Complex (psychology) - Jung's Theory of Complexes With Key Citations

Jung's Theory of Complexes With Key Citations

Early in Jung's career, he developed the concept of the "complex", A "complex" meaning a personal unconscious, core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes organized around a common theme (Shultz and Shultz, 2009). According to Jung's personality theory, complexes are building blocks of the psyche and the source of all human emotions. Complexes are thought to operate "autonomously and interfere with the intentions of the will, disturbing the memory and conscious performance". "Jung stressed that complexes are not negative in themselves, but their effects often are".

Jung included the ego in a broadly comprehensive theory of complexes, often referring to it as the ego-complex as illustrated when he said "by ego I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the center of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity. Hence I also speak of an ego-complex" (Jung, 1971: par 706).

Jung often used the term "complex" to describe a usually unconscious, repressed, yet highly influential symbolic material that is incompatible with the consciousness (Daniels, 2010). Daniels (2010) described complexes as "'stuck-together' agglomerations of thoughts, feelings, behavior patterns, and somatic forms of expression". Jung spoke of one specific type of complex, an autonomous feeling-toned complex, when he said "what then, scientifically speaking, is a 'feeling-toned complex'? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness." (Jung, 1969:par. 201)

Some complexes usurp power from the ego and can cause constant psychological disturbances and symptoms of neurosis (Daniels, 2010). With intervention, it may become conscious and greatly reduced in their impact (Daniels, 2010). Jung described the power complexes can hold when he said "what is not so well known, but far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us. The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naive assumption of the unity of consciousness, which is equated with 'psyche,' and on the supremacy of the will. Every constellation of a complex postulates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of consciousness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected, as we have seen. The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such disruptions of the conscious order would not be possible at all. And in fact, an active complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting, for which under certain conditions the only appropriate term would be the judicial concept of diminished responsibility" (Jung, 1969:par. 200).

On the other hand, Jung identified the development of the differentiating functions as essentially the development of useful complexes. However, even here there are often undesirable side effects.

It is true that we do not refer to this as obsession by a complex, but as one-sidedness. Still, the actual state is approximately the same, with this difference, that the one-sidedness is intended by the individual and is fostered by all the means in his power, whereas the complex is felt to be injurious and disturbing. People often fail to see that consciously willed one-sidedness is one of the most important causes of an undesirable complex, and that, conversely, certain complexes cause a one-sided differentiation of doubtful value. (Jung, 1969:par. 255)

In Psychological Types, Jung describes in detail the effects of tensions between the complexes associated with the dominant and inferior differentiating functions in highly and even extremely one-sided types.

In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that these types occur at all frequently in such pure form in actual life. They are, as it were, only Galtonesque family portraits, which single out the common and therefore typical features, stressing them disproportionately, while the individual features are just as disproportionately effaced (Jung, 1971: par 666).