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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Carl Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland and brought up in or near the historic city of Basel. His father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church. He was continually racked by doubts about his beliefs. His mother was a highly intuitive woman, possibly with psychic abilities and sensitivities. Jungs childhood experiences and memories of religion were quite negative: crowds of dark-clothed men and weeping women; a hole in the ground into which a box was put; told Jesus had taken someone to himself.
SIGMUND FREUD
Freud went to a medical school in Vienna and initially did research for many years in neuropsychology. He then went to Paris to study with the great psychiatrist, Charcot. He returned to Vienna and set up a practice in neuropsychiatry with the help of his mentor and friend, Joseph Breuer. They treated young women suffering from hysterical symptoms. Freud was struck by how many of them were related to repressed traumatic sexual experiences in childhood.
THE UNCONSCIOUS
One of Freuds greatest contributions to psychology was his scientific study of the unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious is a domain of the psyche encompassing the repressed id functions, the memories, images and wishes that are too anxiety-provoking to be accepted into consciousness. Freud found that there are powerful ideas in the unconscious, but they cannot become conscious due to a force that represses them and resists bringing them out into the open.
ARCHETYPES
In addition, Jung said that the collective unconscious is not just a dead deposit, a sort of abandoned rubbish heap, but a living system of reactions and aptitudes that determine the individuals life in invisible ways. It also consists of pre-existent forms that Jung called archetypes. He first called them primordial images in that he considered them to be archaic or primordial types of universal images that date back to humankinds remotest beginnings. Everyday realities like mother, father, husband and wife create the mightiest archetypes.
THE ANIMA
The three most important archetypes Jung called the anima, animus and shadow. The anima is the unconscious image of the feminine that every man has within himself. Jung wrote: Every man carries with him the eternal image of woman. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an imprint of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit of all the impressions ever made by woman. To explain the existence of the anima Jung invoked the persona by which he means the formation of the mask behind which most people live.
PERSONA
Jung maintained that a compensatory relationship exists between persona and anima. He explained: The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. Society expects every individual to play the part assigned to him, so that a man who is a parson must not only carry out his official functions, but at all times and in all circumstances play the role of parson in a flawless manner.
ANIMUS
Similar to a man, every woman carries within her the eternal image of a man. In the same way that man has an unconscious anima, woman has an unconscious animus which consists of masculine characteristics. The animus is also an active force on the woman who is unconscious of its presence. The way to remove the negativity of the animus and to live in harmony with him is for woman to differentiate between her ego and the animus instead of assuming them to be one as she unconsciously does. Similarly, the man has to differentiate between his ego and the anima. This is achieved by individuation dealt with later.
SHADOW
The inferior being in ourselves is what Jung calls the shadow. It consists of all that we are ashamed of and that we do not want to know about ourselves. It constitutes part of our personal unconscious, but we also have an archetypal shadow in the realm of our collective unconscious. It represents an encounter with evil and facing it can be a shattering experience. The shadow of every person has to be firmly grasped and acknowledged for a person to achieve a state of wholeness.
GOD AS AN ARCHETYPE
Jung arrived at the view that the soul possesses by nature a religious function. Because of this natural religious function of the soul Jung maintained that there is a God archetype in the collective unconscious of all human beings. However, Jung made a distinction between the God-image archetype and God himself. In the collective unconscious there is only a God-image. Jungs main concern was with the ways in which the God-archetype had manifested itself in actual experiences.
EVALUATION OF JUNG
Appreciative Jung made advances on Freud by broadening the concept of libido to general psychic energy and introducing the concept collective unconscious. Individuation as a process of the dialectical discussion between the conscious mind and the unconscious in order to attain wholeness in the Self is one of Jungs great contributions to humanity. Individuation encompasses the integration and reconciliation of the unconscious dark side of our human nature into the conscious ego thereby helping us become whole people.