Year: 2013

June 20, 2013

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

The founder of analytical psychology, Jung was born, raised and educated in Switzerland. His mother’s mysticism and his own early experiences with little understood psychological phenomena such as neurosis led him to a life-long study of the mind. In 1906 he met the somewhat older Sigmund Freud and formed a friendship and professional relationship that lasted for many years though they eventually fell out over the nature of the unconscious mind, Jung holding that the “collective unconscious” had a deeper and more powerful effect on the psyche. He was responsible for the development of several core concepts of modern psychology, including extroverted and introverted personalities, archetypes and “individuation”, the process of integrating the conscious and unconscious within one’s self. His theories led to a number of current psychological tools, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a test sorting individuals according to their perception of the world and their decision-making processes. Jung’s studies went well beyond the strictly scientific, including dream analysis, astrology, alchemy, and the occult.

Greg Bover