious’ is central to Jung’s work, although not invented by him, since for centuries this theory had come to the fore in philosophical, literary and psychological systemal works; nevertheless it was Jung who defined it further. Jung’s ripening of this theory was empirical because he mat up that if anyone had his experiences thusly they would a rrive at the resembling conclusion.\r\nHayes (1994 pg 233) cites that Jung â€Å" reliable Freud’s model of conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious but believed in a further level to the unconscious †the ‘ embodied unconscious’, Hayes (1994 pg 234) besides states, â€Å"The deepest levels of the unconscious, Jung thought, were shaped by all humans and date back to our immemorial ances give” . In simple terms this message that not everything is wise(p) or due to experiences, but that at that place is a higher order which we have no control over and that reliable separate of our unconscious atomic number 18 built in in the first-class honours degree place we atomic number 18 born.\r\nIn his dealings with schizophrenic patients, Jung spy that many another(prenominal) an(prenominal) of their fantasies, dreams and hallucinations were similar to one another and also similar to ancient cultures and myths. From this he deduced that these cont ents were far beyond personal experience and had because come from evolutionary teaching, were shared from ancestors and so were innate. Jung called these similarities across cultures, these fancys of prevalent themes and symbols ‘Archetypes’. He described many archetypes such as God, Mother, Father, Hero, Child and many more and believed that different archetypes maintain their influence on us in different situations.\r\nThe Persona is one such archetype. Jung described the persona as being the mask or image that we allow others to see, disguising our inner feelings to ensure we behave in a companionablely acceptable way. We have personas for all our different roles and adapt accordingly, however this sometimes causes inbred issues when different personas meet and they are too different to be comfortable, such as the role our persona projects in our work will often be very different to that we project with our friends.\r\nThe night, another archetype, describ es the bootleg side our nature, the sinister within; holding repressed material in our personal unconscious and normal evil images from our corporate unconscious. Jung believed that we never sincerely bang our shadow since it is too frightening to explore the electromotive force we have to think evil thoughts or do harm. Mattoon (2005 pg 28) states, â€Å"the expression of the shadow is likely when a person is in the grip of disquiet, under the influence of inebriant or otherwise subject to a step-down of consciousness… [sic] we repress our shadows to a degree that we are not aware of their behaviour…\r\n[sic] Under these conditions, the shadow is autonomous and may express itself in moods, irritability, physiological symptoms, accidents, emotions and behaviours, even cruelty”. You can see therefore that the archetype of the shadow can play a major part in the psychological disturbance a client may be suffering, displaying these kinds of behaviours can be indicators of a darker side of an undivided touch on their life and can help the therapist in identifying the repressed content, which in turn can evanesce them to assess the progression necessary to improve things for the client.\r\nJung’s other two main archetypes are the anima and animus. The anima, the powder-puff element of the male psyche, contains inherited ideas of what constitutes woman, their experiences of women and incorporates positive and forbid qualities usually associated with women, such as emotionality, seductiveness, demanding, vanity and moodiness. The animus, the male element within the female psyche, is derived in the same way as the anima but from the opposite perspective; females’ experiences of men. It consists of male qualities such as reason, logic, leadership and social insensitivity.\r\nJung felt that having these archetypes enabled men and women to understand each other better. An issue here would occur when animus types try to b rave in an anima role which can cause depression, anxiety, hostility or other, again, identifying this would enable the therapist to digest on these archetypes and find how they fit into the psyche of the individual to help determine the therapeutic goal. According to Begg (2001), Jung also invented Synchronicity which is the term he used for the idea of meatful coincidences.\r\nHe felt that a synchronistic particular was otherworldly, inexplicable and wondrous and was an â€Å"acausal connective principal” meaning golf links between two apparently disunited events occur and again, this supported his spiritual beliefs that our psyche is subject to a higher order. He believed these synchronistic events were a result of the archetypal forces guiding us in certain directions which led to the ‘individuation process’ or the single and completeness of personality.\r\nJung considered individuation to be a driving force leading to uniqueness, he wrote ( collect ind ustrial plant †12 par 330) that â€Å"every life is the realisation of a whole, that is, of a self;…. this realisation can also be called individuation”. The process of individuation includes positive and disconfirming elements and can begin with mental pain such as depression and anxiety, from a therapy perspective this is laborious enough to arouse desire for change but will involve facing one’s shadow. Jung’s theory is a complex one and although has underlying Freudian theories to an extent, much of this faded as he explored the psyche over the years.\r\nJung, like Freud, believed that there were clear stages in maturation; however Jung describes development as having only three main stages. The first being the ‘Pre-sexual’ stage; blood to approximately pentad years old. This is where he felt the individual is thoughtless with nutrition and growth. According to Carl Jung’s Collected Works †8, paragraph 668, he stated that, â€Å"there is no demonstrable ego-consciousness in childhood, for which reason the earliest years leave hardly any traces in the keeping”.\r\nThis indicates that Jung thought that young children live largely in the collective unconscious, it suggests that until around age five, a child lives in a fantasy where they experience an virtually archetypal world in terms of the paternal image they have and the fact that many children of this age have an imaginary playmate, Jung felt supported this view. The abutting stage, from five to pubescence, the ‘pre-pubertal’ phase, was the real beginning of sexuality. In Carl Jung’s Collected Works †8, paragraph 756, Jung states, â€Å"Psychic birth occurs at puberty with the conscious differentiation from the parents…\r\n[and] the blast of sexuality. This differs significantly from Freud’s theory, which suggests that we are tied to our sexual urges from birth. Jung acknowledges the stages in a less controversial way and more in keeping with how we view stages of development in the modern day. Things have not really changed as much as we are led to believe. Mattoon (2005) quotes Socrates from the 5th Century â€Å"Our youth now shaft luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show inattention for their elders and love to sound in place of exercise.\r\nThey no longer rise when others enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers”. This example from history backs up Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious to some extent. It suggests that behaviours of adolescents are not learned at all and that they behave the way they are naturally meant to be; since this has been the way for centuries. Should the behaviours be strictly ‘learnt’, then why would adolescent behaviour be so similar all over the world, in other cultures and before technology brought u s close at hand(predicate) together?\r\nThe final stage he named ‘ due date’ which he identified as being from puberty to adulthood including old age. Jung describes three stages within ‘ maturity date’, the first (adolescence and young adulthood), being about development about a particular nightclub and how to live in it, the help (middle life) focussing on establishing oneself into society through work and personal relationships, in particular marriage and the third (old age) being the time one acquires wisdom.\r\nWithin this ‘maturity’ stage, the ‘middle-life’ he talks about is what today we would describe as a ‘mid-life crisis’. This has happened in the past at 35-40 years mark; although this is getting afterwards as longevity increases. This is the time Jung felt that concerns arose about youthful objectives having not been met or presumption up on. Also a time when somatogenic energies subside and there a re fewer possibilities for achievements and adventures. Jung suggested that at this stage there is an inward turn of psychic energy and refocusing on relationships, goals and the meaning of life.\r\nThe second half of ‘maturity’ is old age and it is at this stage we search for meaning and movement towards wholeness. The nature model within Jung’s theory explains the unconscious as a mirror image of the conscious, meaning that an extravert person would have an introvert unconscious and vice versa, which links back to the anima/animus archetypes. He believed that the personality is complex and many sided, in that we have intuition, emotion, thought, intentionality and so on.\r\nJung felt that the individual should be qualified in developing different facets to the personality every bit and in congruence with one another but if this development was uneven, one side developed and others repressed, this would educate neurotic conflict. He decided the solution to t his was that the individual needed to get in contact with the collective unconscious which in turn would itself heal the psyche, restoring psychological integrity. To do this would involve psychoanalysis or hypnotherapy.\r\nThe introvert takes longer to condition to stimulus, however, once conditioned it is long lasting, they pay attention to subjective factors and inner responses, enjoy being whole, have few friends but are incredibly loyal and may be cumbrous in social situations. Whereas the extravert is more go down to form new standstills between stimulus and response but although this happens quickly, it is not long lasting, they attend to their outer(prenominal) world such as people, events and things and can be seen as quite superficial, these extraverts are disinclined to be alone and seem afraid of their inner world.\r\nJung called Introverts and Extraverts ‘types’ but he meant this relating to attitudes and controls, the dimensions of conscious and unc onscious not by way of putting people into ‘boxes’ and he used their preferences as a way of identifying ‘type’. Mattoon (2005 pg 23) describes Jung’s description of the Introversion-extraversion (IE) as being one of the trump out substantiated dimensions in academic psychology. The IE dimension stood alone but Jung was not convinced it was sufficient and later identified two pairs of functions: sensation †intuition (SU) and thinking-feeling (TF).\r\nThe sensing function relates to how we experience stimuli through our senses without evaluation, the feeling function evaluates the degree of importance of an object or stimuli and is different to an emotional response, the thinking function uses reason and logic and assigns meaning and the intuition function is how we relate to the world without reason, in the form of hunches. Each of these functions is either dominating or non-dominant and largely excludes the other. Jung saw that any function can be associated with either attitude (introversion/extraversion) and also with either gender.\r\nGerman psychologist Hans Eysenck took on Jung’s theory of extraversion-introversion personality traits but also linked biological science of pursualion function to the equation, suggesting that the brain has two sets of neuronic mechanisms, excitatory and inhibitory, the former responsible for stimulating brain activity, the latter inhibiting activity of nerve cells. He utter balance is required which is regulated by the lift Reticular Activating System and it is the arousal produced that links his personality dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism, with neuroticism personality traits including anxiety and worry.\r\nHe also talks of Second club Personality where first order traits are classify and the range from neuroticism to stability is biologically decided. He found that neurotic individuals react readily to disagreeable stimuli whereas stable individuals took l onger to react, with a lesser reaction. both(prenominal) of Eysenck’s theory is comparable with Jung’s but is more scientifically testable compared to Jung’s studies which were empirically based, however Eysenck examined the introversion-extraversion element with success.\r\nJung’s theory of personality types can be useful to the therapist in that it gives many options to explore; the overlapping functions however can be confusing regarding assessing whether the influences are a result of the shadow, the collective unconscious or the influence of one of the many archetypes. Despite this, Jung’s theory has been influential in modern psychology and much of his resulting work is still used today, such as his word association tests which are used to explore the unconscious.\r\nHis theory would be useful to a therapist in the quest to uncover underlying factors in the individual of which they are unaware, using the indicators to explore what is behind their issues and giving sagacity to allow the therapeutic goals to be achieved. Bibliography Begg, DeikeSynchronicity †2001 Hayes, NickyFoundations of Psychology †1994 Jung, Carl Collected Works †Volume 8 †The Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche Jung, CarlCollected Works †Volume 12 †Psychology and Alchemy N. York Vintage BooksMemories, Dreams, Reflections Mattoon, Mary AnnJung and The valet de chambre Pscyhe.\r\n'