Jung, Carl (1875—1961)
Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology whose work on archetype and myth had a significant influence on Anglo-American literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly via the work of Frye, Northrop. Jung’s work was less influential on continental literary criticism, but it did have at least one significant advocate in France, namely Bachelard, Gaston. Jung studied for a medical degree at universities in Basel and Zurich, writing his doctorate on the psychopathology of the occult. Reading Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s work decided him on a career in psychiatry, then the least respected branch of medicine. He took a resident’s position at Burghölzli Asylum (attached to the University of Zurich) under the direction of Eugen Bleuler, who coined the term schizophrenia. During his time at Burghölzli, Jung read and admired the works of Freud, Sigmund, particularly The Interpretation of Dreams (1953), and in a gesture of homage he sent a copy of his book on word associations to Freud, believing it provided empirical support to the latter’s theory. Freud reciprocated the gesture several months later, spawning an intense friendship which lasted six years. For a time, Freud thought of Jung as his natural successor, making him the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, but they broke from each other in 1912 for a variety of personal and professional reasons (they continued to snipe at one another for the rest of their lives in their published work). Their main theoretical differences concerned the concepts of the libido and the unconscious---in contrast to Freud, Jung conceived the libido as a kind of life-force, thinking Freud’s version overly reductive; while his concept of the unconscious allowed for an inherited dimension he called the collective unconscious. Like Freud, Jung’s most important theories were developed out of self-analysis, particularly of his own childhood recollections of dreams and events. Jung’s theory of developmental psychology revolves around a fundamental confrontation between the self, which yearns to be realized (a process Jung referred to as individuation), and the unconscious, the domain of the archetype, which constantly seeks actualization. In contrast to Freud’s theory, which focuses almost exclusively on childhood, and treats the unconscious as an unknowable other, Jung’s theory holds that the unconscious is a constant presence and the developmental confrontation between self and unconscious is lifelong. The process of individuation is highly complicated and by no means linear---the confrontation with the archetypes, particularly, gives rise to several different types of response in the psyche. These varying responses are what differentiate people from one another. Jung argued that people can be classified according to psychological type, of which there are eight basic varieties; this concept has been very influential in the development of management theory. Further Reading: D. Bair Jung: A Biography (2003). A. Storr C. G. Jung (1991).