Psychodynamics - Carl Jung and Analytical Psychology

Carl Jung and Analytical Psychology

At the turn of the 20th century, during these decisive years, a young Swiss psychiatrist named Carl Jung had been following Freud’s writings and had sent him copies of his articles and his first book, the 1907 Psychology of Dementia Praecox, in which he upheld the Freudian psychodynamic viewpoint, although with some reservations. That year, Freud invited Jung to visit him in Vienna. The two men, it is said, were greatly attracted to each other, and they talked continuously for thirteen hours. This led to a professional relationship in which they corresponded on a weekly basis, for a period of six years.

Carl Jung's contributions in psychodynamic psychology include:

1. The psyche tends toward wholeness.
2. The self is composed of the ego, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious contains the archetypes which manifest in ways particular to each individual.
3. Archetypes are composed of dynamic tensions and arise spontaneously in the individual and collective psyche. Archetypes are autonomous energies common to the human species. They give the psyche its dynamic properties and help organize it. Their effects can be seen in many forms and across cultures.
4. The Transcendent Function: The emergence of the third resolves the split between dynamic polar tensions within the archetypal structure.
5. The recognition of the spiritual dimension of the human psyche.
6. The role of images which spontaneously arise in the human psyche (images include the interconnection between affect, images, and instinct) to communicate the dynamic processes taking place in the personal and collective unconscious, images which can be used to help the ego move in the direction of psychic wholeness.
7. Recognition of the multiplicity of psyche and psychic life, that there are several organizing principles within the psyche, and that they are at times in conflict.