CARL G. JUNG 

By Chaplain Paul G. Durbin, Ph.D. 

Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in Kesswyl, a town on Lake Constance in the Canton of Thurgau, Switzerland. His father, Johann Paul Achilles Jung (1842-96) was a clergyman in the Swiss Reformed Church and his mother, Emilie Preiswek Jung (1848-1923) was a daughter of the long-established Basel family. He was taught Latin by his father and his mother read to him of exotic religions. He studied at the University of Basel and upon completion of his medical studies, became First Assistant at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich in 1900. 

Carl Jung was a close associate of Sigmund Freud for several years. In 1910, Freud, with great feeling, urged, "My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark." "A bulwark against what?" asked Jung in astonishment. Freud replied, "Against the black tide of mud, the occultism". In commenting on this episode, Jung said, "First of all it was the words 'bulwark' and 'dogma' that alarmed me; for a dogma, that is to say, an undisputable confession of faith, is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and far all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment; only with a personal power drive. This was the only thing that struck me at the heart of our friendship. I knew that I would never be able to accept such an attitude." (Hall and Lindzey, p. xxiii) 

Jung did not accept the view that his publication of his nonFreudian work, Symbols of Transformation, was the cause of their break. Jung went on to explain more deeply, "It was knowledge of Freud's triangle (with his wife's younger sister) that became a very important factor in my break with Freud. And then, I could not accept Freud's placing authority above truth." (Hall and Linczey, p. xx). As a results of these conflicts, Jung split with Freud in 1913. After a brief illness, Carl Custov Jung died on June 6, 1961 in Zurich at the age of 85. 

Jung preferred his own approach of "analytical psychology" and wished the term to stand for a general concept of embracing both the "Psychoanalysis" of Freud and the "Individual Psychology" of Adler as well as other efforts in this field. Jung's analytical attitude toward the personality led him to explore in many areas the various concepts of personality. Jung would not limit himself to just one theory but to use many different methods as stepping stones to greater insight in dealing with people. In Psychological Reflections, (p. 4) he states, "Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide." The patient is there to be treated not to verify a theory. For that matter, there is no single theory in the whole field of practical psychology that cannot on occasion be proved to be basically wrong. 

This is good advice, not only to psychiatrists, but also to hypnotherapists. I have made it a practice to learn as much from different approaches as I can. You have read of or attended seminars about such clinical uses of hypnotherapy as Analytical Hypnotherapy, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, Client-Centered Hypnotherapy, Alchemical Hypnotherapy, Power Hypnotherapy, Hypno-Analysis, Time-Line Therapy, Parts Therapy, and others that I have failed to mentioned. I admit that I have learned much from each of these techniques and some of each will be found in how I use hypnotherapy. I may or may not accept all that one approach has to offer, but sooner or later, I will use a portion from time to time from one or another of those approaches to help a client.

Jung held a concept that the aim of one's life should be not to repress or suppress, but to come to know one's other side, and so to enjoy and control the whole range of one's capacities; that is, in the full sense, to "know oneself." He believed that a psychological theory of personality must be founded on the principle of opposition or conflict because the tension created by conflicting elements are the very essence of life itself. 
Without tension there would be no energy and consequently no personality. An area of this conflict can be seen in the four fundamental psychological functions as seen by Jung: "Thinking," "Feeling," "Intuition," and "Sensation." The personality, whether introvert or extrovert, may use any one or more of these functions as the dominant characteristic of communication with the world.

It should be noted here that the division of extrovert and introvert was the result of Jung's work. The extrovert is the outgoing, sociable person finding his interests in people and things outside himself. Psychic energy flows outward and is directed toward people, events and things in the external world. On the other hand, the introvert is shy and sensitive, unsure of himself in company, diffident in interpersonal relationships and interested more in ideas than in people and things. For the introvert, psychic energy flows inward and tends to be concentrated on subjective factors and inner responses. 

The process of achieving command of all four functions is Individuation, "even while bound to the cross of this limiting earth, one might open one's eyes at the center, to see, think, feel and intuit transcendence, and to act out such knowledge.: (Campbell, xxvii). These four functions can be seen as a cross. At the top is "Sensation", at the bottom is "Intuition" and left arm of the cross is "Feeling" and the right arm is "Thinking" with the center of the cross "Transcendent Function". The "Transcendent Function" is the term used to describe that faculty of the psyche "by which one is rendered capable of this work of gaining release from the claims of but one or the other pair-of opposites." (Campbell, xxvi), which may be taught of as fifth, at the crossing of the pairs of the other four. It is a way of attaining liberation by one's own efforts and of finding the courage to be oneself.

"Thinking" is intellectual and theoretical as individuals make an attempt to comprehend the nature of the world and self. "Thinking" tells what a thing is, gives names, categories to things, defines alternatives, and reasons objectively. "Feeling" is the function of evaluating the things, whether positive or negative, with reference to the subject. An individual is given his/her experience of pleasure and pain, of anger, fear, sorrow, joy and love. Do not confuse with emotion. "Sensing" tells you what exists: detects the presence of things. It is the seeing, the reality function, yielding concrete facts or representations of the world. It is interested in facts and objects in the objective world. It focuses on the trees. "Intuition" is discerning through unconscious processes and repressed /suppressed content. Uses hunches, sees possibilities, sees around corners and goes beyond facts. It focuses on the forest. "The individual man goes beyond facts, feelings and ideas in his search for the essence of reality." (Clinebell, p. 99) Since complete actualization of the self is impossible, the "Transcendent Function" represents an ideal goal towards which the personality strives.

Thinking and feeling are called "Rational Functions", because they make judgements and evaluations - use reason and logic - in the evaluation of the external world. Sensing and Intuition are called "Irrational Functions", because they seem to go beyond logic and represent a direct linkage to the external world. In this striving, Jung has numerous other factors entering to bring about equilibrium in the individual. He saw the bisexual aspect of individuals in the anima and the animus. The feminine part of man is called the anima and the masculine part of woman is the animus. "Carl G. Jung held that maleness and femaleness complement each other psychologically. A man is attracted to a woman and vice versa, for many reasons. On a deep level, there is the desire to complete one's unfinished identity by joining one's maleness to the femaleness of another." (Clinebell, p. 99). A healthy adjustment is when these two forces are brought to equilibrium. 

The principle contribution Jung made to the understanding of the nature of man (when Jung uses the word "man" in this context, he is referring to both male and female ) was the idea of the collective unconscious. This part of the human psyche represents a storehouse of memories of the part of both the human and the animal race. This collective unconscious also represents the wisdom and self- knowledge at the deepest level. 

At this point, I am interjecting my own view of the place that the collective unconscious plays in past-life regression. As I do not personally believe in reincarnation, I do not use "past-life regression" in my practice of hypnotherapy. I do acknowledge that many people have been helped by the use of past-life regression. I do have an explanation for the source of past-life regression that satisfies me. (I may add that if reincarnation is the way God has planned it, so be it. I am not engaging in a theology debate but just expressing my own personal belief system.) I interpret Carl Jung's "Collective Unconscious" as memory passed on to us by our heritage and is held in our subconscious mind. Within a person's subconscious mind is a history of his/her ancestors to include their experiences and emotions. This may or may not be what Jung meant, but it is my interpretation and Jung is not here to tell me that I am wrong. In past-life regression, a person under hypnosis may relive an experience or memory from one of his/her ancestors which is stored in the client's subconscious mind. I made this statement at a seminar and a man challenged me by telling the story of a girl who was afraid of any animal with fur. He said he regressed her to a past life where she was killed by a bear at age three. He said that she had no ancestors so that disproved my theory. I responded, "you are absolutely correct in stating that she had no ancestors, but she had significant others; mother, father, other family members, community members who may have been traumatized by the event and so it would be a part of their memory whether or not they actually experienced it." One could also image such an event and be frightened by the thought and locked it away in their memory, even though no such event occurred. I believe this is also true of age regression for this life experience, so be aware that all memories are not true memories. 

Jung's states that the primordial image, or archetype, is a figure - be it a demon, a human being, or a process - that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially it is a mythological figure. In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. Jung believed that all of the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present from they are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us. 

Jung wrote in Modern Man in Search of A Soul (p.264), " Among all of my patients in the second half of life, that is to say over thirty-five, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them feel ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers and not one of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook." 

Frederick Sands had an interview with Jung for Good Housekeeping just four days prior to Jung's death. In this article, Jung speaks of his understanding of God. "To this day, God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse. What some people call instinct or intuition is nothing other than God. God is the voice inside us which tells us what to do and what not to do -- in other words, our conscience. All that I have learned has led me step-by-step to an unshakable conviction in the existence of God. I believe in what I know. And that eliminates believing. Therefore, I do not take his existence on belief - I know that He exists. One of the most important qualities of the human soul is its religious function, enabling man to come to peace with himself through understanding the superior force within him." 

Carl Jung's concept of God's working in life falls into line with his principle of conflict, because tensions created are the very substance of life. Jung saw that an important part of becoming well was achieved in a religious attitude that brought a respect for dignity of life and a belief that it has meaning. (Durbin- As hypnotherapists, we should be aware of the importance of the religious aspect of life. Not to impose our religious beliefs on others, but to help the individual to come to terms with his/her religion as it relates to their total being. Whatever your religious belief, you can learn to help the client integrate his/her religion into their total being in relationship to their life situation. 
The actual achievements of analytical psychology can be arranged under four headings - Confession, Explanation, Education, and Transformation. "Every stage in our psychic development has something final about it. When we have experienced catharsis with its wholesale confusion we feel that we have reached our goal at last; all has come out, all is known, every anxiety has been lived through and every tear shed; now things will go as they ought. After the work of explanation we are equally persuaded that we now know how the neurosis arose. The earliest memories have been unearthed, the deepest roots dug up... But then comes the period of education, which makes us realize that no confession and no amount of explaining will make the ill-formed tree grow straight, but that it must be trained...before normal adaptation can be attained. All three quite properly co-exist and are salient aspects of one and the same problem. (Jung, Modern Man In Search of His Soul, p.45) 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Campbell, Joseph Editor. The Portable Jung. (1971) The Viking Press. NY. 
Clineball, Howard J. Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling. (1966) Abingdom Press, Nashville, TN. 
Fromm, Erick. Psychology and Religion. (1950) Bantam Books. NY.
Hall, Calvin S., and Lindzey, Gardner. Theories of Personality. (1970) John Wiley & Sons, Inc. NY: 
Jung, Carl G. Modern Man in Search of His Soul.(1933) Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. NY. 
Jung, Carl G. Psychological Reflections. (1953) Pantheon Books, NY. Sands, Frederick. Good Housekeeping. "Why I Believe in God" (Interview with Carl Jung, 1961)