Carl vs. Carl — Part I
Ramblings Of A Psych Grad On Jung & Rogers
Does this ever happen to you — do you ever suddenly think of something that you used to know in incredible detail that is now almost entirely replaced by new trivia/formed thoughts/experiences and you’re just sitting there engulfed in sadness for a bit, mourning all that precious knowledge that’s either gone or impossible to retrieve? No?? Just me?
Fearing the scarcity of my long-term storage and retrieval capabilities and because of my sentimental relationship with knowledge itself, I often find myself in need of re-acquaintance with past facts/information, especially if they were personally formative in nature.
The following write-up contains excerpts of an old paper on the comparison of Jungian and Rogerian therapy, random memories from my relation to the material and most importantly, ramblings. While analytical psychotherapy was not necessarily formative for me, person-centered therapy has been, both as a practitioner and as a person — and therefore I felt a strong urge to dig up my old paper, hone my academic Greek translating skills and revisit some of my favorite theoretical places. Disclaimer: this should in no way, shape or form be considered an expert thesis on the topic.
Let’s do this!
Carl Jung
Mysticism and empiricism; faith and doubt; Freudian and anti-Freudian:
labeling Carl Jung can be not only taxing but unfair, as his theory can’t be neatly boxed in oversimplified taxonomies. For the purpose of this conversation though, let’s say that Jung belongs in the psychoanalysis team, following the footsteps of frenemy/father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. To paint a picture of these guys’ relationship, you should know that when they first met they talked for 13 hours straight. When was the last time you had a stimulating intellectual conversation of that magnitude?
While they had a pretty close relationship during the following years, Jung was ready to forge his own path sans Freud’s grooming him to be his successor in the psychoanalyst family business. Carl was not fully espousing the Freudian stances re: sexuality but he also knew how super awkward it’d be to publicly call out Freud on it. Finally, he quit the International Psychoanalytical Association and published the “Psychology of the Unconscious: A study of the transformations and symbolisms of the libido, a contribution to the history of the evolution of thought” in essentially what was an intellectual coming-out party. “I couldn’t sacrifice my intellectual independence”, he had written in a letter to his wife. So at two fell swoops (can you even say that or is it always at one fell swoop? also what does that even actually mean? *post-google* this phrase is Shakespearean in origin and is now mostly used to signify suddenness than savagery which was its initial conveyed message #themoreyouknow) he came out of Siggie’s shadow, eschewed his patronizing expectations and basically shattered his god-like infallibility status among psychoanalysts.
Intellectually independent Jung integrated his knowledge from a variety of divergent sources: psychoanalysis under Freud as well as Janet, psychiatry under Bleuler, mythology, alchemy, anthropology, religion; an amalgam of philosophy and science.
While he started off empirically, as he stated, by observing psychic phenomena, he then proceeded to embrace the study of the unknown and the mystical, that rendered him a sort of hermit in the scientific community despite his medical background. Religion, especially, came to be a fulcrum point in his theory, often creating the impression that analytical therapy was synonymous to religion. Jung had basically come to the conclusion that psychological healing and the emersion of the religious sentiment stem from the same source in one’s psyche, therefore heralding the spiritual experience of faith as a catalyst to therapy. This “left-wing protestant” though, as he liked to call himself, claimed he had no intention of making religion and psychotherapy synonymous, or “messianizing” himself, which many accused him of doing.
The most radical concept that Jung introduced was that of the collective unconscious, with which he distanced himself from the primacy of the individual subconscious and the concept of sexuality of Freud. One’s libidinal energy, according to Jung, doesn’t solely target the fulfillment of biological needs, but contributes to one’s psychological development in general, and more specifically in addressing intellectual/philosophical needs. So Jung’s subconscious ended up compartmentalized into two parts, the personal or individual and the collective or social subconscious.
The personal subconscious is composed of fantasy or experiential material, like childhood traumata and intrapyschic conflicts that have been repressed but could surface under the appropriate circumstances. That’s also where complexes lie, aka super charged emotional entities filled with a variety of correlate ideas and images around this central core called archetypes. One of the most well known complexes, courtesy of Freud, is the “Oedipal complex”, and perhaps the best known Jung-studied complex is the “Mother complex”.
So what’s in the heart of these complexes, what are these archetypes all about? Archetypes are primordial, mythological images, deeply, deeeeply rooted predispositions, instinctual pulsions, primeval fears and thought/behavior motifs that have been established throughout the depths of time, through boundless repetitions of situations across contexts. Therefore Jung is a big proponent of a non-tabula rasa mind theory. These archetypes are shared indistinctly, universally. Examples of these archetypes include the “persona”, aka the mask people wear in society and the role they play within it; and the “shadow”, the Darth Vader to one’s Anakin.
Archetypes manifest most often in the realm of dreams. Archetypes and lived experiences are intertwined in this realm, creating narratives and myths out of one’s conscious and unconscious machinations. Besides, as Otto Rank and Karl Abraham once said, respectively: “myths are the collective dream of an entire people”, and dreams themselves “the myths of the world”.
Starting in childhood, according to Jung, we go through this stage of archaic forms of thought and emotions, that even as we grow into adulthood doesn’t ultimately cease to accompany our newfound logic and directive/pragmatic thought processes. This heterogeneous mix of unconscious motives rooted in mythological images, stories and ideas continues to present itself in various capacities throughout life. Therefore, recognizing and realizing the impact of said archetypes is a climactic effort that requires buckets of mental and psychic energy in order to achieve the ultimate goal of integrating one’s conscious and subconscious. In the midst of that effort lies the Ego. Jung’s Ego is a cluster of ideas that imprints one with a sense of identity and continuity. Jung considered the goal of harmony and intra-individual sense of unity as a pretty unattainable one, however to have this goal is essential. While this Αristotelian goal of self-realization (the process of which he refers to as “individuation”) is not in its entirety realistic, the constant thirst for challenge and motivation, the need to express, differentiate and develop one’s self should be a constant compass throughout life.
Another goal of therapy is the discovery of one’s type of psychological functioning: thinking/feeling, intuition/sensing, and introversion/extroversion (the basis of the Myers-Briggs test most folks are probably familiar with). These idiosyncratic differences that make up our personalities can influence one’s thought patterns and behaviors, without, however, rendering them static and deterministic.
Speaking of determinism, while Freud was pretty deterministic, searching for the roots of psychopathology in one’s past, Jung was more teleological (while still remaining somewhat deterministic as well) — juxtaposing one’s current situation to that in which they wish to be. Starting from the beginning, from the discovery of one’s personal myths, the therapist stays in the here-and-now, in the lived present, to shed light on the potentiality of the client and help them integrate the conscious and subconscious. He didn’t have any clear-cut method of “being” in therapy, but instead aimed to individualize his approach based on the needs of his clients.
“Naturally, a doctor must be familiar with the so-called “methods.” But he must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions… In my analyses they play no part. I am unsystematic very much by intention. We need a different language for every patient.”
The Socratic dialectic going on during analytic therapy is, therefore, not just the one occurring between therapist and client but also the one happening between the conscious and subconscious. To that goal, dream interpretation, creative expression and the use of one’s imagination are employed to reinstate a sense of psychic unity.
The concept of “active imagination” is one method clients can utilize to delve in a conscious manner in their subconscious workings. While the experience of dreams is one might claim a rather passive experience, imagination entails the involvement of the Ego. This type of active imagination could be expressed through drawing or writing, instead of recounting and interpreting dreams, that can be influenced by other factors as well (what is the therapist’s role in the interpretation? if it is more active, then does this help develop a sense of dependence upon their “authority” or other forms of transference, and how are those addressed? etc). Interpretations should be presented as hypotheses, and clients should be the ones holding the reigns in determining the meaning of their subconscious manifestations.
Of course, one cannot speak of Jung’s contributions without mentioning how his own writings as well as things published in the journal he was an editor of (which supposedly were not run by him) are representative of anti-semitism, especially considering this was taking place in Nazi Germany (and there are even more accusations of straight-up Nazi affiliation). This is still being debated in psychoanalytic circles (and beyond) with passionate proponents from both sides.
Finally, in the day and age of evidence-based treatments, it is not easy to support use of Jungian psychotherapy (especially not just as a wheel in the therapeutic machine but as the sole driving force) — not in the same way other types of therapy have quantifiably defensible outcomes via research and clinical trials. There are still a number of schools of thought, however, that theorize and practice either the classic type or variations of analytical therapy, and it has greatly influenced the development of the psychodynamic field.
Next up, Carl Rogers!
