Brief biography of Carl Jung. Jung's philosophy Carl Gustav Jung's main works

Carl Gustav Jung was born in Switzerland on July 26, 1875. Until the age of 9, that is, before the birth of his sister, Jung acquired the experience of a somewhat isolated childhood, which he filled with solitary play and a rich inner world: “I did not want to be disturbed (while playing). I was deeply engrossed in the game and hated being looked at.” His father was a Swiss Reformed pastor and an expert in Asian languages. Already as a child, Jung was keenly interested in religious and spiritual problems.

In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung recounts two powerful experiences that had a profound influence on his attitude toward religion. Between the ages of three and four, he dreamed of a terrifying phallic figure standing on a throne in a dungeon. The dream haunted Jung years later. After a few years he realized that the image was a ritual phallus; he represented a hidden, “underground God”, even more terrible, even more real and even more significant for Jung than the traditional church images of Jesus. The second experience happened when Jung was 11 years old. He came home from school at noon and saw the sun sparkling on the roof of the Basel church. He reflected on the beauty of the world, the splendor of the church and the power of God sitting in heaven on a golden throne. And then suddenly a thought came to Jung's mind so blasphemous that he was horrified. He fought desperately for days to suppress the forbidden thought. Finally Jung gave up: he saw a beautiful cathedral, and God sat on his throne above the world, and from under the throne excrement fell and fell onto the roof of the cathedral, covering it and destroying the walls.

Reflecting on this experience, Jung wrote:

“Many things were not clear to me before. In His test of human courage, God refuses to adhere to tradition, and, in spite of everything, he is sacred... One must be completely devoted to God: no questions asked, just doing His will... Otherwise everything is reckless and meaningless.”

“No one could deprive me of confidence, and it gave me joy to do what God wanted, and not what I wanted... I often had the feeling that in all decisive matters I was no more significant than other people, but I was one with God."

Today we find it difficult to grasp the terrifying power of Jung's vision. Given the traditional piety and lack of psychological knowledge in society in 1887, such thoughts were not only unutterable - they were incredible. Nevertheless, following his vision, instead of the expected guilt, Jung felt a strange sense of relief and a sense of respite. He interpreted this as seeing a sign given by God. It was God's will that Jung go against the traditions of the church. From that time on, Jung felt that he had completely dissociated himself from the traditional piety of his father and his relatives. He saw how most people cut themselves off from direct religious experience by following the dictates of the traditional church rather than seriously touching the spirit of God as a living reality.

Partly as a result of his inner experiences, Jung felt isolated from other people; sometimes he felt an almost unbearable loneliness. He was tired of school; nevertheless, he was an avid reader, with an “absolute desire…to read every piece of printed material that came into my hands.”

“Ultimately, most of our difficulties come from losing touch with our instincts, with the old unforgotten wisdom stored up within us.”

From childhood, Jung realized that he had two personalities combined. One of them was the son of a parish priest - fragile and insecure. The other was a wise old man, “skeptical, distrustful, distant from the world of people, but connected with nature, earth, sun, moon, weather, all living creatures, and with all this longing for the night, dreams and whatever „ "God" who worked right in him." The parish priest's son lived the ordinary daily life of a child growing up at a certain time in a certain place. The wise old man lived in a timeless and limitless world of wisdom, meaning and historical continuum. The interaction of these two personalities, Jung said, occurs in every person, only most people do not know about the second figure. This figure was of fundamental importance in his life. In many ways, Jung's theory of personality, especially his concepts of individuation and selfhood, stems from his early knowledge of this inner wisdom.

When it came time to go to university, Jung decided to study medicine—a compromise between his interests in science and the humanities. He became interested in psychiatry as the study of “diseases of personality,” although in those days psychiatry was relatively undeveloped and unremarkable. He imagined that psychiatry, in particular, included both scientific and humanistic perspectives. Jung also developed an interest in psychic phenomena and began researching messages received from his cousin, a local medium. This research became the basis of his dissertation “On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena.”

In 1900, Jung was accepted into an internship at the Bürzhol Medical Hospital in Zurich, one of the most progressive psychiatric centers in Europe. Zurich became his permanent home.

Four years later, Jung headed an experimental laboratory in a psychiatric clinic and developed a word association test for psychiatric diagnostic purposes. In this test, the subject was asked to respond to a standard list of stimulus words; any unusual delay between stimulus and response is taken as an indicator of emotional distress and associated with the stimulus word. Jung also became a master at interpreting the psychological meanings behind the various associations produced by subjects. In 1905, at the age of 30, he began lecturing on psychiatry at the University of Zurich and took the position of chief physician in a psychiatric clinic. At this time, Jung had already discovered the works of the man who would become his teacher and mentor - Sigmund Freud.

"Freud was the first truly important person I met."

Despite the strong criticism directed at Freud in scientific and academic circles, Jung was convinced of the value of his work. He sent Freud copies of his articles and his first book, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907). Freud responded by inviting him to Vienna. The first time they met, the two talked almost nonstop for about 13 hours. After this, they corresponded weekly, and Freud considered Jung to be his scientific successor.

Despite their close friendship, the scientists had fundamental differences. Jung was never able to accept Freud's insistence that incidents of repression are always sexual trauma. Freud, for his part, was disturbed by Jung's interest in mythological, spiritualistic and occult phenomena. There was a philosophical and personal break between them when Jung published Symbols of Transformation (1912), which challenged some of Freud's basic ideas. For example, Jung considered libido to be a generalized psychic energy, while Freud was firmly convinced that libido is sexual energy.

In his preface to the book, Jung wrote: “What hit me was like a landslide that could not be stopped... It was an explosion of all those psychic contents that could find no room or living space in the oppressive atmosphere of Freudian psychology and its limited horizons.” . It was not easy for Jung to lose his friend and mentor. “For two months I was unable to touch a pen, so exhausted was I by this conflict.” The break with Freud was painful and traumatic for Jung, but he decided to overcome his feelings of guilt.

“Dreams bring to light material that cannot be generated by the life of the adult dreamer or his childhood experiences. We are inclined to regard it as part of the archaic heritage which the child brings with him into the world before any of his own experiences and before he is influenced by the experiences of his ancestors. We find duplicates of this phylogenetic material in the earliest human legends and in living customs."

For Jung, the break with Freud precipitated a powerful confrontation with the unconscious. To embrace these powerful experiences and grow from them, Jung began writing them down in his personal journals for the purpose of self-reflection.

Jung gradually developed his own theories of unconscious processes and dream analysis. He came to the conclusion that the methods with which he analyzed the symbols of his patients' dreams could also be applied to the analysis of other forms of symbolism, that is, he picked up the key to the interpretation of myths, folk tales, religious symbols and art.

Interest in fundamental psychological processes led Jung to study the old Western traditions of alchemy and Gnosticism (Hellenistic religion and philosophical tradition) and to explore non-European cultures.

He also seriously studied Indian, Chinese and Tibetan thought. Jung made two trips to Africa, visited India, and came to New Mexico to visit the Pueblo Indians.

In 1949, at the age of 69, Jung nearly died from several heart attacks. In the hospital he had the experience of a vivid vision in which he seemed to be floating high in space, 1000 miles above the earth, with Ceylon under his feet, India under his head and the Arabian Desert to his left. Then Jung entered a black block of stone that was also floating in space. Heading towards the entrance, Jung felt something to his left. All that remained of his earthly existence was his experience, the story of his life. He saw his life as part of a huge historical matrix, the existence of which he had not previously been aware of. Before he could enter the temple, Jung was blocked by a doctor who told him that he had no right to leave the earth now. And then the vision stopped.

A few weeks later, Jung gradually recovered from his illness; he was weak and depressed all day long, but every night around midnight he felt a surge of energy with a feeling of delight. He felt himself floating in a blissful world. His night vision lasted about an hour, and then he fell asleep again.

Upon recovery, Jung began a very productive period, during which he wrote his most important works. His visions gave him the courage to formulate some of his most original ideas. These experiences also shifted his personal perspective toward a deeper acceptance of his own purpose.

“I could formulate it as acceptance of things as they are: an unconditional “yes” to what is, without subjective protest - acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see and understand them, acceptance of my own nature; how happy I am to be alive.. In this way we forge the ego and do not stop working when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures the truth and is capable of reproducing the world and destiny.

“A few days before his death, Jung had a dream. He saw a huge round stone on a hill, completely barren, and on it were engraved the words: “And this will be for you a sign of Wholeness and Unity.” Then he saw many vessels... and a quadrangle of trees, the roots of which stretched around the earth and went around it, and golden threads glittered among the roots" (Franz, 1975).

Jung died on June 6, 1961 at the age of 86. Throughout his life, clinical practice, and research, Jung's work had an undeniable influence on psychology, anthropology, history, and religious writings.

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The founder of the new direction of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, was born in 1875 in the Swiss town of Keeswil in the family of a pastor. After graduating from the University of Basel, the young doctor worked for about 6 years in a psychiatric hospital in Zurich as an assistant to the famous psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, and since 1910, Jung has been one of the students of the founder of the psychoanalytic movement, Sigmund Freud.
Pretty soon, Jung becomes one of Freud's most promising students and takes a leading position in the psychoanalytic movement.
Between 1909 and 1913, Jung became president of the Psychoanalytic Society and editor of its journal.

A departure from Freud's classical psychoanalysis.

In 1914, a break occurred between Freud and Jung.
And although, in general, Jung remains in the position of psychoanalysis, his views on one of Freud’s most basic provisions - on the dominant role of sexual drives in the motivation of the human personality - diverge significantly from the views of the teacher, which leads to irreconcilable contradictions, extremely painful for himself. Freud.

There were two reasons for the fundamental divergence; this was Jung’s new approach to the ideas of libido and the unconscious.

The emergence of analytical psychology.

Let us remember what the main idea of ​​psychoanalysis was.
According to Freud, the behavior of a person is determined by unconscious motives based on sexual attraction, and the cause of internal conflicts - neuroses and depression - is nothing more than the inevitable contradictions that arise between the conscious part of the personality and unconscious impulsive desires caused by the animal nature of man, which is invariably suppressed social and ethical attitudes.

And this idea may seem strange only at first glance, because in his reasoning Sigmund Freud proceeded from a completely rational understanding of the facts and causes of the neurotic behavior of his patients and a scientific hypothesis about the contradiction between the natural animal impulses of man and the demands of society.
In Freud's teachings, man as an animal and man as a social being were in a state of natural contradiction.

Carl Jung's ideas regarding libido and the unconscious were similar to Freud's only at first glance, and some of them, especially his views on the unconscious, were based on views that were very exotic for that time.

In general, by accepting the very idea of ​​libido, Jung deprived it of its main function - sexual. In his understanding, the original source of conflict was not only sexual energy, but a certain psychic energy as such. Sexual energy was nothing more than a part of it and came to the fore (like any other need) only in those moments when it became relevant for the individual.

In such a coordinate system, any human need, if not fulfilled, could serve as a source of psychological problems, and the list of such needs expanded very far beyond the limits of purely bodily impulses. More precisely, the nature of basic (animal) energy according to Jung remained the same, but manifested itself not only in the sphere of animal needs, but also in types of activity inherent only to humans.

Jung also invested completely different meanings in understanding the motives for personal development. Thus, Freud's famous idea about the Oedipus complex in Jung's understanding takes on a slightly different context. Now, Jung explains, for the most part, the child’s attachment to his mother by the fact that the mother is the source of satisfaction of the current needs of the individual, for example, the basic needs for food and warmth. As for sexual energy, according to Jung’s logic, it became much more relevant during puberty, and therefore much later. At the same time, Jung did not at all deny the phenomenon of sexual desires at an early age, but they were reduced only to fragmentary manifestations, along with other mental needs.

Based on the difference in views on the dominant psychic energy, a much more far-reaching difference emerged regarding the basic paradigm of views on a person’s personality, or more precisely on how this personality is determined at a given moment in time.
Thus, according to Freud’s views, the basis of human personality, its motives and impulses in the present were largely determined by the past, namely the childhood period of development. Jung argued that personal development does not end in childhood.
A person can change significantly at any age, and his motivations are equally determined not only by his childhood traumas, but also by current motives and tasks that exist now and are determined in the present.

Thus, using Freud's psychoanalysis as a basis, Jung essentially treated his teacher's theory quite radically.

But at the same time, without a doubt, Jung’s truly revolutionary view was his interpretation of the unconscious, which became one of the foundations of the new theory of personality.

Personality structure according to Jung.

Structurally, Jung's personality is almost no different from Freud's, but this is only at first glance.
According to Jung, personality - soul (psyche), consists of three components - Ego, Personal unconscious and Collective unconscious.

Ego- the central part of consciousness which includes thoughts, feelings, sensations, information (memories). It is this part of our consciousness that is responsible for identifying us as a separately existing person, for rational perception of the world and for conscious activity (conscious behavior).

Personal unconscious- a repository of information that was previously recognized, however, for certain reasons, repressed and forgotten. Such a concept of the unconscious would be similar to Freud's, if Jung had not gone much further, suggesting that this same area contains the so-called complexes or emotionally colored (charged) parts of the psyche that have acquired the properties of autonomous existence as certain independent entities capable of exerting a significant influence on a person, his condition and behavior.
The reason for the emergence of such mental structures is traumatic situations from the past, which, among other things, were in opposition to the ego, that is, for some reason they could not be accepted by it, and therefore found themselves locked in the subconscious in the form of images of these situations.

In essence, Jung argued for the existence of alien independent elements in the sphere of personal consciousness.
Complexes are suppressed by the volitional conscious efforts of the ego, but without problems they continue to exist again and again, making themselves felt in situations similar to those in which they arose.
The problem is that thanks to these components of the psyche, a person’s free will is significantly violated and the individual begins to behave not in accordance with the requirements of the real situation, but under the influence of internal reasons from the past.
Complexes affect not only a person’s behavior, but also his worldview.

According to Jung, information located in the sphere of the personal unconscious can be realized by the individual.

The third part of personality according to Jung is collective unconscious, which represents the repository of the universal memory of humanity over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. This is, as it were, the collective heritage of our ancestors, existing in a hidden figurative form in the subconscious of each individual and, under certain conditions, accessible to awareness in the form of images.

The bearers of this collective heritage were particularly significant and energetically powerful images - archetypes(primary modules), which were responsible for the instinctive behavior of people, for perceiving the world in a certain way through basic ideas, the same in different cultures but often not causally related.
This meant that people react to certain situations in approximately the same way, for example, their attitude towards father and mother, child, death, etc.
In fact, each archetype is responsible for a certain typical life situation and determines (is a template) a model of human behavior under given circumstances.

Examples of significant Jungian archetypes are mother, child, death, sage, god, self.

Jung believed that the perception of archetypes is available in figurative form during dreams.
These archetypes are also found in different cultures in the form of symbols, religious, artistic, literary, philosophical.

The most important archetypes of Jung.

It is believed that the number of archetypes in general should be equal to the number of typical situations in our life, which means unlimited. However, Jung identified a number of the most important of them: mask, anima, animus, shadow and self.

Mask (person). One of the most important archetypes for a person whose name speaks for itself.
The mask is that part of our consciousness that faces society. It is through it that interaction with society occurs.
For every social situation, every person has their own type of mask.
The function of a mask is to imitate a socially acceptable image of ourselves, as well as to hide who we really are.
The mask is a very important part of our personality, which is responsible for a successful social life, but, like any useful thing, it carries both good and evil. Often the mask begins to play such a big role for most of us that we completely forget who we really are, which means that we fall under the power of a skillful tool that quietly enslaves us.

Shadow. What is responsible for the “primitive” animal part of our personality, the shadow, is our natural impulses (selfish, sexual, aggressive), which for various reasons are not accepted either by society or by ourselves. Accordingly, we tend to suppress its natural manifestations. However, Jung himself considered the Shadow to be essentially twofold.
On the one hand, it presents obvious problems for the individual, on the other, it is a powerful source of universal energy that can also be used for “peaceful purposes,” for example, channeled into a creative direction.

According to Jung, both the Shadow and the Persona are special archetypes and are a certain basic structure (core) in the collective unconscious. The reason for this view is probably that these archetypes, unlike the others, are responsible for the self-consciousness of the individual, and therefore, both one and the other manifest themselves both in the personal unconscious and directly in consciousness.
The role of the Ego is precisely to create a certain semblance of harmony between the Shadow and the Persona.
This means directing the enormous energy of the Shadow in the right direction.
On the other hand, this means using the Persona, precisely as a practical tool for life in society, without identifying with it.

Anima and Animus. These two archetypes are associated with the images of the Father and Mother, man and woman.
For a man, the Anima image is an ideal, connected on the one hand with the mother, on the other, carrying within itself the unconscious feminine side of male nature, as well as ideas about the ideal woman, which largely influence the search for a partner.
Typical manifestations of Anima in a male character are excessive emotionality, sensuality, and irrational impulsiveness.
Ignoring the feminine side of your nature leads to a certain disharmony in the development of the male personality and the loss of certain opportunities.

For a woman, the Animus is the image of an ideal man, partner, father, as well as the masculine part of her personality. Manifestations of the animus in a female character are aggressiveness in society and family, the desire for dominance, independence, logic.
Just as in the case of a man, ignoring or rejecting the male part of the personality leads to one-sided development.

Archetype Self(I, as it is). Unmanifested under ordinary conditions, this archetype becomes the center of the entire personal structure after a special act, which Jung called individuation.
The individuation of a personality occurs when all its internal structures, which under normal conditions are in antagonism, come into balance and are united in one integral harmony.
Only then does the Self become the defining archetype of personality.
Jung believed that self-actualization of the Self is a very rare phenomenon, nevertheless, it is the main goal of human existence. According to Jung, the Self is the embodiment of our natural religiosity and subconsciously pushes a person to develop inner harmony.

Refers to "Mystical Worlds"

Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Gustav Jung wrote his works between 1930 and 1960. This was the time when scientific methodology was just becoming established, there was no generalizing book by Imre Lakatos, Falsification and Methodology of Research Programs, and it was just being understood how much the mystical has a right to exist, what knowledge gives: faith or reason.
Of course, as today, mysticism attracted tempting ideas, and people plunged into it headlong, selflessly exploring what seemed to be the most important, the most important thing in life. Carl Jung was just such a researcher, pushing himself to the limits of psychosis and experiencing severe crises in connection with this. He sincerely and seriously tried to find all the relationships between the real and the mystical in such a way as to be able to explain the observed phenomena of the psyche. In any case, that's how he started. Having left behind a huge mark, he influenced with his ideas, methods, classifications the development not so much of psychology, but of philosophy and esotericism of all kinds, and also feeds the imagination of many pseudo-scientific theoreticians (see, for example). He considered the psyche and everything mystical that he associated with it, including God, to be really knowable and therefore sought to know it, and was not limited to religious faith. In his book On the Nature of the Psyche he writes:
"The psyche is not a chaos consisting of random whims and circumstances, but an objective reality to which the researcher can gain access using the methods of natural science. There are indications and signs that place psychological processes in some kind of energetic relationship with the physiological substrate. Because they are objective events, they can hardly be explained by anything other than energy processes, or to put it another way: despite the immeasurability of mental processes, tangible changes made by the psyche can only be understood as phenomena of energy and."
And, at the same time, practicing mysticism and actually replacing psychological phenomena with mysticism (he did not interpret or substantiate them in any other way, which will be extremely clear later) in principle could not contribute to genuine knowledge, but led deeper and deeper into the unknowable religiosity, which completely determined his beliefs and activities in later years of life.
Initially, considering the psyche as a black box and trying to guess its fundamental principles and mechanisms by its external manifestations, C. Jung, like all other psychologists in such a situation, had the opportunity to compare only directly, empirically and observable, but precisely in the case of the psyche this is the least productive way of understanding it, due to the main property and purpose of the psyche: the constant adaptation of behavior to new conditions, and therefore the fundamental inconstancy of its external manifestations in different conditions. Empirically found patterns and methods for the psyche are not justified because they depend on the specific conditions in which they were obtained, and as soon as these conditions are different in some way, the generalizations cease to correspond to the real (see About the science of psychology). That is why they cannot be accepted as a scientific basis (axioms) for further development. In practice, the use of his methods and what they were modified by his followers gave controversial results, and if we do not consider only success (in his case, determined by his authority and charisma), and if we take into account failures, they could not claim sufficient reliability, although they were used and are still widely used, always supported by loud authority and sonorous names.
Due to non-reproducibility and lack of certainty, the “empirical laws” found by C. Jung and his methods have always caused considerable criticism, and the more the more mystical was involved in their justification. K. Jung wrote:
“It is strange that my critics, with few exceptions, are silent about the fact that I, as a doctor, proceed from their empirical facts, which everyone can check. But they criticize me as if I were a philosopher or a Gnostic who claims that he has supernatural knowledge. As a philosopher and as an abstractly reasoning heretic, I can, of course, be easily defeated. Probably for this reason they prefer to hush up the facts I have discovered."(German edition of the works of C. G. Jung: Gesammelte Werke. Zurich, 1958. Bd. 11, S. 335)
However, if the methods were actually quite effective, and the patterns found could claim to be axioms, the fate of this heritage would be strikingly different, and all this would not only be applied with efficiency, but would also develop, bringing even greater fruits . And these “patterns” were not correctly generalized and systematized from the standpoint of scientific methodology. By choosing faith at the expense of reason, C. Jung obtained results that were inappropriate to reality.
“In general, Jung’s psychology has found its followers more among philosophers, poets, and religious figures than in the circles of medical psychiatrists. Training centers for analytical psychology according to Jung, although the curriculum in them is no worse than Freud’s, also accepts non-medical students Jung admitted that he "never systematized his research in the field of psychology" because, in his opinion, the dogmatic system too easily slipped into a pompous and self-confident tone. Jung argued that the causal approach is finite and therefore fatalistic. His teleological approach expresses the hope that a person should not be absolutely slavishly enslaved by his own past."- from the book 100 Great Scientific Discoveries.
The name of Carl Jung, having become unusually popular for one reason or another, thereby with its authority attached special weight to the ideas associated with it and, as happens in all such cases, sometimes made them indisputably true in the minds of many, so much so that it is regarded as sacrilege to expose them at all. doubt their greatest significance (see Richard Noll's book "The Jungian Cult: The Origins of the Charismatic Movement"). Of course, those who are engaged in research in related subject areas of science should be more sober in this regard and spend some time assessing the real practical value of Carl Jung's legacy and the possibility of using it.
The purpose of this article is to show how and where certain ideas of Carl Jung developed, where they prevail today, and how legitimate they can be in describing real mental processes.
For this purpose, an abstract review of books and articles about Jung has been compiled, a comparison of the information received has been made, and material has been provided for considering individual ideas of Carl Jung from the perspective of modern knowledge. As an illustration of how completely unnecessary (and erroneous) Carl Jung’s ideas and ideas about the mechanisms of mental phenomena are, let the review On Systemic Neurophysiology, which summarizes the extensive factual material accumulated to date, serve as an illustration.
My comments in the authors' text are in blue.

First, I offer excerpts from three books by Carl Jung, the original text of which can be read using the links provided.
From Carl Jung's book Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Before I discovered alchemy, I had several dreams with the same plot.
...
In 1926, I had a stunning dream that anticipated my studies in alchemy.
It is very typical for all of C. Jung’s texts to constantly turn to one’s subjective, listening to sensations, feelings, impressions from dreams and giving all this so much importance that this subjectivism becomes the basis of his “scientific” reasoning.
...
Wasting no time, I immediately rushed to leaf through thick volumes on the history of religion and philosophy, although I did not hope to clarify anything. But after some time it became clear that this dream also points to alchemy, its heyday precisely in the 17th century. Surprisingly, I completely forgot everything that Herbert Silberer wrote about alchemy. When his book came out, I perceived alchemy as something alien and curious, although I extremely appreciated the author himself, I considered his view of things to be quite constructive, which I wrote to him about. But, as the tragic death of Silberer showed, constructiveness did not turn into prudence for him [He committed suicide. - ed.]. He mainly used later material, which I was poorly versed in. The later alchemical texts, baroque and fantastic, had to be deciphered first, and only then could their true value be determined.
Quite soon I discovered a striking similarity between analytical psychology and alchemy. The experiments of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiments, their world was my world. The discovery made me happy: I had finally found a historical analogue of my psychology of the unconscious and found solid ground. This parallel, as well as the restoration of a continuous spiritual tradition coming from the Gnostics, gave me some support. When I read the medieval texts, everything fell into place: the world of images and visions, the experimental data I had collected over time, and the conclusions I had come to. I began to understand them in historical connection. My typological research, which began with my studies in mythology, received a new impetus. Archetypes and their nature have moved to the center of my work. Now I have gained confidence that without history there is no psychology - and first of all this applies to the psychology of the unconscious. When it comes to conscious processes, it is quite possible that individual experience will be sufficient to explain them, but neuroses in their anamnesis require deeper knowledge; When a doctor is faced with the need to make a non-standard decision, his associations alone are clearly not enough.
...
In my book, I argued that every way of thinking is determined by a certain psychological type and that every point of view is in some way relative. At the same time, the question arose about the unity necessary to compensate for this diversity. In other words, I came to Taoism.
This is the belief that the type determines the way of thinking for the rest of one’s life, despite the fact that a person can change radically due to circumstances, becoming actually a different person, that by recognizing the type one can say a lot about a person and predict his reactions, regardless of the circumstances - the basis typologies are still alive today. This belief presupposes a certain initial predisposition, a hereditary quality, which, in fact, does not have any serious justification, but is very attractive for those who would like to have a theory that allows them to simply approach the knowledge of a person, predict and modify his behavior (See Personality and society).
...
In physics, we talk about energy, which manifests itself in various ways, be it electricity, light, heat, etc. The same is true in psychology, where we first of all encounter energy (of greater or lesser intensity), and it can manifest itself in a variety of forms. Understanding libido as energy allows you to obtain a unified and complete knowledge about it. In this case, all kinds of questions about the nature of libido - whether it is sexuality, the will to power, hunger, or anything else - fade into the background. My goal was to create a universal energy theory in psychology, such as exists in the natural sciences. This task was the main one when writing the book “On Psychic Energy” (1928). I have shown, for example, that human instincts are various forms of energetic processes, and, as forces, they are analogous to heat, light, etc.
It is worth remembering this unambiguous explanation of the essence of mental energy and - as a kind of analogue of physical energy and, only in its specialized form for the psyche, which completely resonates with esoteric ideas about this. C. Jung's strong focus on mysticism is constantly and directly reflected in his reasoning and conclusions.
...
From the very beginning, problems of worldview and the relationship between psychology and religion occupied an important place in my work. I dedicated the book “Psychology and Religion” (1940) to them, and later quite thoroughly stated my point of view in “Paracelsica” (1942), in its second chapter, “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon.” There are many original ideas in the works of Paracelsus; the philosophical attitudes of the alchemists are clearly visible in them, but in a late, baroque expression. After meeting Paracelsus, it seemed to me that I finally understood the essence of alchemy in its connection with religion and psychology - in other words, I began to consider alchemy as a form of religious philosophy. My work “Psychology and Alchemy” (1944) is devoted to this problem, in which I was able to turn to my own experience of 1913 - 1917. The process I experienced in those years corresponded to the process of alchemical transformation that was discussed in this book.
Naturally, then no less important for me was the question of the connection between the symbols of the unconscious and Christian symbols, as well as with the symbols of other religions.
...
All that I can tell about the other world, about life after death, all these are memories. These are the thoughts and images that I lived with and that haunted me. In a certain sense, they are the basis of my work, because my work is nothing more than a tireless attempt to answer the question: what is the connection between what is “here” and what is “there”? However, I have never allowed myself to talk about life after death expressis verbis (quite clearly - Lat.), otherwise I would have to somehow justify my thoughts, which I am not able to do.
...
Parapsychology considers a completely satisfactory proof of the afterlife to be a certain manifestation of the deceased: they declare themselves as ghosts or through a medium, conveying to the living what only they can know about. But even when this is verifiable, questions remain, is this ghost or voice identical to the deceased or is it some kind of projection of the unconscious, were the things that the voice spoke about known to the dead or did they again pass through the department of the unconscious?
Even if we put aside all the rational arguments that essentially prohibit us from talking with confidence about such things, there are still people for whom the confidence that their lives will continue beyond the present existence is very important. Thanks to her, they try to live more intelligently and calmly. If a person knows that he has eternity ahead of him, is this senseless haste necessary?
...
The unconscious gives us a certain chance, telling us something or hinting at something with its images. It can give us knowledge that is not subject to traditional logic. Try to remember the phenomena of synchronicity, premonitions or dreams that came true!
...We receive warnings quite often, but we do not know how to recognize them.
The most characteristic statement for esotericists, which is completely unsubstantiated by serious research into the issue, is pure faith.
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I dare to say that, in addition to the actual mathematical expressions, there are others that are correlated with reality in the most incomprehensible way. Take, for example, the creations of our imagination; due to their high frequency, it is quite possible to consider them as consensus omnium, archetypal motives. Just as there are mathematical equations about which we cannot say which physical realities they correspond to, so there is a mythological reality about which we cannot say which mental reality it corresponds to. For example, equations for calculating the turbulence of heated gases were known long before these processes were thoroughly studied. In the same way, for a long time there have been mythologems that determined the course of certain processes hidden from consciousness, the names of which we were able to give only today.
Not understanding the essence of human abstractions, but replacing everything with ideas about archetypes, K. Jung does not even make an attempt to understand that the same outwardly similar formulas, descriptions, formalizations can be suitable for a variety of real processes within certain frameworks of their abstraction, and found by themselves, do not at all mean their correlation with any reality until the person himself gives them such a correlation.
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Although no one has yet presented satisfactory evidence of the immortality of the soul and the continuation of life after death, there are phenomena that make us think about it. I can accept them as possible references, but I will not dare, of course, to attribute them to the realm of absolute knowledge.
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The unconscious, due to its spatio-temporal relativity, has much better sources of information than consciousness - the latter only directs our meaning perception, while we are able to create our myths about life after death thanks to a few meager hints from our dreams and similar spontaneous manifestations of the unconscious .
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Assuming that life continues “there”, we cannot imagine any other form of existence other than mental, since the soul does not need either space or time. And it is precisely this that generates internal images that then become material for mythological speculation about the other world, which I see exclusively as a world of images. The soul should be understood as something belonging to the other world, or the “land of the dead.” And the unconscious and the “land of the dead” are synonymous.
Here is a revelation - for those who seriously believe that the meaning that C. Jung actually puts into the concepts of the unconscious, etc. (and not covering it with masks of decency, as discussed below). - in fact - pure esotericism.
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Since the Creator is one, then His creation and His Son must be one. The doctrine of Divine unity does not allow deviations. And yet the limits of light and darkness appeared without the knowledge of consciousness. This outcome was predicted long before the appearance of Christ - among other things, we can find this in the book of Job or in the famous book of Enoch that has come down to us from pre-Christian times. In Christianity, this metaphysical split has deepened: Satan, who in the Old Testament was under Yahweh, now turns into the diametrical and eternal opposite of God's world. It is impossible to eliminate it. And it is not surprising that already at the beginning of the 11th century a heretical teaching appeared that it was not God, but the devil who created this world. This was the entry into the second half of the Christian eon, despite the fact that earlier the myth of fallen angels had already arisen, from whom man received dangerous knowledge of science and art. What would these ancient authors say about Hiroshima?
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Since the god-image, from a psychological point of view, is an obvious basis and spiritual principle, the deep dichotomy that defines it is already recognized as a political reality: a certain mental compensation already takes place. It manifests itself in the form of spontaneously arising rounded images, which represent a synthesis of the opposites inherent in the soul. Here I would include the rumors that have spread widely since 1945 about UFOs - unidentified flying objects.
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I, as you can see, prefer the term "unconscious", although I know that I can just as well say "god" or "demon" if I want to express something mythological. Using the mythological mode of expression, I remember that "mana", "demon" and "god" are synonyms for the "unconscious" and that we know as much as we know little about them. People believe they know much more; and in a certain sense, this faith may be more useful and effective than scientific terminology.
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I do not at all claim that my thoughts about the essence of man and his myth are the last and final word, but, in my opinion, this is exactly what can be said at the end of our era - the era of Pisces, and perhaps on the eve of the upcoming era of Aquarius, which has a human appearance. Aquarius, following two opposite Pisces, is a kind of coniunctio oppositorum and, perhaps, a personality - a self.
...talking about “god” as an “archetype”, we say nothing about his real nature, but we admit that “god” is something in our psychic structure that was before consciousness, and therefore He is in no way cannot be considered generated by consciousness. Thus, we do not reduce the probability of His existence, but we approach the possibility of knowing Him. The last circumstance is extremely important, since a thing, if it is not comprehended by experience, can easily be classified as non-existent.
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If the energy concept of the psyche is correct, then assumptions that contradict it, such as, for example, idea of ​​some metaphysical reality, must seem, to put it mildly, paradoxical. !!!
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Archetypal statements are based on instinctive premises that have nothing to do with reason - they can neither be proven nor disproved using common sense. They have always represented a certain part of the world order - representations collectives (collective representations - French), according to Lévy-Bruhl's definition. Of course, the ego and its will play a huge role, but what the ego wants incomprehensibly negates the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. The area of ​​their practical existence is the sphere of religion, and to the extent that religion, in principle, can be considered from the point of view of psychology.

Carl Gustav Jung born July 26, 1875 in Switzerland in the family of a Lutheran pastor. He developed an early passion for knowledge, but was a mediocre student at school.

Entered the university to study medicine. Later he became interested in psychiatry (parapsychological phenomena) and wrote a dissertation “On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena.” In 1900, Jung was accepted as an intern at the Bürkkelts Hospital (Zurich), headed by E. Blackler, which in those years was one of the most progressive psychiatric centers in Europe. During these years, the famous French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, with whom he studied, had an undoubted influence on Jung as a scientist.

In 1904, Jung organized essentially the world's first psychological laboratory) on the basis of a psychiatric clinic, where he developed and used his association test for diagnostic purposes. In 1905, at the age of thirty, he became a professor at the University of Zurich.

The works had an undoubted influence on Jung's scientific thinking - they helped Jung find his own approach to the analysis of dreams and symbolism, come to the idea of ​​“archetypes”, “collective unconscious”, “individuation”. In 1911, Jung founded the International Psychoanalytic Society, of which Jung became the first chairman.

Significant differences in the views of these two outstanding scientists soon emerged: Jung could not fully accept Freud's nansexualism, and Freud had a negative attitude towards Jung's understanding of mythology and occult phenomena. The final break occurred in 1912, after Jung published his work Symbols of Transformation, in which his differences with Freud became more pronounced. Jung suffered greatly, but went his own way, since in everything related to scientific beliefs, he was as irreconcilable as Freud.

Jung's range of scientific interests was quite wide: he was interested in alchemy, parapsychology, mythology, oriental culture...

For this purpose, he made two trips to Africa, went to New Mexico to visit the Pueblo Indians, and was in India. He seriously studied Indian, Chinese and Tibetan philosophy.

In 1944, at the age of 69, Jung suffered a severe heart attack, but gradually recovered and lived a long and fruitful life.
It was this period (from 70 to 85 years old) that was the most highly productive in his creative life. At this time, he wrote the most interesting works, a number of which were published after his death: “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1961), “Approach to the Unconscious” (1964), “Analytical Psychology” (1968), etc.

The main provisions of Jung's teachings

The concept of introversion and extraversion. Each individual can be turned primarily to his inner self (introversion) or, conversely, to the outside world (extroversion). Usually a person is not a pure introvert or extrovert, although he is inclined towards one orientation or another.

Mental functions. Jung identifies four main mental functions: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Jung regarded thinking and feeling as ways of making decisions, sensation and intuition as ways of obtaining information. Thinking type - the ability to generalize, abstract, and make logical constructs. Sensual type - preference for emotions. The feeling is based on concrete facts, on what you can see, smell, touch with your hands. Intuition is a way of processing information accumulated primarily in the unconscious. A harmonious assessment of the external and internal world, according to Jung, is possible with a harmonious combination of all four mental functions.

Collective unconscious. In addition to the personal unconscious, there is also a collective unconscious, which contains the experience of the development of all humanity and is passed on from generation to generation. The psyche of a child at birth contains certain structures (archetypes), which subsequently influence the development of the child, the formation of his self and his interaction with the external environment.

Archetypes. The basis of the collective unconscious is archetypes. An archetype is a form without its own content (imprint) that organizes and directs mental processes. Archetypes manifest themselves in the form of symbols: in the images of heroes, myths, folklore, rituals, traditions, etc. There are many archetypes, since this is the generalized experience of our ancestors. The main ones are: the I archetype, the mother archetype, the father archetype.

Personality structure: persona, ego, shadow, anima (for men), animus (for women) and self. A person is a character, a social role, the ability to express oneself in society. The ego is the center of consciousness and plays a major role in conscious life. The ego, being on the verge of the unconscious, is responsible for the connection (fusion) of the conscious and unconscious. The shadow is the center of the personal unconscious (desires, tendencies, experiences that are denied by the individual as incompatible with existing social standards, concepts of ideals, etc.). Anima and animus are ideas about oneself as a man or a woman, repressed into the unconscious as undesirable for a given individual. The anima (in men) usually has a feminist content, and the animus (in women) has a masculinist content. The Self is the archetype of personality integrity. The Self unites the conscious and unconscious; it is the center of the integrity of the Self, just as the Ego is the center of consciousness.

Individualization and analytical psychotherapy. Jung called a person’s ability for self-knowledge and self-development, the merging of his conscious and unconscious, the process of individuation. Stage 1 of individuation is the analysis of the person. Stage 2 - awareness of the shadow. Stage 3 - meeting with Anima and Animus. Stage 4 - self analysis. In the process of individuation, consciousness expands and “complexes” from the unconscious are transferred to the conscious.

According to Jung, the conscious and unconscious are in constant interaction, and an imbalance between them “manifests itself as neurosis.” Based on this, analytical psychotherapy is aimed mainly at balancing the conscious and unconscious, optimizing their dynamic interaction.

The author of the technique of free association, Swiss psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung is familiar to many from the books “Man and His Symbols”, “Archetypes” and “Memories, Reflections, Dreams”. Jung's teachings are based on the terms "introversion" and "extroversion" that he personally developed. Karl argued that each individual, depending on the dominant personality function, can be turned either to his inner self (introversion) or to the external world (extroversion).

Based on this conclusion, the researcher developed psychological types of people and derived a formula for the human soul, enclosing it in a psychiatric and psychological framework. Jung's work has had a significant influence on cultural studies, comparative religion, anthropology, pedagogy and literature.

Childhood and youth

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in the commune of Keeswil, located in northeastern Switzerland. The future psychotherapist's father, Johann Jung, was a pastor in a Reformed church, and his wife Emily was raising their son. As a child, Karl was an introverted and somewhat strange child. Unsociability and detachment appeared as a result of tense relations with the head of the family and frequent hysterical attacks of his mother, which Gustav repeatedly observed in childhood.

At the age of 10, Jung cut out a 6-centimeter man from a wooden block he picked up on the street, put him in a pencil case and took the craft to the attic. When the irritability of his father or the sickness of his mother brought the boy to extreme despair, he climbed into the attic and spoke in a secret language with a man-made friend. These oddities were the first manifestation of unconscious behavior, which Karl later described in detail in essays on the psychology of the unconscious.

The parents sent their son to the gymnasium when he was 11 years old. It is worth noting that Gustav showed no interest in either science or creativity. While the teaching staff complained about the lack of talent in the lack of initiative student, Karl, upon returning home, enthusiastically drew ancient castles and read prose. Karl could not make friends and express himself fully in his studies due to the feeling of dual personality that did not leave him. Jung himself noted in his “Red Book” that since childhood he had “two selves.”

At the age of 16, the fog of loneliness began to slowly dissipate. Attacks of depression became a thing of the past, Jung became interested in studying philosophy. He defined for himself a range of topics that he definitely wanted to study, read, and even found his thoughts reflected in his works. In 1893, Karl entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Basel. At the university, in addition to reading the required literature, Jung became interested in the works of mystical philosophers: Emmanuel Swedenborg and Adolf Eschenmayer.

Impressed by the works he read, Gustav even conducted spiritualistic seances a couple of times. This unusual hobby helped him write a dissertation on medicine, which was called “On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena.” In the future, in order to properly formulate his commentary on ancient texts (I Ching, The Secret of the Golden Flower, The Tibetan Book of the Dead), he will deliberately return to the topic of studying the spiritual world.

For Jung, this period was very difficult financially. After the death of his father, his family was left without a livelihood. Gustav attended lectures during the day and spent his free time tutoring. So the young man maintained a rather modest existence and paid for his studies. After graduating from a higher educational institution, the certified specialist came across the “Textbook of Psychiatry” by Richard von Krafft-Ebing. This discovery predetermined Jung's future.

Psychology

In 1900, Karl moved to Zurich and began working as an assistant to the then famous psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler at the Burghölzli mental hospital (a suburb of Zurich). Gustav settled on the hospital grounds. Soon he began publishing his first clinical works, as well as articles on the use of the word association test he had developed.

"The Red Book" by Carl Jung

In 1907, his first large-scale work, “The Psychology of Dementia Precocious,” was published, which Jung sent for review. The meeting with Freud marked an important milestone in Karl's scientific development. By the time of our personal acquaintance in February 1907 in Vienna, where Jung arrived after a short correspondence, he was already widely known both for his experiments in word associations and for the discovery of sensory complexes.

In 1909, together with Freud, Jung first came to the United States of America, where he gave a course of lectures. International fame, and with it private practice, which brought in a good income, allowed Gustav to leave his post at the Burholzl clinic in 1910 (by that time he already held the position of clinical director), return to his native land and immerse himself in in-depth research into myths, legends, and fairy tales in the context of their interaction with the world of psychopathology.

During the same period, publications appeared that quite clearly outlined the boundaries of Karl’s ideological independence from Freud in the views of both on the nature of the unconscious. In 1913, the geniuses of psychoanalysis decided to stop all communication. The drama of the separation turned into an opportunity for Jung to publish his works “Symbols of Transformation” and “The Red Book.”

In the 1920s, Jung made a series of long, exciting trips to areas of Africa and North America. A kind of cultural and psychological essay formed the basis of one of the chapters in the autobiographical book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.” In 1930, Karl was awarded the title of honorary president of the Psychotherapeutic Society of Germany, and also revealed to the world his new creation - the book “Problems of the Soul of Our Time.” Two years later, the Zurich city council awarded him a prize for literature, accompanied by a check for 8 thousand francs.

From 1933 to 1942 Jung taught in Zurich, and from 1944 in Basel. Also in 1933–1939. the scientist published the Journal of Psychotherapy and Related Fields, which supported the Nazis' internal policies of racial purification, and excerpts from Mein Kampf became the obligatory prologue to any publication. Among Jung's works of this period, the articles “Relationships between the Self and the Unconscious”, “Psychology and Religion”, “Psychology and Education”, “Images of the Unconscious”, “Symbolism of the Spirit” and “On the Origins of Consciousness” stood out.

In February 1944, during an excursion, Jung broke his leg and, while in the hospital, suffered a heart attack, after which he teetered on the brink of life and death for several weeks. He later detailed his visions in his autobiography.

In November 1955, after fifty-two years of marriage, Jung's wife, Emma, ​​died, and this loss completely devastated the psychotherapist. To get rid of sad thoughts, Karl plunged headlong into work. The autobiography, which Jung wrote down with the help of a secretary, took a lot of time, and the amount of correspondence grew so much that he sometimes had to hide bundles of incoming letters behind bookshelves.

Personal life

Jung met his first and only wife, Emma Rauschenbach, while a medical student. At the time of their first meeting, he was 21 years old and she was 15 years old. Gustav immediately liked the sweet, modest girl with thick hair neatly braided into a braid. Emma and Karl legalized their relationship on February 14, 1903.

The philosopher's chosen one came from an old Swiss-German family of wealthy industrialists. The financial well-being of his wife allowed Jung to devote himself to scientific research in the field of psychology, without regard to the need to earn money every day. Emma showed a sincere interest in her husband's work and supported him in everything. Rauschenbach gave her husband four daughters and a son: Agatha, Gret, Franz, Marianne and Helen.

The presence of a legal wife and children did not prevent Jung from starting relationships on the side. On August 17, 1904, an eighteen-year-old girl, Sabina Spielrein, was admitted to the Swiss clinic where Karl worked. This love story became popular because the relationship between Spielrein and Jung was based on the phenomenon of erotic transference (the patient's infatuation with the attending physician). Jung noticed and appreciated the girl’s sharp mind and scientific mindset, and Spielrein could not help but fall in love with the doctor, who had a keen sense of the world. Their romance ended immediately after Sabina was cured of her illness and left the medical facility.

In 1909, 21-year-old Toni Wolf came to Karl as a patient. This young lady, after recovery, became the official assistant and mistress of the psychiatrist. In September 1911, the girl even accompanied the Jung family to the Weimar Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Society. Emma knew about her husband's hobby, but her boundless love for the father of her children did not allow her to file for divorce.

Toni Wolf is Jung's only assistant who, for 40 years, shared not only her bed, but also her workplace with the psychoanalyst. As a result of their collaboration, the book “Metamorphoses and Symbols of Libido” appeared.

Death

In May 1961, Jung went for a walk. There, the psychotherapist suffered another heart attack, which caused blockage of blood vessels in the brain and partial paralysis of the limbs. For a couple of weeks, Karl was on the verge of life and death. According to the recollections of the nurse who looked after the thinker, the day before his death, the philosopher had a dream, after which, with a smile on his face, he declared that he was no longer afraid of anything.

Jung died on June 6, 1961 at his home located in the village of Küsnacht. The eminent psychotherapist was buried in the local cemetery of the Protestant church. On the rectangular tombstone, in addition to the initials of the eminent psychoanalyst, the names of his parents, sister Gertrude and wife Emma are engraved.

Bibliography

• "Archetype and Symbol"
• "Memories, Reflections, Dreams"
• “Soul and myth. Six archetypes"
• "The relationship between the ego and the unconscious"
• "Man and His Symbols"
• "Psychological aspects of the mother archetype"
• "The Psychology of Transference"
• "A General View of Psychology and Dreams"
• “Symbols and metamorphoses. Libido"
• "Marriage as a psychological relationship"
• "Problems of the soul of our time"
• "Psychological types"
• "Works on Psychiatry"

Quotes

• “Do not hold back someone who leaves you. Otherwise, the one who comes to you will not come.”
• “Everything that irritates others can lead to self-understanding”
• “Any kind of addiction is bad, be it addiction to alcohol, drugs or idealism”
• “I am not what happened to me, I am what I decided to become”