Question

Explain jung's contributions to transpersonal psychology

Answer 1

arl Gustav Jung, (1875 – 1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and academic,  was an early and key collaborator of Freud’s; and at one time the heir apparent to the psychoanalytic legacy. He made a big impact in medical and forensic psychology, early in his career, whilst at Burgholzli Psychiatric Clinic, with his word association experiment. The word association experiment had a particular significance for psychoanalysis and was a catalyst to his association and collaboration with Freud. After Jung and Freud split around 1913, under somewhat acrimonious circumstances, as a consequence of both personal and theoretical differences, Jung went on to develop his own school of psychoanalytic thought, initially called complex psychology and later analytical psychology (most often referred to simply as Jungian psychology).

Jung’s writing is contained in the 20 volumes of his Collected Works which offer a detailed exposition of his thought, and application of his technique both clinically and culturally. Jungian psychology, whilst for most of the 20th century in the shadow of Freud and psychoanalysis, went on to thrive and become perhaps the most well-known and popular alternative in depth psychology to Freudian psychoanalysis. The schism that developed between Jung and Freud lasted their entire careers and has remained as a gulf between their two respective, competing, schools of psychodynamics.

In my talk today I will focus on one of key theoretical differences between the two schools, and a defining concept for Jungian psychology, Jung’s hypothesis of the “collective unconscious.” The theoretical point of departure is summed up quite succinctly in this statement from the forward to Symbols of Transformation, originally published in 1912, and later substantially revised in 1952

“To free medical psychology from the subjective and personalistic bias that characterized its outlook at that time, and to make it possible to understand the unconscious as an objective and collective psyche”