Freuds and Jungs Conceptualizations of the Unconscious - Essay Example

Freud’s and Jung’s Conceptualizations of the Unconscious Insert 09 March An analysis of Freud’s and Jung’s Conceptualizations of the Unconscious Introduction Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are the most common proponents of the theory of psychoanalysis. This is because their contribution to human mind and the thinking process has a very profound impact in the study of human behaviors. Freud was an Austrian doctor and is the father of psychoanalysis theory (Meredith-Owen, 2011). In addition, Freud had a passion to extend and improve human knowledge, and as a result, he managed to enroll at University of Vienna in 1873 to study medical research in biology and physiology. He graduated from the school, got his degree in 1886, and set up a private treatment method dealing with psychological disorders. This became the foundation of his and passion and ambition to contribute to the psychoanalysis theory. Primarily, Freud introduced the three elements of the mind involving the id, the ego and the superego (Ekstrom, 2004). Again, Freud also contributed largely towards the theory dealing with unconsciousness, the consciousness, and the pre-consciousness. In addition, he developed the theory of psychosexual development, repression, hysteria and the theory of dreams. Besides, the theory of libido and dual instinct are also closely connected to Freud’s works (Green, 2012). On the other hand, Carl Jung is closely related to Freud, as studies shows that they were friends. Additionally, they both contributed towards the development of psychoanalysis theory. Jung developed and introduced the personal unconscious theory and its complexes, the archetypes theory including the anima and the animus, the shadow, the self, and the theory dealing with introversion and extraversion. As a matter of fact, Jung evaluated and introduced four functions such as individuation, compensation and various dream functions and works (Ekstrom, 2004). Therefore, this paper will discuss and analyze these theories and works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Again, the paper will also discuss and analyze Freud and Jung’s conceptualization of the unconscious element of the mind including dream theory and fantasies that shape human personalities. An Analysis of Conceptualizations of the Unconscious Jung’s analytical psychology was mostly derived from his once great friend Freud, especially on the psychoanalysis theory. Despite this, there were some differences and disagreement between them in terms of their viewpoints towards psychological human behaviors (Meredith-Owen, 2011). On one hand, Freud’s view on the unconscious mind was that, the unconscious element of the mind is the receptacle part of the conscious mind, which contains various rejected and un-encountered human feelings, thoughts, experiences, and situations. Therefore, according to Freud, it is the function of the unconscious mind to cover those events that are rejected by the conscious mind (Ekstrom, 2004). Contrary to this, Jung introduced two elements of the unconscious mind - the personal and collective unconsciousness. He argued that the personal unconscious mind is responsible for the various psychic content of the conscious mind, while the collective unconscious mind contains the various accumulating experience of the human mind (Ekstrom, 2004). Secondly, according to Freud, the main driving force controlling human behavior and life is mainly the sexuality that is contained by the unconscious mind. In that sense, he asserts that the various thoughts, feelings, and experiences, including frustrations that human beings usually face are mainly due to unfulfilled sexual wishes and desires (Green, 2012). According to Jung, there are more other things to life apart from sexuality. In addition, the unconscious mind has to deal more with the compensatory function of regulating the mind and aims at healing growth and individuation. Furthermore, Jung argues that sexuality is just part of human beings’ wholeness and underlies the element of individuation and constant search of meaning (West, 2008). Thirdly, according to Freud, the psychic balance mainly originates from the unresolved and unfulfilled sexual wishes that come from the libido energy. However, according to Jung, the psychic balance of human being is due to compensatory and regulatory underlying elements of the unconscious mind that strive to balance the unfulfilled psyches to attain equilibrium (West, 2008). Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud therefore have a number of viewpoints that depict their different perspectives of the unconscious mind. For example, Jung believed that the unconscious mind had about two layers that were just located right under the conscious mind (Green, 2012). These were the personal unconscious mind and the collective unconscious mind whose task is to deal with all humanity experiences in life. On the other hand, Freud only believes that the unconscious mind is only one layer whose function is to contain the various unresolved sexual thoughts, experiences and feelings that the conscious mind was unable to deal with (Edwards, & Edwards, 2010). Although Carl Jung was once Freud’s student, he later went on and challenged Freud’s theories of dream interpretation (Green, 2012). In fact, on interpretation of dreams, Jung focused on the subjective nature of dreams while Freud mainly focused on the objective nature. In that sense, Freud argued that dream mainly involves further manifestation of an individual’s past events and life experiences from childhood, especially the psychological trauma events and the sexual fixations. However, according to Jung, dreams are symbolic in nature and can be used to show the various transformations and individualism growth that an individual has undergone in life. Nevertheless, they both relied on interpretation of their patient’s dreams. Again, they differ largely on the dream issues. This is because Freud believed that dreams were a manifestation of the unfulfilled sexual desires, while Jung believed that dreams could be used to show how an individual can grow (Green, 2012). Freud’s emphasis on unfulfilled sexual desires is one of the main reasons that led to most of his peers and friends differing with him. Therefore, I can argue that his too much focus on sexuality is one of the weaknesses of his theory on dream interpretation. In addition, Jung believed that human beings were able to develop and grow, while Freud believed that human beings’ main driving force in life is mainly sexual motivation (Hoffer, 2001). On the part of hysteria, which includes the loss of appetite, irritability, lack of sex desires and even abdomen pain, Freud argued that these were mainly due to past traumatic events that the patients went through. Therefore, these experiences had been forgotten by the conscious mind and in order to treat a patient undergoing these, the patients must recall some of the past feelings and thoughts so that the conscious mind can confront them. Besides, by recalling these past events, the patient could then relieve her/himself by crying or yelling and ultimately he or she would be okay. Furthermore, Freud argues that these symptoms would be more common to patients who experienced these traumatic events that were more closely related to childhood sexual experiences (Hoffer, 2001). On the part of the elements making up the human mind, Freud believed that the human mind is made up of the id, the ego and the superego (Raguet, 2012). To begin with, he argued that the id is the element of the unconscious mind that mainly deals with immediate sexual drives and wishes and has nothing to do with morality and reality. Therefore, it is mainly responsible for satisfaction of the pleasure principle. Secondly, the ego is the conscious element of the mind that is mainly concerned with the memories, perceptions, and thoughts that usually enable human beings to act in line with reality principle (Green, 2012). Therefore, it works in serving the reality principle of the mind. Thirdly, we have the superego as an element of the human mind, which is the conscious element of the mind mainly dealing with morality. Therefore, the superego is usually in conflict with the id since it tries to manage the id wishes through socially acceptable standards and behaviors (Edwards, & Edwards, 2010). Freud believed that in human life, sexual desires usually start at the infancy stage and include the oral stage, the anal stage and the phallic stage. He further argued that at age five, the child would enter Oedipus complex (Green, 2012). Here, human beings begin to undergo sublimation whereby, the energy that is gotten from unfulfilled wants is directed to other activities. This is because sexual activities cannot be done all the times, and therefore, the energy for libido is directed and channeled to other activities such as sports. In this sense, the superego is trying to control the ego through socially acceptable behavior standards like involvement in sports (Raguet, 2012). On the psyche, Jung divides them into three parts, that is, the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious elements. Jung argues that the ego is conscious while the personal unconscious is the one that deals with the memories that are suppressed by the conscious mind although to him, these are not sexual thoughts and feelings (Green, 2012). Again, Jung asserts that the collective unconscious mind includes the knowledge and experiences that human beings are born with. In addition, Jung also developed his own principle stating that in life, in every good thought that human make, there is always a bad thought that come with it (Edwards, & Edwards, 2010). Besides, he argues that human beings have the ability and the freedom to choose which side of life to focus on, whether good or bad. He termed this theory as the theory and principle of relevance (Raguet, 2012). Jung believes that there are father archetype and mother archetype. Therefore, one can decide to shadow the father figure or shadow the mother figure. This persona will be reflected in an individual public image (Green, 2012). He identified aspect of ‘real us’, which he termed as the ‘anima’ and the ‘not real us’ that he termed ‘animus’; indeed, the male and female aspects of characteristics that one has will be represented in the type of archetype one has. Generally, the anima is the female aspect, which is contained in the unconscious collective mind of men while the animus is the male aspect of the collective unconscious mind contained in women mind. Besides, he believes that individual roles are determined by one’s gender, which is mostly determined by the society. Therefore, according to Jung, the society determines how boys and girls act (West, 2008). Another important contribution of Jung is his types of attitude, including the introversion and extraversion attitudes. Here, he argues that the various types of attitudes such as intuition, sensation and thinking can help in determining one’s personality (Hoffer, 2001). Therefore, Jung believed that personality usually depends on the thinking and type of attitudes that individuals develop in life (Edwards, & Edwards, 2010). It is worth noting that despite differences between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud’s perspectives on the theories, they all believed on the anima and the animus. They both believed that human beings are bisexual in nature and the society is the main determinant of gender roles for both boys and girls (Meredith-Owen, 2011). Conclusion All in all, the major criticism of these theories include Freud and Jung putting little attention on the impact of environment on human mind. These theories ignored the use of sociology and culture in analyzing the structure of the human mind. Again, the theories lack enough empirical and scientific data to support them; hence, they cannot be scientifically tested and verified. In addition, they never involved proper experimentation, since they mostly dealt with their patients. Other studies show that not all children undergo the sexual stages that Freud and Jung introduced. However, it is important to note that their theory of the unconscious mind remains relevant even today in explaining and in shaping human personality. This is because the concept of unconscious mind has been one of the major contributors to personality in psychology. Again, Freud and Jung clearly illustrate how the unconscious mind is the basis of personality through controlling human behaviors. These include Freud’s concepts on pre-conscious, conscious, and unconscious mind, and the structure of the mind including the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud and Jung explain that we come to know about our unconscious mind through dream analysis and fantasies. Therefore, this procedure can be used to help patients with problems such as hysteria. Finally, it is important that various therapists and neuropsychologists adopt the Freud and Jung theory of the unconscious mind and conceptualization to help their patients and clients with psychological problems. References Edwards, S. D., & Edwards, D. J. (2010). Sigmund Freud: Pioneer in Energy Healing. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 16(2), 219-222. Ekstrom, S. R. (2004). The mind beyond our immediate awareness: Freudian, Jungian, and cognitive models of the unconscious. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 49(5), 657-682 Green, S. R. (2012). Psychoanalytic Dialogues by Rozmarin, E. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 57(4), 551-554. Hoffer, A. (2001). Jungs analysis of Sabina Spielrein and his use of Freuds free association method. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 46(1), 117. Meredith-Owen, W. (2011). Winnicott on Jung: destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 56(1), 56-75 Raguet, C. (2012). The end of analysis for the analyst (Translated by Ann Kutek). Journal of Analytical Psychology, 57(2), 149-166 West, M. (2008). The narrow use of the term ego in analytical psychology: the ‘not-I’ is also who I am. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 53(3), 367-388 Read More