Hidden Personality - Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who became one of the most famous and influential psychological thinkers and innovators of all time. Early in his career, Jung studied with Sigmund Freud and was thought to possibly succeed Freud as the leading promoter of Freud’s brand of psychoanalysis. Later in his career Jung’s thinking diverged significantly from Freudian psychology in ways that are directly relevant to the concept of the inferior function. Jung viewed human personality from a broad perspective, so his system for understanding individual differences and similarities is complex. Jung saw the human psyche as containing everything necessary to grow, adapt, and heal itself. He believed that people were capable of directing their own personality development and benefiting from both positive and negative life experiences (Quenk 2002).

In his studies, Carl Jung divided the psyche into the unconscious and the conscious minds. Freud viewed the unconscious as containing the Id, the Superego and the Ego, whereas Jung developed a different model. He described the unconscious as consisting of two major components: the Personal Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious (Quenk 2002).

Jung looked at all behavior including neurotic symptoms as ways of stimulating an individual's growth toward completion. He was interested in personality development as it occurred over the life span and saw it as an ongoing process.