56 pages • 1 hour read
C. G. JungModern Man in Search of a Soul
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1931A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Carl Jung
In 1900, young Swiss physician Carl Jung studied with Sigmund Freud, who trained Jung in the new system of mental health therapy, psychoanalysis. Jung quickly took the technique in another direction with his belief that the unconscious contains not simply bad impulses but many different drives that can go sour when repressed or bloom when appropriately expressed. Jung also agreed with Alfred Adler that the urge for power is as important as the urge for pleasure. Jung’s great contribution to psychotherapy is the idea that most mental health issues are spiritual in nature—that people become neurotic when their lives appear to them to be meaningless—and that deep in the mind lies a “collective unconscious” that contains helpful images and symbols, called archetypes, that well up when a person or an entire society needs them the most. Jung is also famous for his theory of personality types, which has led to the development of personality evaluation systems like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Jung’s break with Freud was stressful for both men, but it proved fruitful for psychology. Jung’s ideas helped birth the human-potential movement and inspired a deeper engagement by Western societies with Eastern philosophies. A person who practices yoga or mindfulness meditation can thank Jung for opening a doorway through which those techniques arrived in the West.
Sigmund Freud
Founder, during the late 1800s, of the mental health therapy called psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud believed that most mental health problems stem from childhood traumas whose memories are buried in the unconscious, a psychological system of drives and urges that most people are unaware of. Freud also believed that these urges are uncivilized, especially the sexual urge and the infantile search for pleasure, and that the proper function of consciousness is to regulate them, so they don’t get out of hand and form mental health problems. Freud developed the idea of the complex, a set of entangled urges that manifests as antisocial behaviors called neuroses. In his system of therapy, a patient talks about traumatic past experiences while a therapist guides the conversation so that the patient becomes aware of repressed longings and frustrations.
In recent decades, Freud’s once popular “talking cure” has come under criticism within the psychology community for being expensive, time consuming, and of dubious value. Freud’s central idea, that the unconscious mind contains unbridled selfish urges for sex and other pleasures, was questioned originally by Freud’s own students, including Jung, Adler, and others. Jung emphasized the good side of the unconscious, a concept that has gained in popularity.
Alfred Adler
Physician Alfred Adler, a contemporary of Jung, studied psychotherapy under Freud and, like Jung, soon broke with the master and began teaching his own version, called Individual Psychology. This method de-emphasized Freud’s notion of the unconscious will to pleasure and instead stressed a new concept, the inferiority complex, and its associated drive for power. Jung mentions Adler several times as an alternative to his own idea of the unconscious as a repository of important spiritual impulses. Adler serves the text as an authority on the unconscious whose views differ from Freud’s, giving weight to Jung’s own ideas so that they can withstand the blasts of heated disagreement launched by Freud’s loyalist followers.
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