New to Jung

From the Desk of analyst Stuart Potter

Jungian psychology is the study of the wholeness of the individual, wholeness being the totality of consciousness and the unconscious. The unconscious is composed of two parts, the personal and the impersonal. The personal is mostly a matter of shadow contents; the impersonal is the archetypes. Shadow is simply what we don’t know about ourselves that we could know, and it can be positive or negative. The impersonal is the domain of opposite sex figures, anima and animus. Opposite-sex figures have something in common with the individual, but they are more unfamiliar than readily familiar. Complete integration of shadow and anima/ animus amounts to individuation. Conscious individuation is a highly desirable achievement of mana or light-bearing personality.

Wikipedia: “Analysis is the detailed examination of a complex topic, substance, or data set by breaking it down into smaller parts to understand how they work together.” The work of Jungian analysis is a breaking down of accepted notions of behavior, precepts, and thought patterns. Often, these patterns of thought are formed by presumed truths, suppositions, and given attitudes just outside of consciousness that guide expectations of personal involvement in real-world situations. This phenomenon is also known as the transference. Wikipedia: Transference is a psychological phenomenon where a person unconsciously redirects feelings, desires, and attitudes from significant past relationships (often parental) onto someone in the present, commonly a therapist.

Analysis

Analysis presupposes subsequent synthesis in a natural way, without the effort of the Analyst. Once dissembled, an organic life force, an elan vital, produces a synthesis of a new belief structure, a durable and conscious attitude, producing a synthesis of a personal nature directly emerging from the unconscious. The individual then has a more objective view of people and life situations. Put simply, Jungian analysis aims to improve the relationship of individual consciousness with the unconscious.

Dream interpretation, the association experiment, active imagination, and sand tray or picture interpretation are the most effective ways of communicating with the unconscious. Exercises of this nature, such as work with dreams, exhibit products of the unconscious without the influence, control, guidance, and falsification of the conscious mind. These unconscious contents influence and interfere with consciousness, also known as the ego or ego consciousness, thereby affecting thoughts and behaviors. Once complexes are made conscious, the perspective changes, the emotional charge dissipates, and the energy invested in maintaining the unconscious attitude re-enters the conscious center of the personality. The contents of the unconscious remain intact; the complexes and related contents are still there, but the heightened emotional charge of the complex no longer persists. In Jungian analysis, the complex is not eradicated. Jung says that this would amount to “an amputation.”

The self is the totality

In the interview on dreams, von Franz states that “complexes are the motors of the mind.” Accordingly, personal sensitivity led to the complex developing as a split-off piece of the psyche. If those sensitivities and the tendency to make an experience acutely personal are conscious and supported by a conscious stance, then what was dissociative, detrimental, or even destructive to performance can become a driving force. The new drive may amount to the individual’s work of redemption. This might be seen in the production of art, a painting, a work of fiction, a drama, or a story that is no longer a personal shield, but inexperience shared by many suffering people. It might also be the story of an invention, the development of a medical process, a motivational or inspirational talk, the spirit of a self-sacrificing mentor, or a proponent of charity.

The self is the totality. It is a totality that includes the ego, and the non-ego parts of the personality (again, shadow, anima, and/ or animus, self). Totality involves the whole life of the individual, not just the current situation or ego biases. Conscious individuation is the aim of this teleological process that simultaneously aligns the individual with the best expression of his or her nature and the optimal use of their characteristics in service to others. Over the course of a lifetime, the self is a unification of the different phases of ego formation. The dreams of older people look back on all parts of an individual’s life as if the self aims to pull together the disparate iterations of a given life.

Relations

The child first adapts to the environment through relations with the mother and father. Following this, as an emerging ego appears, the remaining time in the first half of life is defined by ego development, strengthening, and increased flexibility in the interest of adaptation. These interests manifest in leaving home, attaining education and purposeful work, marriage, home buying, having children, and becoming a viable member of a community. Once the pinnacle of this development occurs, the aim of life shifts. The self appears, and the ego is moved from the central position to make room for it. Life shifts to serving others, being known for a contribution, a legacy, for children, or for another select group or purpose. The ego moves from a primary position to a secondary position. It must not be destroyed, but function as part of an ego-self axis.

About Stuart:

Stuart Potter is a Jungian analyst who maintains a private, analytical practice in Minneapolis. He is a member of the C. G. Jung Institut, Zurich – Kusnacht, and IAAP. His training was completed at CGJI – Zurich, Kusnacht, including a thesis on Relationships, a topic of ongoing study and writing. For more of Stuart’s breakdown of Jungian thought, please visit/subscribe to our Substack.