Psychology · Ch 2 — Self and Personality
Carl Jung : Aims and Aspirations
Carl Jung : Aims and Aspirations
The Shift from Freud
Carl Jung began his career as a close collaborator of Sigmund Freud, but eventually broke away to develop his own school of thought. The fundamental disagreement was about what drives human personality. While Freud emphasised sex and aggression as the primary motivators, Jung argued that human beings are guided just as much by their aims, aspirations, and future goals. This led him to create a theory he called analytical psychology.
The Core Assumption: Internal Balance
Jung’s theory rests on a basic assumption that differs sharply from Freud’s. For Jung, the central conflict in personality is not between the individual and society, or between the individual and external reality. Instead, personality consists of competing forces and structures within the individual that must be balanced against each other. The goal of life is to achieve harmony among these internal forces.
The Collective Unconscious and Archetypes
Jung proposed that the unconscious mind has two layers. The first is the personal unconscious, which contains an individual’s own repressed memories and experiences. The second, and far more revolutionary, is the collective unconscious.
The collective unconscious is a universal, inherited layer of the unconscious shared by all human beings. It is not acquired through personal experience. It contains archetypes (or primordial images) — ancient, universal patterns of thought, symbols, and images that are present in every culture.
Archetypes are not individually learned; they are inherited as part of our human heritage. They appear in the myths, dreams, art, and religious traditions of all peoples across the world.
A clear example of an archetype is the God or Mother Earth figure. These images recur in countless cultures, not because they were copied from one another, but because they arise from the same collective unconscious.
The Self as an Archetype
For Jung, the self is itself an archetype — the central archetype of the entire personality. The self represents the striving for unity, wholeness, and oneness. It is not something we achieve automatically; it is a goal we work toward. The self expresses itself in many symbolic forms across different traditions, and Jung devoted much of his work to studying these expressions.