Analytical psychology
It was initially a theory concerning psychological complexes until Jung, upon breaking with Sigmund Freud, turned it into a generalised method of investigating archetypes and the unconscious, as well as into a specialised psychotherapy.
Among widely used concepts specific to analytical psychology are anima and animus, archetypes, the collective unconscious, complexes, extraversion and introversion, individuation, the Self, the shadow and synchronicity.
[5][7][8] A lesser known idea was Jung's notion of the Psychoid to denote a hypothesised immanent plane beyond consciousness, distinct from the collective unconscious, and a potential locus of synchronicity.
[5]: 50–53 [10] Hence as Jung proceeded from a clinical practice which was mainly traditionally science-based and steeped in rationalist philosophy, anthropology and ethnography, his enquiring mind simultaneously took him into more esoteric spheres such as alchemy, astrology, gnosticism, metaphysics, myth and the paranormal, without ever abandoning his allegiance to science as his long-lasting collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli attests.
Already employed at the Burghölzli hospital in 1901, in his academic dissertation for the medical faculty of the University of Zurich he took the risk of using his experiments on somnambulism and the visions of his mediumistic cousin, Helly Preiswerk.
One method Jung applied to his patients between 1913 and 1916 was active imagination, a way of encouraging them to give themselves over to a form of meditation to release apparently random images from the mind to bridge unconscious contents into awareness.
[46]: 21 On the other hand, for French historian of psychology, Françoise Parot, contrary to the alleged rationalist vein, Jung is "heir" to mystics, (Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, or Augustine of Hippo,[46]: 96 ) and to the romantics be they scientists, such as Carl Gustav Carus or Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert in particular, or to philosophers and writers, along the lines of Nietzsche, Goethe, and Schopenhauer, in the way he conceptualised the unconscious in particular.
For instance, the expression "abaissement du niveau mental" comes directly from the French psychologist Pierre Janet whose courses Jung attended during his studies in France, during 1901.
Individual analysts' thinking was also integrated into his project, among whom are Sándor Ferenczi (Jung refers to his notion of "affect") or Ludwig Binswanger and his Daseinsanalyse [de], (Daseinsanalysis).
[51] He remained aware nonetheless that exposure to a patient's unconscious contents always posed a certain risk of contagion (he calls it "psychic infection") to the analyst, as experienced in the countertransference.
One of the salient differences is the compensatory function they perform by reinstating psychic equilibrium in respect of judgments made during waking life: thus a man consumed by ambition and arrogance may, for example, dream about himself as small and vulnerable person.
Thus analytical psychology focusses on meaning, based on the hypothesis that human beings are potentially in constant touch with universal and symbolic aspects common to humankind.
Explorant l'inconscient en scientifique et poète, il montre que celui-ci se structure non-comme une langue mais sur le mode du mythe)[61]In analytical psychology two distinct types of psychological process may be identified: that deriving from the individual, characterised as "personal", belonging to a subjective psyche, and that deriving from the collective, linked to the structure of an objective psyche, which may be termed "transpersonal".
[78] Jung started experimenting with individuation after his split with Freud as he confronted what was described as eruptions from the collective unconscious driven by a contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.
[83] For Jung many unconscious conflicts at the root of neurosis are caused by the difficulty to accept that such a dynamic can unbalance the subject from his habitual position and confronts her/him with aspects of the self they were accustomed to ignore.
The often cited example of the phenomenon is Jung's own account of a beetle (the common rose-chafer, Cetonia aurata) flying into his consulting room directly following on from his patient telling him a dream featuring a golden scarab.
For Jung it constitutes a working hypothesis which has subsequently given rise to many ambiguities.I chose this term because the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events seemed to me an essential criterion.
[107] Synchronicity is among the most developed ideas by Jung's followers, notably by Michel Cazenave [fr], James Hillman, Roderick Main,[108] Carl Alfred Meier and by the British developmental clinician, George Bright.
[110] Although Synchronicity as conceived by Jung within the bounds of the science available in his day, has been categorised as pseudoscience, recent developments in complex adaptive systems argue for a revision of such a view.
Its adherents, according to Samuels (1985), include Gerhard Adler, Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, Murray Stein, Rafael López-Pedraza [es] and Wolfgang Giegerich.
Robert L. Moore has explored the archetypal level of the human psyche in a series of five books co-authored with Douglas Gillette, which have played an important role in the men's movement in the United States.
The use of sand in a suitable tray with figurines and other small toys, farm animals, trees, fences and cars enables a narrative to develop through a series of scenarios.
The historian of psychology, Sonu Shamdasani has commented: Historical reflection suggests the spirit of Jung's practice of the image, his engagement with his own figures, is indeed more alive in Sandplay than in other Jungian conclaves.
[122]One of Dora Kalff's trainees was the American concert pianist, Joel Ryce-Menuhin, whose music career was ended by illness and who retrained as a Jungian analyst and exponent of sandplay.
In fact, the task of Jungian analysis is not merely to explore the patient's past, but to connect conscious awareness with the unconscious such that a better adaptation to their emotional and social life may ensue.
[130]Analytical psychology has inspired a number of contemporary academic researchers to revisit some of Jung's own preoccupations with the role of women in society, with philosophy and with literary and art criticism.
[131][132] Leading figures to explore these fields include the British-American, Susan Rowland, who produced the first feminist revision of Jung and the fundamental contributions made to his work by the creative women who surrounded him.
[148] In his Le Livre Rouge de la psychanalyse ("Red Book of psychoanalysis"), the French psychoanalyst, Alain Amselek [fr], criticizes Jung's tendency to be fascinated by the image and to reduce the human to an archetype.
[clarification needed] In fact, his hypotheses are determined by the concept of his postulated pre-existing world and he has constantly sought to find confirmations of it in the old traditions of Western Medieval Europe.
")[153] Another, a French ethnographer and anthropologist, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec [fr], criticized Jung over his alleged misuse of the term archetype and his "suspect motives" in dealings with some of his colleagues.
