Carl Gustav Jung (Kesswil,July 26 1875–Kiss night,June the 6th 1961) was aSwiss psychiatristandpsychologist. He was the founder of theanalytical psychology.
From1920 he made some long journeys, toAsia,Central Americaand tropicalAfrica, especially his encounters with the peoples of theElgonjiin WesternKenyaand the Pueblo IndiansMexicowould become essential to his thinking about the psychic split of Western man.
Later, Jung hovered on the verge of death due to a serious heart attack; the visions he received during this experience exerted an important influence on his magnum opus, the Mysterium Coniunctionis, in which he describes the process of psychic healing through writings from thealchemy. During the last years of his life, Jung continued to work on his theory of the collective unconscious and the meaning of thereligionfor the humanPsyche. Among other things, he published another work on the phenomenon of theufosor flying saucers, which he believed to be representations of the collective unconscious.
He held that the essence of the personality, besides personal consciousness, is also, and largely, formed by what he calls itcollective unconsciouscalled one, as it wereepigeneticinherited part of the unconscious; a psychic plane, which, according to his teaching, is shared by all representatives of a race or species. Jung developed the doctrine of thearchetypes. These archetypes, concepts such as the shadow, the eternal youth, the evil spirit, the hero, and so on, are, as it were, handed down, functional primal drives or 'modalities of experience', which structure the personality of man. Archetypes are abilities or tendencies to develop in a certain way. They express themselves in images that can often be found in our dreams, but also in fairy tales andmyths, and are the experiential material of every religion.
Jung also advanced the view that archetypes are at the root ofculturaldevelopment, in different parts of the world. Certain correspondingways of thinkingand ideas would therefore not necessarily have to do with physical descent or migration only.
Jung's system is so complex that it takes years of study to complete the system he developedanalytical psychologyto be able to apply. He based his teachings on both experiences in hisclinical practice, as on themythology, thepsychology of religionand his knowledge of itcomparative symbolism. To contain itcollective unconsciousTo find out, he immersed himself for years in the visionary, but very dark writings of thealchemists, asParacelsus,Dorneus,ZosimosandMaier, whom he largely unraveled and whose images he could sometimes find in the visions of his patients. His work, like that ofFreud, characterized by a large number of new concepts and principles, such as the conceptsynchronicity.