Carl Jung

Who was Carl Jung?

Carl Gustav Jung, often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.

Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.

Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious" and made this religiousness the focus of his explorations. Jung is one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolization.

Famous Quotes:

• Where love rules, there is no will to power; where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
• The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.
• The healthy man does not torture others -- generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
• Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
• The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
• The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.
• The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.
• All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
• The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
• If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.