Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/ YUUNG;[1][2] German: [kaʁl ˈjʊŋ]; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. He was a prolific author, illustrator, and correspondent, and a complex and controversial character, presumably best known through his "autobiography" Memories, Dreams, Reflections.[3]
"Jung" redirects here. For his grandfather, a professor of medicine, see Karl Gustav Jung. For other uses, see Jung (disambiguation).
Carl Jung
Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology,[4] and religious studies. He worked as a research scientist at the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, in Zurich, under Eugen Bleuler. Jung established himself as an influential mind, developing a friendship with Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, conducting a lengthy correspondence paramount to their joint vision of human psychology. Jung is widely regarded as one of the most influential psychologists in history.[5][6]
Freud saw the younger Jung not only as the heir he had been seeking to take forward his "new science" of psychoanalysis, but as a means to legitimize his own work: Freud and other contemporary psychoanalysts were Jews facing rising antisemitism in Europe, and Jung was Christian.[7] Freud secured Jung's appointment as president of Freud's newly founded International Psychoanalytical Association. Jung's research and personal vision, however, made it difficult to follow his older colleague's doctrine and they parted ways. This division was painful for Jung and resulted in the establishment of Jung's analytical psychology, as a comprehensive system separate from psychoanalysis. Scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi believed Jung's later antisemitic remarks may be a clue to the schism.[8]
Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual's conscious and unconscious elements. Jung considered it to be the main task of human development. He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion. Jung was also an artist, craftsman, builder, and prolific writer. Many of his works were not published until after his death and some remain unpublished.[9]
Among his principal distinctions are honorary doctorates from:
In addition, he was:
Legacy[edit]
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a psychometric instrument mostly popular with non-psychologists, as well as the concepts of socionics, were developed from Jung's model of psychological types. The MBTI is considered pseudoscience[185] and is not widely accepted by researchers in the field of psychology.[186]
Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious" and made this idea a principal focus of his explorations. Jung is one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolization. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Jung as the 23rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century. The list however focused on U.S. journals and was made by the psychology department of Arkansas State University.[187]
Although psychoanalysis is still studied in the humanities, a 2008 study in The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association found that psychology departments and textbooks treat it as "desiccated and dead".[188] Similarly, Alan Stone noted, "As academic psychology becomes more 'scientific' and psychiatry more biological, psychoanalysis is being brushed aside."[189]