Handout on Carl Gustav Jung

"Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide."


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 waking imagination, we can contact and reintegrate our different parts. The goal of life is individuation, the process of coming to know, giving expression to, and harmonizing the various components of the psyche. If we realize our uniqueness, we can undertake a process of individuation and tap into our true self. Each human being has a specific nature and calling which is uniquely his or her own, and unless these are fulfilled through a union of conscious and unconscious, the person can become sick.

STORY. Jung concluded that every person has a story, and when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration comes when the person discovers or rediscovers his or her own personal story.

NEUROSIS. Jung had a hunch that what passed for normality often was the very force which shattered the personality of the patient. That trying to be "normal", when this violates our inner nature, is itself a form of pathology. In the psychiatric hospital, he wondered why psychiatrists were not interested in what their patients had to say.

MYSTERY. For Jung life was a great mystery. We know and understand very little of it. He never hesitated to say, "I don't know." Always admitted when he came to the end of his understanding.

THE UNCONSCIOUS. A basic tenet: All products of the unconscious are symbolic and can be taken as guiding messages. What is the dream or fantasy leading the person toward? The unconscious will live, and will move us, whether we like it or not.

Personal unconscious. That aspect of the psyche which does not usually inter 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.





Collective unconscious: That aspect of the unconscious which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. Inwardly, the whole history of the human race, back to the most primitive times, lives on in us.

SYMBOL. A name, term, picture which is familiar in daily life, yet has other connotations besides its conventional and obvious meaning. Implies something vague and partially unknown or hidden, and is never precisely defined. Dream symbols carry messages from the unconscious to the rational mind.

ARCHETYPES. These primordial images reflect basic patterns or universal themes common to us all which are present in the unconscious. These symbolic images exist outside space and time. Examples: Shadow, animus, anima, the old wise person, the innocent child. There also seem to be nature archetypes, like fire, ocean, river, mountain.

PERSONA. The "mask" or image we present to the world. Designed to make a particular impression on others, while concealing our true nature.

SHADOW. The side of our personality which we do not conscousnly display in public. May have positive or negative qualities. If it remains unconscious, the shadow is often projected onto other individuals or groups.

ANIMA. Archetype symbolizing the unconscious female component of the male psyche. Tendencies or qualities often thought of as "feminine."

ANIMUS. Archetype symbolizing the unconscious male component of the female psyche. Tendencies or qualities often thought of as "masculine."

DREAMS. Specific expressions of the unconscous which have a definite, purposeful structure indicating an underlying idea or intention. The general function of dreams is to restore one's total psychic equlilibrium. They tend to play a complementary or compensatory role in our psychic makeup.

COMPLEXES: Usually unconscious and repressed emotionally-toned symbolic material that is incompatible with consciousness. "Stuck-together" agglomerations of thoughts, feelings, behavior patterns, and somatic forms of expression. Can cause constant psychological disturbances and symptoms of neurosis. With intervention, can become conscious and greatly reduced in their impact.

WORD ASSOCIATION TEST. A research technique Jung used to explore the complexes in the personal unconscious. Consisted of reading 100 words one at a time and having the person respond quickly with a word of his or her own. Delays in responding can indicate a complex.

SYNCHRONICITY. The meaningful coincidence of a psychic and a physical state or event which have no causal relationship to each other.

SELF. Archetype symbolizing the totality of the personality. It represents the striving for unity, wholeness, and integration.

MANDALA. The Sanskrit word for circle. For Jung, the mandala was a symbol of wholeness, completness, and perfection. Symbolized the self.

AMPLIFICATION. To get a larger sense of a dream, a kind of spreading-out of associations by referring to mythology, art, literature, music. ("Where have we heard this before."

ACTIVE IMAGINATION. A concept embracing a variety of techniques for activating our imaginal processes in waking life in order to tap into the unconscious meanings of our symbols.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES. People differ in certain basic ways, even though the instincts which drive us are the same. He distinguished two general attitudes--introversion and extraversion; and four functions--thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting.





Extravert: Outer-directed, need for sociability, chooses people as a source of energy, often action-oriented.





Introvert: Inner-directed, need for privacy and space; chooses solitude to recover energy, often reflective.





Thinking function: Logical, sees cause & effect relations, cool, distant, frank, questioning.





Feeling function: Creative, warm, intimate, a sense of valuing positively or negatively. (Note that this is not the same as emotion)





Sensing function: Sensory, oriented toward the body and senses,


detailed, concrete, present.





Intuitive. Sees many possibilities in situations, goes with hunches, impatient with earthy details, impractical, sometimes not present.