CARL JUNG: BIOGRAPHY, THEORIES, ARCHETYPES, SYNCHRONICITY, CONTRIBUTIONS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) was a 20th century Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist. He is known for having been the father of analytical psychology, in which he argued that the mind of a healthy person tends to balance.

In its beginnings it followed the current proposed by Sigmund Freud called psychoanalysis. Jung was even thought to be the heir to leadership in the psychoanalytic movement when its creator disappeared.

Carl Gustav Jung, full-length portrait, standing in front of Burghölzli clinic, Zurich,, via Wikimedia Commons

He worked with psychiatric patients at Burghölzli Hospital, which allowed him to meet and study some patients who suffered from schizophrenia, as well as other conditions. Eventually his vision became irreconcilable with psychoanalysis.

Then great conceptual conflicts arose about the origin of certain mental illnesses, as well as the definition of the unconscious. All this caused a break with Freud, who is considered his mentor.

Sigmund Freud, by Max Halberstadt (1882-1940), via Wikimedia Commons.

Jung created a new approach that he baptized as analytical or deep psychology, with which he showed a different mental scheme from the one Freud had conceived in psychoanalysis. Jung's structure contained a collective unconscious, an individual unconscious, and finally consciousness.

He was attracted by the psychological elements hidden in the interpretation of dreams, as well as its relationship with classical and religious mythology.

Jung introduced concepts such as introvert and extrovert personalities, also archetypes, which are recurring elements in most individuals.

The society of the time was marked by the theories of analytical psychology. Jungian postulates were used in such vast areas as anthropology, philosophy, archeology, religion, literature, art, and even politics.

Biography

Jung

Early years

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswill, Thurgau, Switzerland. He was the son of Paul Jung, a pastor of the Reformed Church, with his wife Emilie Preiswerk.

Within six months of Jung's birth, his father was offered a better position at Laufen. So they moved to the new city where the little boy spent his early years. At that time Carl was an only child since his older brother passed away early.

Carl Gustav's father, Paul Jung, seemed to have a good future as a linguist, but ended up taking the position of clergyman so that he could access a high-paying job more easily.

It is said that Paul was a shy and quiet man in public, but troubled in the privacy of his home, leading to a troubled marriage. Also contributing was the fact that Emilie had mental imbalances that worsened over time.

In fact, in 1878 Jung's mother was committed to a mental hospital and the boy was taken over by Emilie's sister when he was three years old.

After a year the Jungs were reunited once more. A new job offer as a reverend for Paul Jung led the family to a second move, this time to Kleinhüningen.

Family

It is believed that throughout his life the future psychiatrist was very inspired by the figure of his paternal grandfather who, like him, was called Carl Jung. This man had been a doctor, although he first became interested in poetry.

Thanks to the friendship that he established in Paris with the traveler and botanist Alejandro Humboldt, he obtained a position as a doctor in Basel in 1820. In that city he settled and took nationality, he also developed his professional career there.

The father of the future psychiatrist, Paul, was the youngest son of Carl Jung Sr.'s third marriage and grew up in a large household. Emilie was also the youngest daughter of her dad's second bond, a clergyman just like her husband.

When Carl Gustav Jung was nine years old, his sister Johanna Gertrud was born, in 1884, she later became his secretary.

During his youth, Jung liked to spread the rumor that he was descended from Goethe. However, he later dismissed that story and admitted that his great-grandmother, Emile Ziegler, was friends with a niece of the poet.

Education

For most of his childhood Carl Gustav Jung was a lonely and slightly disturbed child, probably as a result of his mother's sufferings and his parents' marital problems.

In 1886 the young man began to study at the Basel Cantonal Gymnasium, which is how the public instruction centers in the area were called (Gymnasium).

Jung received lessons in history, grammar, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and English. But what the school curriculum placed special emphasis on was classical languages ​​and civilizations, which sparked a deep interest in the boy.

When he was 12 years old, a classmate pushed him and Jung was unconscious for a few moments. Then he began to use fainting as a frequent method of dropping out of school from which he was absent for six months.

At one point he realized that if he did not study he would be a poor man and could not get any job, at that moment he began to study Latin in his father's library and three weeks later he returned to the gymnasium.

Years later he claimed that at that moment he knew what a neurosis was firsthand.

college

Although his entire family hoped that he would become a clergyman, to follow the path of most of the men in his family, this did not interest Carl. He had a great inclination for archeology, although he was also interested in philosophy.

Convenience and a lack of budget made him look only at local options and that was how he decided to study medicine, which was offered at the University of Basel.

Jung entered the university in 1895 thanks to a scholarship that helped him cover the cost of tuition. The following year his father, Paul Jung, passed away.

In 1900 Carl Jung received his medical degree and was seeking a graduate degree. He had thought of surgery and internal medicine, but his relationship with Professor Kraft-Ebing, a famous neurologist, influenced him to select psychiatry as a specialization.

The 20th century received the young doctor in Zurich, where he moved in 1900, there he secured a position as a clinical assistant at Burghölzli Hospital under Dr. Eugene Bleuler.

From that position he was able to carry out studies on schizophrenia and began to use methods such as word association.

In 1902 he presented his doctoral thesis called On the psychology and pathology of hidden phenomena, in that research he addressed the case of a cousin of hers who seemed to receive messages from another plane when she went into trances.

Marriage

Carl Gustav Jung married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903, she was 20 years old and he was 27. The girl was a member of a wealthy family related to the business of industries, especially luxury watches.

In 1905 Emma and her sister inherited the family businesses after the death of their father and although Jung never took the reins of them, they always provided the means for a comfortable life for his family.

Emma became interested in her husband's work and then she herself became a recognized name within the ranks of psychoanalysis. The Jungs had 5 children named Agathe, Gret, Franz, Marianne, and Helene.

The infidelities of the father of analytical psychology are known. During his life he was intimately related to various women, some of them were his patients.

One of Jung's most famous extramarital affairs was with the Russian Sabine Spielrein, who later became a psychoanalyst. Another of his lovers was Toni Wolff, with whom he maintained a relationship until he passed away in 1953.

Despite this, Emma Rauschenbach remained married to Jung for her entire life.

Professional beginnings

Also in 1903 Jung began teaching at the University of Zurich. At the same time he opened a private practice and continued to work at the Burghölzli Hospital, where he remained active until 1909.

During this time, Carl Jung noticed that many patients created fantasies or illusions very similar to some classic myths or religious stories. He considered it impossible that all these individuals had read the same passages.

This then led him to the conclusion that there was the possibility that all people shared a common unconscious layer, an element that he baptized as the "collective unconscious" and defined as the inheritance of all humanity in each individual.

In 1905 he received a formal appointment as professor in the house of studies where he had already worked since 1903.

Relationship with psychoanalysis

Jung became familiar with the work of Sigmund Freud from 1900, during his years as a student, when he read The Interpretation of Dreams. From that moment the young doctor became interested in the psychoanalytic current.

Since 1904 the correspondence between the Austrian and the Swiss doctor seems to have begun. Jung is believed to have started commenting on Freud about his studies on schizophrenia.

In addition, Carl Jung began to treat some of his patients with the psychoanalytic method and also popularized it among his students at the University of Zurich.

It is known that in 1906 Freud invited the Swiss professor to Vienna and that meeting took place in February 1907. When the two doctors met they spoke for about 13 uninterrupted hours and the father of psychoanalysis began to treat Jung as his disciple and successor.

The following year Carl Jung participated in the First Congress of Psychoanalysis in Vienna. When the lectures that opened the doors to the Freudian movement were held at Clark University in Massachusetts, United States Jung joined the participants.

With that trip not only was psychoanalysis consolidated in America, but Jung also managed to build a base of new followers in the country.

In 1910 Freud nominated Carl Jung for the position of president for life of the International Psychoanalytic Society, which ensured his position as heir to world leadership in the field. In the following interview Jung talks about his relationship with Freud and about other concepts of psychoanalysis:

Separation

Jung's top position did not prevent the intellectual separation that he had seen forging between himself, his mentor, Sigmund Freud for some time. Jungian theories began to separate more and more irreconcilably from psychoanalysis.

The concepts that each one assigned to the unconscious were key in the rupture.

While Freud viewed it as a repository of unacceptable and inaccessible wishes and thoughts, Jung saw it as an innate layer of symbols and images connected to creativity as well as emotional problems.

His theoretical proposal also distanced himself with respect to the origin of mental problems. For the father of psychoanalysis, the center of these imbalances was in the drives and had to do with libido, that is, sexual energy.

In contrast, Carl Jung did not observe a constant or primary relationship between all mental illnesses and the sexual factor, in fact, he thought that the problems used to have religious origins.

In 1912 Carl Jung published his book entitled The Psychology of the Unconscious, and in this text it was evident that he was marking the distance between the basic doctrines of psychoanalysis and his new theoretical model.

By 1913 the relationship between Freud and Jung was practically dissolved. A year later the latter decided to separate from his post as president of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Self analysis

Since 1913 Carl Jung had left his post as an academic at the University of Zurich. He also began to have psychological problems, he claimed to have visions and dreams that led him to analyze himself.

Although most of his self-analysis was done until 1918, Jung continued to record his dreams and experiences in the Red Book for 16 years.

Some consider that part of his condition had to do with the fact that he had separated from Sigmund Freud. The Swiss doctor went through a time of intense isolation in which his family and his lover represented a vague connection with the rest of the world.

He also discovered the benefits of yoga as an exercise and as a method of meditation during this period of his life.

Return

In 1916 Carl Jung published Collected Papers on Analytical Psycology, from this time he began to use the term analytical psychology, thereby trying to move further away from his previous school (psychoanalysis).

Jung's great return to the theoretical plane came with his 1921 work: Psychological Types. Some central elements of his approach were presented at this time, including the definition of individuation or the process in which the person creates the "self".

Personalities (introversion vs. extraversion) and the four functions, which are thought - feeling and sensation - intuition, were also introduced.

Travels

In 1920 Carl Jung had a brief tour of North Africa. That same year he gave some seminars in Cornwall, in addition in 1923 and 1925 he also participated in talks in England related to analytical psychology.

During 1924, Jung visited the United States of America and was in contact with an indigenous tribe in Taos, New Mexico. A year later he toured East Africa, spending time in countries like Uganda and Kenya.

Another of his journeys took him to Egypt in 1926. All these days served Jung to analyze societies that were not dominated by the influence of Western culture and philosophical thought, thereby further developing his idea of ​​the collective unconscious.

Also during his tour of India in 1938 he was able to perceive that the figure of the Buddha was one of the most tangible examples of what he had proposed when speaking of the development of the “self”.

International recognition

In 1928 Carl Jung published a book on Taoist alchemy, which he christened The Secret of the Golden Flower. The Swiss doctor continued this line of publications for the next three decades.

In the 1930s Jung was also chosen as president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Those years were of great relevance for the professional development of Carl Gustav Jung.

In 1936 he received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, the following year he was a speaker at conferences that were held at Yale University.

Also in 1938, the University of Oxford awarded him another doctorate for his career, as did several renowned study houses in Switzerland during the following years.

The Faculty of Medical Psychology of the University of Basel appointed him professor in 1943. However, Jung had to abandon academic life when in 1944 he fractured his foot and shortly after had a heart attack.

Last years

Although he suffered a second heart attack in 1946, it failed to separate him from his work as a writer. Answer to Job was published in 1952 and a year later his complete works were published in the United States.

In 1953 Toni Wolff passed away, with whom he had a relationship for many years.

He continued his intellectual activity and by 1955 he published Mysterium coniunctionis. That year Jung was also widowed since his life partner and mother of his children, Emma Rauschenbach, died.

Between 1960 and 1961, Jung devoted himself to work on his latest work "Approach to the unconscious." This piece was published in the posthumous book that they named El hombre y sus symbols (1964). The following video is an interview in which Jung spoke about death and the psyche.

Death

Carl Gustav Jung passed away on June 6, 1961. He was at his home in Küsnacht, Zurich, Switzerland at the time of his death. He suffered from a circulatory disease that was to blame for ending his life.

He was buried in the cemetery of the Protestant church in his locality and all his children survived him. In 2017 the house that belonged to the creator of analytical psychology was turned into a museum and it was inaugurated the following year.

Theories

The great theoretical contribution made by Carl Gustav Jung was the current of analytical or deep psychology. In this proposal, the Swiss developed the idea of ​​a psychic structure different from the one Sigmund Freud had made, although with some similarities.

In Jungian theory the core of the mind is the "conscious self" of each individual, then there is the personal unconscious and finally a collective unconscious that is shared by all human beings.

The difference between the personal and the collective unconscious is that the latter is a kind of preconfiguration of the mind and can be inherited, while the former belongs to each individual according to their experiences since birth.

That is why it is said that Jung did not believe that children come into the world with a blank mind and begin to fill it, but that there are certain actions, attitudes or events that come within the system from birth.

Personalities

Jung classified personalities into two broad categories according to their attitudes: introverts and extroverts.

These could be mixed with each of the four types of functions: the irrational, which were sensation and intuition, were on the one hand, on the other were the rational, that is, thought and feeling.

With the different possible combinations between attitudes and rational and irrational functions, the eight main psychological types were given, which were:

1 - Introvert + Thinking

They don't care so much about the factual, they prefer to focus on the ideas. They try to understand themselves and pay little attention to their surroundings, including other people.

2 - Extrovert + Thinking

They are interested in facts, to use them as a basis for the concepts they create and accept. Also, they expect everyone around them to think the same way, but they don't care much about others.

3 - Introvert + Feeling

They pay little attention to the external but do not feel upset by the lack of relationships, but they appear independence and autonomy. They can become sympathetic and understanding when they are confident. However, they do not usually show their feelings and convey melancholy.

4 - Extrovert + Feeling

They are very sociable, they adapt to both the environment and their time, they tend to follow fashions and seek to be successful. They have the facility to establish personal relationships naturally and with successful results.

5 - Introvert + Sensation

They prioritize their experiences over any proven facts. This is a typical personality of some artists or musicians and at times they tend to be modest and quiet.

6 - Extrovert + Feeling

They are practical on all occasions. They always seek to know tangible realities, as well as their own pleasure. You need constant encouragement, but you tend to make a lot of changes because you don't settle for an experience.

7 - Introvert + Intuition

These people are the classic dreamers. They live thinking about the future and do not worry so much about the present in which their life unfolds.

8 - Extrovert + Intuition

They are adventurers, but the moment they get one of the things they want, they lose interest and quickly dismiss it to focus their attention on the next goal. He is able to get followers easily.

Archetypes

According to the theories of analytical psychology, the collective unconscious provides people with patterns or molds, which are filled with personal experiences in different measures depending on each subject.

That is, the substance contained in the archetypal molds is created by the personal unconscious. This matter is subject to many factors that can alter it, not only the individual but also the cultural one.

At first Jung called the archetypes "primordial images" and explained that they had no content and that they were unconscious.

Then he differentiated the archetype from the "person", since the latter fulfills an external function. It could be said that the archetypes are the roles that are played and the masks (person) are the particular styles of each of the actors.

Jung classified the main archetypes into events (birth, death, marriage), figures (mother, father, sage, hero, joker), and motives (creation, apocalypse, flood).

It is essential to highlight that a person is not necessarily composed of a single archetype, since these are mixed and have different nuances for each one depending on the experiences since they are simple molds. The following are excerpts from an interview in which Jung talks about archetypes:

Synchronicity

Carl Jung explained that synchronicity was the "simultaneity of two events linked by sense, but in an acausal way." This means that just as two events can be related by a verifiable cause, they can also be related by their sense or meaning.

As there was no verifiable cause, it was also called “meaningful coincidences”. Jung differentiates it from "synchronism", which is only the simultaneity of two events but without any relationship.

Some have considered this a pseudoscience, since it can be neither proven nor verified, which are the main characteristics of positivist knowledge.

Other contributions

Jung considered through the study of different religions that the spiritual aim of humans was to discover himself and all the potential he had. In fact, that was the basis of his theory of "individuation."

He also conducted research in alchemy and linked the search of the alchemists with the spiritual growth of man when trying to know himself, thus turning his soul into gold in a figurative sense.

After this, Jung suggested that a person can overcome a disease or vice after going through a transformative experience. This is how Jungian theory served as the inspiration for the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Swiss doctor defended psychological treatments with art, through the representation of dreams, anxiety, fears or visions that a patient experienced, generating a catharsis with the experience.

It is believed that just as he did with painting or drawing, he also experimented with other treatment modalities that elicited sensory stimuli through dance.

For a time he studied paranormal events. Originally Jung thought that it was a psychological phenomenon, but then he began to argue that there are inexplicable events, that supported him with his theory of synchronicity.

Plays

books

- Vol. 2 - Experimental investigations. Studies about the association of words.

- Vol. 3 - Psychogenesis of mental illnesses.

- Vol. 4 - Freud and psychoanalysis.

- Vol. 5 - Symbols of transformation. Analysis of the prelude to a schizophrenia.

- Vol. 6 - Psychological types.

- Vol. 7 - Two writings on analytical psychology.

- Vol. 8 - The dynamics of the unconscious.

- Vol. 9.1 - Archetypes and the collective unconscious.

- Vol. 9.2 - Aion. Contributions to the symbolism of the self.

- Vol. 10 - Civilization in transition.

- Vol. 11 - About the psychology of western religion and eastern religion.

- Vol. 12 - Psychology and Alchemy.

- Vol. 13 - Studies on alchemical representations.

- Vol. 14 - Mysterium coniunctionis: research on the separation and union of psychic opposites in alchemy.

- Vol. 15 - On the phenomenon of the spirit in art and science.

- Vol. 16 - The practice of psychotherapy: contributions to the problem of psychotherapy and the psychology of transference.

- Vol. 17 - On the development of personality.

- Vol. 18.1 - The symbolic life.

- Vol. 18.2 - The symbolic life.

- Vol. 19 - General indices of the complete work.

II - Seminars

- Conferences at the Zofingia Club.

- Dream analysis.

- Childhood dreams.

- Nietzsche's Zarathustra.

- Introduction to analytical psychology.

- The psychology of kundalini yoga.

- Visions.

III - Autobiography

- Memories, dreams, thoughts.

IV - Epistolary

- Letters.

- Correspondence Sigmund Freud & Carl Gustav Jung.

V - Interviews

- Meetings with Jung.

References

1. Krapp, K. (2004). A study guide for psychologists and their theories for students.
2. En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Carl Jung. Available at: en.wikipedia.org.
3. McLynn, F. (1998). Carl Gustav Jung: A biography. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
4. Fordham, F. and SM Fordham, M. (2019). Carl Jung - Biography, Theory, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: britannica.com.
5. Benitez, L. (2007). Carl Jung: A 20th century shaman. Editions Read.