Carl Jung Theory Essay Example for Free

Carl Jung Theory EssayJungs scheme divides the psyche into three parts. The first is the ego, which Jung identifies with the witting mind. closely related is the personal unconscious, which includes anything that is not presently conscious, further can be. The personal unconscious is like near(prenominal) peoples under supporting of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that be easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for to a greater extent or less reason. But it does not include the instincts that Freud would have it include. But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that illuminates his theory stand out from every(prenominal) whatever others the incarnate unconscious. You could call it your psychic inheritance. It is the reservoir of our fathers as a species, a engaging of knowledge we be all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the wound u p angiotensin-converting enzymes, but we only know about it indirectly, by look at those influences.thither are some experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others The experiences of warmth at first sight, of deja vu (the feeling that youve been here out front), and the immediate recognition of certain symbols and the meanings of certain myths, could all be understood as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of the collective unconscious.Grander examples are the creative experiences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all measure, or the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales, and literature. A nice example that has been greatly discussed of late is the near-death experience. It seems that many people, of many different cultural digestgrounds, find that they have very similar recollections when they are brough t back from a close encounter with death.They speak of leaving their bodies, seeing their bodies and the events surrounding them clearly, of being pulled through a long tunnel towards a bright light-headed, of seeing deceased relatives or unearthly signifiers waiting for them, and of their letdown at having to leave this happy scene to return to their bodies. maybe we are all built to experience death in this fashion. Archetypes The contents of the collective unconscious are called patterns. Jung also called them dominants, imagos, mytho logical or key images, and a few other names, but pilot burners seem to have won out over these.An prototype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. The buffer has no form of its own, but it acts as an organizing principle on the things we see or do. It works the way that instincts work in Freuds theory At first, the baby just wants something to eat, without knowing what it wants. It has a rather indefinite yearning , which, nevertheless, can be fulfill by some things and not by others. Later, with experience, the claw begins to yearn for something more specific when it is hungry a bottle, a cookie, a broiled lobster, a slice of New York style pizza.The archetype is like a black hole in space You only know its there by how it draws matter and light to it ego. The stick archetype The mother archetype is a particularly good example. All of our ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an surround that included a mother or mother-substitute. We would never have survived without our connection with a nurturing-one during our times as helpless infants. It stands to reason that we are built in a way that reflects that evolutionary environment We come into this world ready to want mother, to seek her, to recognize her, to deal with her.So the mother archetype is our built-in ability to recognize a certain relationship, that of mothering. Jung says that this is rather abstract, and we are likely t o project the archetype out into the world and onto a particular person, ordinarily our own mothers. Even when an archetype doesnt have a particular real person available, we tend to personify the archetype, that is, turn it into a mythological story-book character. This character symbolizes the archetype.The mother archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or earth mother of mythology, by Eve and bloody shame in western traditions, and by less personal symbols such as the church, the nation, a forest, or the ocean. check to Jung, person whose own mother failed to satisfy the demands of the archetype may well be one that spends his or her flavour seeking comfort in the church, or in identification with the motherland, or in meditating upon the figure of Mary, or in a life at sea. Mana You must understand that these archetypes are not sincerely biological things, like Freuds instincts.They are more spiritual demands. For example, if you dreamt about long things, Freud mi ght suggest these things equate the phallus and ultimately kindle. But Jung might have a very different interpretation. Even ideate quite a specifically about a penis might not have much to do with some unfulfilled need for sex. It is remarkable that in primitive societies, phallic symbols do not usually refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize mana, or spiritual power. These symbols would be dis compete on cause when the spirits are being called upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or to heal someone.The connection mingled with the penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fertilization and fertility are understood by most cultures. The shadow Sex and the life instincts in general are, of course, correspond somewhere in Jungs system. They are a part of an archetype called the shadow. It derives from our prehuman, carnal past, when our concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we werent self-conscious. It is the dark ramp of the ego , and the evil that we are commensurate of is a good deal stored there. Actually, the shadow is amoral neither good nor bad, just like fleshlys.An animal is capable of tender dole out for its young and vicious killing for food, but it doesnt choose to do either. It just does what it does. It is innocent. But from our human perspective, the animal world looks rather brutal, inhuman, so the shadow becomes something of a garbage can for the parts of ourselves that we cant quite admit to. Symbols of the shadow include the snake (as in the garden of Eden), the dragon, monsters, and demons. It frequently guards the entrance to a hollow or a pool of water, which is the collective unconscious.Next time you dream about wrestling with the devil, it may only be yourself you are wrestling with The persona The persona represents your public image. The member is, obviously, related to the word person and personality, and comes from a Latin word for mask. So the persona is the mask you pu t on before you show yourself to the outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time we are finished realizing it, it is the part of us most distant from the collective unconscious. At its surpass, it is just the good impression we all wish to present as we fill the roles guild requires of us.But, of course, it can also be the false impression we use to manipulate peoples opinions and behaviors. And, at its worst, it can be mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true nature Sometimes we believe we really are what we pretend to be Anima and animus A part of our persona is the role of antheral or womanish we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, tangle that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only step by step, under the influence of hormones, become male or female.Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately as in brief as those pink or blue booties go on we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds us into men and women. In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have many remnants of these traditional expectations.Women are still expected to be more nurturant and less aggressive men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung matt-up these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential. The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive , or as a witch, or as the earth mother.It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, and even argumentative. The anima or animus is the archetype through which you reach with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love lifeWe are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our otherhalf, the half that the immortals took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that fills our anima or animus archetype particularly well Other archetypes Jung said that there is no fix number of archetypes that we could simply list and memorize. They overlap and easily melt into each other as needed, and their logic is not the usual kind. But here are some he mentions Besides mother, their are other family archetypes. Obviously, there is father, who is often symbolized by a guide or an authority figure.There is also the archetype family, which represents the idea of blood relationship and ties that run deeper than those based on conscious reasons. There is also the child, represented in mythology and art by children, infants most especially, as well as other small creatures. The rescuer child celebrated at Christmas is a manifestation of the child archetype, and represents the future, becoming, rebirth, and salvation. Curiously, Christmas falls during the winter solstice, which in northerly primitive cultures also represents the future and rebirth. People used to light bonfires and perform ceremonies to encourage the suns return to them.The child archetype often blends with other archetypes to form the child-god, or the child- ace. Many archetypes are story characters. The hero is one of the main ones. He is the mana personality and the defeater of evil dragons. Basically, he represents the ego we do tend to identify with the hero of the story and is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the form of dragons and other monsters. The hero is, however, often dumb as a post. He is, after all, ignorant of the ways of the collective unconscious. Luke Skywalker, in the steer Wars films, is the perfect example of a hero.The hero is often out to rescue the maiden. She represents purity, innocence, and, in all likelihood, naivete. In the beginning of the Star Wars story, Princess Leia is the maiden. But, as the story progresses, she becomes the anima, discovering the powers of the force the collective unconscious and becoming an equal provide with Luke, who turns out to be her brother. The wise old man guides the hero. He is a form of the animus, and reveals to the hero the nature of the collective unconscious. In Star Wars, he is played by Obi Wan Kenobi and, later, Yoda.Notice that they give lessons Luke about the force and, as Luke matures, they die and become a part of him. You might be curious as to the archetype represented by Darth Vader, the dark father. He is the shadow and the master of the dark side of the force. He also turns out to be Luke and Leias father. When he dies, he becomes one of the wise old men. There is also an animal archetype, representing humanitys relationships with the animal world. The heros faithful horse would be an example. Snakes are often symbolic of the animal archetype, and are thought to be particularly wise.Animals, after all, are more in touch with their natures than we are. Perhaps loyal little robots and reliable old spaceships the Falcon are also symbols of animal. And there is the trickster, often represented by a clown or a magician. The tricksters role is to hamper the heros progress and to generally make trouble. In Norse mythology, many of the gods adventures originate in some trick or another played on their majesties by the half-god Loki. There are other archetypes that are a little more herculean to talk about. One is the original man, represented in western religion by Adam.Another is the God archetype, representing our need to comprehend the universe, to give a meaning to all that happens, to see it all as having some purpose and direction. The hermaphrodite, both male and female, represents the union of opposites, an important idea in Jungs theory. In some religious art, Jesus is presented as a rather feminine man. Likewise, in China, the character Kuan Yin began as a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), but was portrayed in such a feminine manner that he is more often thought of as the female goddess of compassionThe most important archetype of all is the self. The self is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross, and the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus ba ck to the center, and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personifications that best represent self are Christ and Buddha, two people who many believe achieved perfection. But Jung felt that perfection of the personality is only truly achieved in death.