Psychological Intervention

Neo Freudian theory

Carl Jung Psychoanalytic theory

Carl Jung Psychotherapy

July 26, 1875 - June 6, 1961

Introduction

Jungian therapy (“J-analysis”) is a face-to -ace psychoanalytic psychotherapy based on

psychodynamic principles elaborated by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung after his
break with Freud and classical psychoanalysis around 1912. In sharp contrast to the rarely
psychoanalytic model of the mind restricted to instinct, drive, and defense, Jung postulated
an innate, irreducible, and thus additional psychic need to apprehend meaning and to express
it symbolically. This need most commonly generates a religious impulse that cannot in every
case be derived from (nor need always be a defense against conflict with) the biological
drives. When ignored or blocked, this need can produce not only unhappiness, but
psychological distress and eventually overt symptoms. Jung considered the now-
widespread dismissal of religion as driven less by rational disillusionment than by
hubris.
Classical Jungian therapy therefore aims at promoting an “individuation process”
marked by an individually determined interior experience of a markedly mystical
character. Jungian scholarship incorporates and interprets a vast, world-spanning body of
mythological, religious, mystical, and occult references. Jungian ideas are widely embraced
within artistic, literary, religious, and personal circles, but remain largely peripheral to
academic psychology and psychiatry.

Jung anticipated many later trends: “ego-psychology”, which defines, and focuses treatment toward
expanding a defense-free domain of the ego: the ideas of Otto Rank, who similarly focused on free
will; Heinz Kohut with his emphasis on a “self” developed out of “normal narcissism”; Hans
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Leowald’s re-evaluation of regression as not merely restorative but creative; and Abraham Maslow’s
notion of “self-realization”. Today’s easy blending parallels Jung’s approach-and was in large part,
fostered by it.
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Jung's Methods in Psychotherapy

Jung's method in psychotherapy follows the Freud's one, as he often admitted. In rare cases, in
which Freudian approach of the soul is not sufficient, Jung applies also other methods that
should guide the patient to a personal confrontation with the collective unconscious, and with
archetypes. This confrontation aims the assimilation of archetypal images, in one word the
individuation, an extensive process that leads to the realization of a psychic totality that
includes equally the conscious and the unconscious. In common terms, it is all about an
extension of the conscious mind which includes therefore the archetypal materials.
The main methods of Jungian therapy are as follow:
• Free Associations Test
Test used in psychotherapeutic treatment that consists of recording the average response time
to certain stimulus-words. The patient is asked to answer to the inducted words pronounced
by the analyst with any word that comes to his mind. The response time can be an indicator of
the constellated unconscious complexes.
• Dream Analysis
Up to a point, it follows Freud's method: free associations, subject level, retrospective
interpretation. But Jung added several other new ideas as well:
i. Amplification of dream content,
ii. The idea that the dream is a compensation of ego's unilateral attitude
iii. The idea of the oneiric message's finality
• Active Imagination
Let all the things flow. Let inner fantasies flow freely but not as a detached and contemplative
viewer, nor as a psychotherapist, but as an actor that takes part in the fantasies, that plays a
role in them. The fantasies are products of the unconscious and must be fully integrated in our
conscious mind.
• Symbol Analysis
• It aims at the integration of the unconscious psyche and the extension of conscious.
•
• Analysis of Oneiric Symbols

The symbol analysis is a basic component of Jung's analytical method. He devoted this
subject a great number of works among which we mention: Psychology and Alchemy.

The symbols often appear in dreams and this is why they request
the analyst's contribution to their decrypting. Unlike Freud, who
reduces almost all oneiric symbols to sexuality, Jung claims that
the symbols are indications of the collective unconscious
archetypes and especially of the Self (the archetype of the center).

Notes:
Jung introduces the notion of amplification in the effort of dream
interpretation. The analyst participates with his vast knowledge to
the deciphering of the oneiric symbols' psychological signification.
This knowledge is extracted from astrology, alchemy, mythology,
history of religions, etc.

Jung devoted the rest of his life to developing his ideas, especially those on the relation
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between psychology and religion. In his view, obscure and often neglected texts of writers in
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Carl Jung Psychoanalytic theory

the past shed unexpected light not only on Jung's own dreams and fantasies but also on those
of his patients..

Jung’s Influence
Jung has had an enduring influence on psychology as well as wider society. He has influenced
psychotherapy, introducing:
 The concept of introversion vs. extraversion
 The concept of the complex
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was inspired by Jung's psychological types
theory
 Socionics, similar to MBTI, is also based on Jung's psychological types.
o The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric
questionnaire designed to identify certain psychological differences according to the
typological theories of Carl Gustav Jung as published in his 1921 book Psychological
Types (English edition, 1923). The original developers of the personality inventory
were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. They initially
created the indicator during World War II, believing that a knowledge of personality
preferences would help women who were entering the industrial workforce for the first
time identify the sort of war-time jobs where they would be "most comfortable and
effective".
o Socionics is a theory of personality and interpersonal interaction based on Carl Jung's
work on Psychological Types, Freud's theory of the conscious and subconscious mind,
and Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism. The theory was developed
mainly by the Lithuanian researcher Aušra Augustinavičiūtė in the 1970s and 80s, and
continues to develop today. The name socionics is derived from the word "society",
since Augustinavičiūtė believed that each personality type has a distinct purpose in
society, which can be described and explained by socionics.

Central to socionics is the idea that a person's psyche processes information using
"psychological functions." Different orderings of these functions result in different
ways of perceiving, processing, and producing information, which in turn result in
distinct thinking patterns, values, behavior, and thus different personality types.
Socionics also includes a theory of intertype relations which examines the interaction of
these functions among types.

Spirituality as a cure for alcoholism

Jung also played a role in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous. For example, Jung
once treated an American patient (Rowland H.) suffering from chronic alcoholism. After
working with the patient for some time, and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the
man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual
experience. Jung noted that occasionally such experiences had been known to reform
alcoholics where all else had failed.
Rowland took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience.
He returned home to the United States and joined a Christian evangelical church. He also told
other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of
the alcoholics he told was Ebby Thatcher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill
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Wilson, later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Thatcher told Wilson about Jung's
ideas. Wilson, who was finding it impossible to maintain sobriety, was impressed and sought
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out his own spiritual experience. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the
formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original 12-step program, and from there into the
whole 12-step recovery movement, although AA as a whole is not Jungian and Jung had no
role in the formation of that approach or the 12 steps.
The above claims are documented in the letters of Carl Jung and Bill W., excerpts of which
can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous. The detail of this story is
disputed by some historians.

Jung and Freud

Jung's legacy has not enhanced Christianity. From its inception psychotherapy has
undermined the doctrines of Christianity. Sigmund Freud's attitudes towards Christianity were
obviously hostile, since he believed that religious doctrines are all illusions and labelled all
religion as "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity."1 His one-time follower and
colleague Carl Jung, on the other hand, may not be quite as obvious in his disdain for
Christianity. However, his theories have disdainfully diminished Christian doctrines by
putting them at the same level as those of all religions.
While Jung did not call religion a "universal obsessional neurosis," he did view all religions,
including Christianity, to be collective mythologies - not real in essence, but having a real
effect on the human personality. Dr. Thomas Szasz describes the difference between the
psychoanalytic theories of the two men this way: "Thus in Jung's view religions are
indispensable spiritual supports, whereas in Freud's they are illusory crutches". While Freud
argued that religions are delusionary and therefore evil, Jung contended that all religions are
imaginary but good. Both positions are anti-Christian; one denies Christianity and the other
mythologizes it.
After reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Jung contacted Freud and a friendship with
mutual admiration ensued and lasted about eight years. Even though Jung had served four
years as the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the break between
Jung and Freud was complete. Jung departed from Freud on a number of points, particularly
Freud's sex theory. In addition, Jung had been developing his own theory and methodology,
known as analytical psychology.

CLASSICAL JUNGIAN THERAPY

1) Format
Jungian therapy is conducted face-to-face. Jung believed that the “neutrality” of the classical
psychoanalyst was undesirable-because largely illusiory. He was the first to argue for a more
“personal” form of psychotherapy in which the mixing of the patients problems and biases
with those of the therapist would be accepted as a virtue. Treatment sessions last about an hour
and take place no more than three times weekly, more typically once or twice.

2) Process
Classical Jungian therapy has two chief components: “dream interpretation” and “active
imagination”.

a) Dream interpretation- the Jungian approach to dream interpretation uses two main
techniques:
b) association and amplification. To associate to his dream, the patient freely expresses, without
c) censorship, any thoughts that the imagery brings to mind. In contrast to classical
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d) psychoanalytic technique, however, Jungian-style association is interpreted, not free. It is akin

e) to the limited association Jung asked of his subjects in his early word-association studies:
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once
f) a link is established by the patient between nan element of the dream and some aspect of the
g) patient’s life-past or present- the therapist encourages him or her to set that element aside and
h) associate to other aspects of dream. Jung insisted that while associations eventually lead
i) toward a patient’s familiar conflicts( which he called complexes) they wandered away from
j) the specific meaning of the dream to which they were tethered. Inevitably, the lack of new
k) information will lead both therapist and patient to devalue dream interpretation. For both
l) practical and theoretical Jungian treatment, dream interpretation consists in teaching the
m) patient (by commentary, not directive) how to make plausible links between the elements of
n) dreams and their personal concerns. Early on, the dreams are expected to be of the kind
o) familiar to most psychotherapists: fleeting, fragmentary, often confusing.

Active imagination- once a patient has begun to experience “big dreams”, they are
encouraged to take their expressive engagement with the material a step further. The patient
will be guided to converse with the dream figures in imagination. The goal is to achieve a
state of mind akin to certain forms of meditation that utilize explicit visualization. Active
imagination is a method of assimilating unconscious contents (dreams, fantasies, etc.) through
some form of self-expression. The object of active imagination is to give a voice to sides of
the personality (particularly the anima/animus and the shadow) that are normally not heard,
thereby establishing a line of communication between consciousness and the
unconsciousness. Even when the end products-drawing, painting, writing, sculpture, dance,
music, etc. - are not interpreted, something goes on between creator and creation that
contributes to a transformation of consciousness.
The first stage of active imagination is like dreaming with open eyes. It can take place
spontaneously or be artificially induced.
In the latter case you choose a dream, or some other fantasy-image, and concentrate on it by
simply catching hold of it and looking at it. You can also use a bad mood as a starting-point,
and then try to find out what sort of fantasy-image it will produce, or what image expresses
this mood. You then fix this image in the mind by concentrating your attention. Usually it will
alter, as the mere fact of contemplating it animates it. The alterations must be carefully noted
down all the time, for they reflect the psychic processes in the unconscious background,
which appear in the form of images consisting of conscious memory material. In this way
conscious and unconscious are united, just as a waterfall connects above and below.
The second stage, beyond simply observing the images, involves a conscious participation in
them, the honest evaluation of what they mean about oneself, and a morally and intellectually
binding commitment to act on the insights. This is a transition from a merely perceptive or
aesthetic attitude to one of judgment.
Although, to a certain extent, he looks on from outside, impartially, he is also an acting and
suffering figure in the drama of the psyche. This recognition is absolutely necessary and
marks an important advance. So long as he simply looks at the pictures he is like the foolish
Parsifal, who forgot to ask the vital question because he was not aware of his own
participation in the action. But if you recognize your own involvement you yourself must
enter into the process with your personal reactions, just as if you were one of the fantasy
figures, or rather, as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real.
The judging attitude implies a voluntary involvement in those fantasy-processes which
compensate the individual and-in particular-the collective situation of consciousness. The
avowed purpose of this involvement is to integrate the statements of the unconscious, to
assimilate their compensatory content, and thereby produce a whole meaning which alone
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makes life worth living and, for not a few people, possible at all.
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3) Individuation
In any event, not every one has a knack for active imagination. Those who do, are considered
to have the essential skills for the “individuation process”. Utilizing active imagination as its
chief vehicle, the Jungian analysand may now undergo a lengthy series of imaginative
encounters with the major “archetypes”. These appear as larger-than-life brings of mythic
proportion and so real as to engender intense emotional response. The therapists role at this
stage is two-fold: first, to ensure that the emergence of this archetypal material is placed so as
to minimize the risk of “inflation” (hypomania); and second, to guide the analysand toward
literature that “amplifies” the meaning of emerging theme. Jung’s own autobiography remains
the best example in the literature of such state, and of the difficulty of discriminating among
deliberate active imagination, psychotic, hallucination, and extreme dissociation. There are
some individuals who are able to engage in active imagination but who should not, because of
its potentially destabilizing effects.
In successful individuation process, the encounter with the archetypes greatly expands the
individual’s sense of meaning and purpose in life, and their flexibility in adaptation. Potentials
previously unrecognized and untapped may be awakened, and aspects of the personality that
had lain fallow may now be cultivated and incorporated, yielding greater “wholeness”. Jung
believed that such an expansion of the personality was marked in dreams and active
imagination by the spontaneous appearance of symbols of the “self”. These are images whose
basic geometric format is the quartered circle (mandala). They are strikingly similar to
symbols utilized worldwide to represent God; in polytheistic cultures, the highest god; in
Gnostic religions, the union of all gods.

The ideal classical Jungian individuation process is expected to traverse the following stages:
o Integration of the ‘personal unconscious’, or ‘shadow’ loosely equated with the
unconscious as defined in psychoanalysis; this prepares the individual for the
integration of the “collective unconscious”, that is , the archetypes, the wit
o The “anima”-unrealized feminine aspects of a man, or “animus”-unrealized
masculine aspect of a woman;
o The “Great Mother’, the embodiment of everything maternal, both nurturing
engulfment, as nature herself can be;
o The “Wise old Man”, the embodiment of “spirit”;
o The “Self”, an overarching union of all of these, that is at once the superordinate
representation of God and the foundation of individual identity
Individuation itself is a never-ending process. Jung considered the ignition of process in
therapy, and at least some substantial experience of the Self, to be the goal of therapy. With
the acquisition of a sense of meaning and higher purpose ni life, symptoms may be expected
either to disappear or, if not, to have taken on the kind of meaning that allows them to be
accepted as a gift rather than a hindrance.

The Religious Affiliation of Psychoanalyst

Which religion was Jung?
Throughout the course of Jung's long life, he struggled greatly with his Christian roots and
psychic heritage. Jung was the only surviving son born to a Swiss Reformed Evangelical
clergyman. Further, eight of his uncles were ministers. It's obvious that the young Carl Jung
must have spent a large portion of his early life, surrounded by these very religious clerics.
However, despite Jung's struggles with what he considered to be the dead faith of his father - at
the end of his life, Jung came full circle in his personal struggles and remained a Christian
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(albeit, he will never be accused of "orthodoxy" in his beliefs).

Jung was sympathetic to and interested exploring all the many other religious faiths across the
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world, and throughout antiquity. Jung's interest was in order to gain a better understanding
of the working of the human psyche.
Jung would not have recommended anyone converting to a religion or religious stance that was
foreign to his/her own psychic inheritance and/or heritage.

Jungian Interpretation of Religion

The Jungian interpretation of religion views all religious experience as a psychological
phenomenon, and regards the personal experience of God as indistinguishable, for scientific
purposes, as a communication with one's own unconscious mind.
Carl Jung established a school of psychology called depth psychology, which emphasizes
understanding the psyche through dream analysis. Other workers in depth psychology have
used other methods with some success, but dream analysis remains the core of depth
psychology. Works of art and mythology are interpreted similarly to dreams: a myth is "a
dream being experienced by a whole culture."
Inevitably archetypal figures appear in personal dreams which closely resemble mythic figures,
which leads to a natural interest in experience of religion as a psychological phenomenon.
Jung emphasized the importance of balance in a healthy mind. He wrote that modern humans
rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and
appreciation of the unconscious. Jungian psychology is typically missing from the curriculum
of most major universities' psychology departments. Jung's ideas are occasionally explored in
humanities departments, particularly in the study of mythography.
Jung's parents were fervent Christian missionaries, and part of Jung's early life was occupied
with resolving his personal conflict between his stern upbringing and his his own feelings
about religion. This settled in on the "scientific" interpretation of religion, which treats religion
as a psychological phenomenon only, and neither affirms nor denies a greater reality.
Although Carl Jung was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, he searched
through other subjects, attempting to find a pre-existing myth or mythic system which aptly
illustrated his ideas about the human psychology of religion. He began with Gnosticism, but
abandoned it early on. Later he studied astrology and then speculative alchemy as a symbolic
system. It is not clear from his writings if he ever settled on any one of these systems of
symbols.
Carl Jung and his associate G.R.S. Mead worked on trying to understand and explain the
Gnostic faith from a psychological standpoint. Jung's analytical psychology in many ways
schematically mirrors ancient Gnostic mythology, particularly those of Valentinus and the
'classic' Gnostic doctrine described in most detail in the Apocryphon of John (see gnostic
schools).
Jung understands the emergence of the Demiurge out of the original, unified monadic source of
the spiritual universe by gradual stages to be analogous to (and a symbolic depiction of) the
emergence of the ego from the unconscious.
However, it is uncertain as to whether the similarities between Jung's psychological teachings
and those of the gnostics are due to their sharing a "perennial philosophy", or whether Jung was
unwittingly influenced by the Gnostics in the formation of his theories.
Jung's own 'gnostic hymn', the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Latin: "The Seven Sermons to
the Dead"), would tend to imply the latter, but after circulating the manuscript, Jung declined to
publish it during his lifetime. Since it is not clear whether Jung was ultimately displeased with
the book or whether he merely suppressed it as too controversial, the issue remains contested.
Uncertain too are Jung's belief that the gnostics were aware of and intended psychological
meaning or significance within their myths.
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On the other hand, it is clear from a comparison of Jung's writings and that of ancient Gnostics,
that Jung disagreed with them on the ultimate goal of the individual. Gnostics in ancient times
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clearly sought a return to a supreme, other-worldly Godhead. In a study of Jung, Robert Segal
claimed that the eminent psychologist would have found the psychological interpretation of the
goal of ancient Gnosticism (that is, re-unification with the Pleroma, or the unknown God) to be
psychically 'dangerous', as being a total identification with the unconscious.
To contend that there is at least some disagreement between Jung and Gnosticism is at least
supportable: the Jungian process of individuation involves the addition of unconscious psychic
tropes to consciousness in order to achieve a trans-conscious centre to the personality. Jung did
not intend this addition to take the form of a complete identification of the Self with the
Unconscious.

Jung's Spirit Guide

Because Jung turned psychoanalysis into a type of religion, he is also considered to be a
transpersonal psychologist as well as a psychoanalytical theorist. He delved deeply into the
occult, practiced necromancy, and had daily contact with disembodied spirits, which he called
archetypes. Much of what he wrote was inspired by such entities. Jung had his own familiar
spirit whom he called Philemon. At first he thought Philemon was part of his own psyche, but
later on he found that Philemon was more than an expression of his own inner self. Jung says:
Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there
are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their
own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held
conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed
clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior
insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a
living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the
Indians call a guru. One can see why Jung is so very popular among New Agers.

Summary

C.G. Jung has exerted an enormous and steadily growing influence on modern culture,
especially as the “search for meaning” has taken on special urgency in the light of the
triumphs of scientific materialism. Transplanted via analogy from physics to psychology, the
seminal ideas of the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli profoundly influenced Jung’s theory
of the psyche. Although greatly helped by Jung the person, and deeply gratefull to him, Pauli
predicted what has infact happened: That for an era bereft by science of religion, Jungian
theory would ultimately prove more worthy as a philosophy than as a strictly scientific model
of psychology.
Jungian therapy is therefore most distinct when aming its therapeutics primarily at the
development of a spiritual life. Its practitioners root themselves theoretically in a model they
find personally congenial and that provides for them, as it were, a larger myth within which to
lead a meaning-infused life. In practice, the evidence for and against the comparative efficacy
of a specifically Jungian treatment method is no better than for any other method-or worse.
Given the many different approaches that have arisen among the various Jungian schools-and
within them-a good argument can be made that the parameters defining Jungian therapy will
surely evade adequate denotation, but that individuals who identify themselves as Jungian
therapists do as a good job on the whole as do those who do not. There is no doubt that many
individuals deliberately seek Jungian therapy for what the term “Jungian” connotes and that
Jungian therapists favour a style of communication that is comfortable for such individuals.
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References

1. Jeffrey Satinover, “Jungian Psychotherapy”. Yale University

2. Sigmund Freud. The Future of an Illusion, trans. and edited by James Strachey. New York:
W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1961, p. 43.
3. Thomas Szasz. The Myth of Psychotherapy. Garden City: Doubleday/Anchor Press, 1978,
p. 173.
4. C. G. Jung. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., trans. by R.F.C. Hull.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 4.
5. Calvin S. Hall and Gardner Lindzey. Theories of Personality. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 1957, p. 80.
6. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, op. cit., p. 7.
7. C. G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. by Aniela Jaffe, trans. by Richard and Clara
Winston. New York: Pantheon, 1963, p. 55.
8. Victor Von Weizsaecker, "Reminiscences of Freud and Jung." Freud and the Twentieth
Century, B. Nelson, ed. New York: Meridian, 1957, p. 72.
9. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit., p. 183.
10. "Spiritus contra Spiritum: The Bill Wilson/C.G. Jung Letters: The roots of the Society of
Alcoholics Anonymous." Parabola, Vol. XII, No. 2, May 1987, p. 68.

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