What Is Analytical Psychology?

Analytical psychology is a deep psychology that explores the primitive image of the human mind, born in the early 20th century. Its founder, Swiss psychiatrist and representative of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung, Based on the unconscious discovery, based on his own personal experience and after extensive observation of clinical patients and extensive study of religious myths of various nationalities, a convincing set of deep structure theories of the human mind was proposed ^[1] .

Analytical psychology is a deep psychology that explores the primitive image of the human mind, born in the early 20th century. Its founder, Swiss psychiatrist and representative of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung, Based on the unconscious discovery, based on his own personal experience and after extensive observation of clinical patients and extensive research on the religious myths of various ethnic groups, a convincing set of deep structure theories of the human mind was proposed. This theory outlines the primitive face of the human mind and builds a psychological bridge between the past and the modern, the East and the West. ^[1]

In the system of analytical psychology, the mind is taken as the totality of personality. It encompasses all conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. According to Jung, personality is inherently integrated, and what humans should do is first to protect this integrity, to avoid its fragmentation, and to become independent and conflicting structural systems; further develop this The inherent integrity of personality makes it possible to achieve the greatest possible differentiation, integration and coordination, and to achieve spiritual unity in the ultimate sense. Jung's view is related to the structure of the human mind he has discovered. According to Jung, the mind as a whole includes three levels: consciousness, individual unconsciousness, and collective unconsciousness, each of which has its own meaning and function.

Individual unconsciousness contains all mental activities and accidental experiences that are inconsistent with the individualized function of consciousness. It manifests itself as an autonomous structurecomplex, with its own internal driving force, like an independent, smaller personality structure in the overall personality, which has a very powerful influence on controlling our thoughts and behaviors.

Collective unconsciousness is composed of instinct and archetype. At the deepest part of the human mind, it is a common base that transcends all cultures and consciousness. All consciousness and unconscious phenomena emerge from collective unconsciousness. ^[1]

The essence of consciousness is to discriminate and distinguish between self and non-self, subject and object, affirmation and negation, etc .; produce a value standard for measuring good and bad, choosing, and freeing people from their original state and human dignity.
Consciousness is the only part of the mind that can be directly perceived by individuals. Jung argues that it appeared early in life and might even precede birth. "The whole essence of consciousness is to discriminate and distinguish between self and non-self, subject and object, affirmation and negation, etc. The separation of things into opposing sides is entirely due to the distinction of consciousness. Only consciousness can recognize the appropriate things and make To distinguish from inappropriate and worthless things. " ^[2]

Individual unconsciousness is a container that contains and contains all mental activities that are inconsistent with the individualized functions of consciousness and various conscious experiences of the moment, including content that has been suppressed or ignored for various reasons, such as Human painful thoughts, unresolved issues, interpersonal conflict and moral anxiety, etc. There are also some experiences, which are irrelevant or insignificant to people. Because they are too weak, they cannot reach the level of consciousness when they experience them, or they cannot stay in the consciousness, so they are stored in the individual unconscious. All these constitute personal unconscious content. When needed, this content usually reaches the conscious level easily. Jung's word association test found that in the unconscious, there are racial clusters that are related to emotions, thoughts, and memories. He called them complexes. Any word that touches these complexes will cause an unconscious procrastination response, indicating that the complex is an autonomous structure with its own internal driving force, like an independent, smaller personality structure in the overall personality. These complexes have an extremely powerful influence in controlling our thoughts and actions. For Jung, self constitutes the core of the consciousness field and is the subject of all conscious behaviors of the individual, showing a high degree of continuity and identity. But the ego is by no means a whole of personality. It is just a complex of ideas, juxtaposed with other complexes. They are connected with each other and are relatively independent. Some complexes do not even associate with the ego at all, or this connection is extremely rare. ^[4]

In the deepest part of the human mind, there is a common base that transcends all cultures and consciousness. This base is collective unconsciousness. All conscious and unconscious phenomena arise from the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious content is not composed of the experiences that the individual once felt like the individual unconscious, and they have never been perceived during the entire life of the individual. What, then, is the basis for the collective unconsciousness?
Jung said that collective unconsciousness is an instinctive thing deeper than experience for individuals, and its existence is as old as the existence of human physiological structure. Jung did not agree to limit the scope of instinct to only a few physiological functions of the human body. He believed that "instinct is a typical behavioral pattern. Whenever we face generally consistent and recurring behaviors and response patterns, we are Dealing with instincts, whether or not it is associated with conscious motivation. " ^[6]

Jung's analytical psychology is also a theory of overall personality structure. He called the totality of personality the mind, thinking that the mind is not only a complex and changeable organic whole, but also a layered and interactive personality structure. It consists of three levels: self-consciousness, individual subconsciousness, and collective subconsciousness.

Self-consciousness is the only part of the human mind that can be directly perceived by individuals. Jung believes that the development of human consciousness is the process of "personalization" of human beings, which plays a very important role in human psychological development. Its purpose is to maximize self-awareness or self-awareness. The self is the core of consciousness. It consists of various perceptions, memories, thoughts, and emotions. The role of consciousness is similar to the role of a gatekeeper. He screens and eliminates various materials that enter the mind to keep the individual personality structure the same. And continuity. At the same time, it is constantly enriching, improving and shaping a new self.

The individual is unconscious. Jung believes that the biggest influence on personality and development is the unconscious. It includes the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious. The individual unconscious is the surface layer of the unconscious. It contains all forgotten memories, consciousness, and suppressed experiences. Because it is a psychological content that occurs in the individual and is connected with the individual's experience, it is called individual unconscious.

An important aspect of individual unconsciousness is the form of "complex". Complex determines many aspects of individual personality. When we say that someone has a certain complex, such as inferiority complex, sexual complex, money complex, etc., it means The thing is that his mind is strongly occupied by some kind of "psychological problem", making him unable to think about anything else, but he himself is not aware of it. Jung believes that the purpose of psychotherapy is to help the patient untie the complex and liberate people from the bondage of the complex. However, Jung later found that the complex does not only play a negative role. In fact, it is often a source of inspiration and creativity. Especially strong complexes will drive people to create exquisite works. Earlier Jung thought that complex originated in the childhood experience of individuals, and later he discovered that the deepest root of the complex is collective unconsciousness.

Collective unconsciousness is Jung's greatest discovery, a theoretical problem that is the most esoteric and causes the most controversy. Synthesizing different definitions of Jung, it refers to the experience of human ancestors accumulated from generation to generation during the long historical evolution process, and it is the innate genetic tendency that humans must respond to certain events. It only adds very little variation in each century, and it is a psychological content that the individual has never realized (but it does exist and actually affects people's psychological activities).

The main content of collective unconsciousness is the prototype, which is a primitive model, and various other beings are shaped according to this prototype. It is deeply buried in the mind, so when they cannot be expressed in consciousness, they are manifested in archetypes and symbols in dreams, fantasy, hallucinations and neurosis. Jung has devoted most of his life and energy to researching prototypes. He has identified and described dozens of different prototypes, but the main prototypes are personality masks, Anima and Animus, shadows, and nature. They each play a different role in the personality structure.

The main archetypes of analytical psychology

Personality mask (persona) refers to the personality aspect of a person in a public place, the purpose of which is to show a good image in his favor in order to gain social recognition. Communicating well with your personality mask can reduce the intensity of social anxiety.

Anima and animus are also known as male and female intentions. Anima refers to the female component or image in the male mind; Animus refers to the male component or image in the female mind. This is the result of the experience of interaction between men and women in the long years. Good communication with your anima or animus can safely survive the middle-aged crisis.

Shadow (shadow) is the darkest, hidden, deepest evil tendency inherited from the human mind. It seeks to project to the outside, but its nature is the source of vitality, spontaneity and creativity. Communicating well with your own shadow can release more creativity.

Self is the core of collective unconsciousness. Its role is to coordinate the various components of personality to achieve integration and unification, that is, self-actualization. According to Jung, this is the highest goal of human nature. However, it believes that few people can achieve this goal.

Middle-aged crisis in analytical psychology

In the 1960s, Jung introduced the "middle-aged crisis". He believes that people generally reach their peak of crisis at the age of thirty-five to forty. Later, another Mr. Davidi said that it was more difficult for forty to fifty years old.

Ringer specialized in treating middle-aged patients in the later stages, and he found that most of his patients were adaptable to society and had outstanding achievements. The reason for the "middle-aged crisis" is the lack of internal integration. In layman's terms, that is, lack of personality, so still can't help feeling the emptiness of life. Jung's proposed solution is to communicate well with his anima or animus.

Analytic psychology

Freud regards libido as the only sexual energy that promotes mental activity, while Jung's libido is a universal vitality, "the strength of a psychological process, its psychological value." Jung replaced Libido with mental energy.