The Invisible Mentor

Wisdom Wednesdays: Carl Gustav Jung, a Founder of Modern Psychology (also collected data from séances)

May 18th, 2011 |

Image via Wikipedia

Whenever I create these profiles in wisdom, I try to include a few pieces of information that is not very well known about the individual. I find it to be a lot of fun to hunt down that obscure piece of information. Today, I am focusing on Carl Gustav Jung, and I am stunned to learn that he collected information from séances. It appears that some of Jung’s relatives liked to connect with the spirits of dearly departed, and that got Jung interested in parapsychology. Ouija board anyone?

Name: Carl Gustav Jung

Birth Date: July 1875 – June 1961

Job Functions: Psychologist, Therapist & Natural Scientist

Fields: Psychotherapy

Known For: Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler were the founders of modern psychology. Jung also claimed that the self is fully realized in death. He also proposed psychological concepts which include: The Archetype, the Collective Unconscious, the Complex, and synchronicity.

Carl Gustav Jung was a very bright child, and at age six, his father started to teach him Latin. While at school, he read extensively and was interested in biology, zoology, paleontology, philosophy, and the history of religion. The mystical writings of Meister Eckhart also fascinated him. He could not make a career out of these interests because of the kind of salary he wanted to earn, so he instead opted to study medicine at the University of Basel. The data Jung collected from the séances mentioned above was the subject of his doctoral thesis, which was published in 1902. The data marked a turning point for him, and psychiatry was the only field that would allow him to further explore and understand what he had observed from the séances.

During his internship, Eugen Bleuler was conducting research into schizophrenia. Jung got support from him for conducting word association tests to the psychology of normal people and those with mental disabilities. The test revealed significant groups of ideas in the unconscious region of the psyche. For Jung, the psyche was divided into the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious (part of the unconscious mind).

Reading Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams confirmed and extended Jung’s ideas and observations. He contacted Freud by sending him a copy of his book Studies in Word Association. Jung’s earlier studies and the ideas he gleaned from mythology, religion and philosophy, combined with reading Freud’s work allowed him to propose a “universal unconscious that revealed itself in symbolic form through dreams, mysticism and religion.” Jung and Freud were collaborators and friends from 1907 to 1913 at which time they parted on a sour note.

Jung was interested in exploring the “secrets of the unconscious psyche expressed by dreaming, fantasies, myths, fairytales, superstitions and occultism… For him the unconscious not only is a disturbing factor causing illnesses, but also is fundamentally the seed of man’s creativeness and the roots of human consciousness.” Jung was often accused that his methods were unscientific, and Freud and his followers accused him of mysticism.

Contributions to modern psychology.

The Birth of Introversion and Extroversion: After his break from Freud, Jung immersed himself into his work, performed a deep self-analysis and delved into the unconscious psyche. This led to the discovery of introversion and extroversion. The way Jung defined introversion and extroversion is somewhat different from how they are defined today. An introverted personality type were those like himself, whose ego were turned more toward the internal and unconscious, while extroverted personality types were orientated toward outer reality and external activities.
Archetypes: Jung’s other main contributions to the field of psychology was the study of archetypes (universal psychic disposition). To do this, he conducted field studies by living among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona (1924 – 1925) and the inhabitants of Mt. Elgon in Kenya. Later he also visited Egypt and India. Jung firmly believed that the collective unconscious determines that our experience is conceived according to archetypes.

Jung tested his theories and published his conclusions and gained an international audience.

Why Jung was Wise

Even though his break from Freud caused him great distress, he continued his work and developed analytical psychology, which was based on his theories. Despite being reproached for mysticism, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is widely used today to assess employee suitability was actually developed from Jungian psychology.

Whenever something happened that defied logic, Jung didn’t try to explain it away, he instead worked at discovering why it happened. Carl Gustav Jung demonstrated the importance of not quitting, even when the going got tough. And he was a man who found solutions not excuses.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Sources Cited/Referenced

Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of World Biography

The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia

American Societies of the Learned: Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers, Philip Stokes

Image Credit: Wikipedia