Carl Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875, and was trained as physician there. He is one of the followers of Sigmund Freud and was influenced by his ideas especially the interpretation of dreams. Jung departed later from Freud and made his own discipline in psychoanalysis called analytic psychology.
Jung stated that behaviour of humans is governed by the laws of causality and by teleology. He asserted that current behaviour is influenced by what happened to us in the past. In addition he believed that our current behaviour is associated with what will happen to us tomorrow, a concept that is called destiny.
This statement that our future is determined beforehand or is determined based upon destiny does not have any scientific support in favour of it. This claim puts the theory of jung beyond the scope of the science of psychology.
Another concept by Jung, which has no scientific basis as well is called the collective unconscious. This concept states that we inherit memories of our ancestors from previous generations.
This concept of collective unconscious as well as the concept of destiny have no scientific background as was mentioned previously. These two concepts make the theory of Jung lack a scientific basis.
We can inherit brown eyes because our chromosomes that we have dictate to us to do so. This is a genetic predisposition that is well known and which has a scientific basis and proof.
However, the collective conscious and the destiny concepts do not have scientific justification. These two concepts made analytic psychology by Jung of little value for the practice of his theory as a scientific discipline.
The unconscious concept based on Jung is divided into two types. These are: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious by Jung is similar in structure to the unconscious by Freud.
It is formed by the experience that we obtain during our life time. One feature of the personal unconscious is the concept of the complex. A complex is a traumatic event that is associated with emotional state that develops along with the traumatic event. This traumatic event has a significant emotional value.
In contrast to the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious is inherited according to Jung and it includes all memories and human experience from prehistoric time. As was mentioned previously this concept is a weakness in the theory by Jung which does not have scientific reason for its existence.
Included in the collective unconscious accroding to Jung are archetypes. An example of an archetype is found in the newly born baby or infant. In every baby there is an archetype of a mother which helps him to identify his mother and distinguishes her from other people.
In addition to the archetypes there are two personality structures and which reside outside the collective unconscious. These two structures are the persona and the shadow. They are derivatives of archetype that reside outside the collective unconscious.
The persona represents the positive aspect of the personality while the shadow represents the negative aspect of the person. In addition to these two personality structures there are two other structures that are called the anima and the animus.
Jung viewed the personality as bisexual having both male as well as female characteristics. The feminine archetype in men is the anima, while the masculine archetype in females is the animus. The anima and animus archetypes developed like all other archetypes in the collective unconscious from ancestors of prehistoric time.
The last structure of personality that Jung talked about in his theory was the Self concept. It forms in adulthood through a process that is called individuation.
Jung talked in his theory about psychological types of personality. He mentioned two dimensions of personality. These are attitudes and functions. In addition, there are two attitudes that he talked about. These are introversion and extroversion.
In addition there are four types of functions that he talked about. These are: thinking and feeling and sensing and intuiting. The content of thinking is the idea while the content of feeling in the emotions. The content od sensing is perceptual processes. Intuition is an abstract concept that is difficult to define.
Jung’s interest in mysticism and spirituality and religion in addition to other controversial concepts in his theory has placed his theory beyond the scientfic discipline of psychology. Nevertheless two of his concepts: the introvert and extrovert have brought much empirical data into the science of psychology.
