Who was Jung?
Carl Gustav Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875. Raised in a religious atmosphere he did not understand and which he found difficult to sustain, Jung became interested in the world of dreams, fantasy, religion and myths. Some studies say that proximity to the divine is something that Jung attributed to a kind of heritage. maternal, while faith in the sense of blind and unquestioned ritual would have been something inherited from her father.
In addition to religious issues, Jung approached knowledge in natural sciences, with a keen interest in the possibility of understanding reality through these studies. For Jung, the contradiction between science and religion was the basis of his dissatisfaction. Amid these questions about the world, Jung decided to study psychiatry as a way to understand the biological and the spiritual scientifically. Among the authors he studied, we can highlight the philosophical influences of Kant, Plato, Goethe and Schopenhauer.
In his studies in psychiatry and clinical practice, Jung tried to humanize the patient care service, seeking to investigate, to in addition to the symptoms, the existential issues that each subject brought him, making each clinical session a unique encounter, full of Meanings. In this way, he avoided labeling patients and standardizations in terms of care and treatments, emphasizing the individual aspects of each case. At that time, Jung was already using a rudimentary technique of word association, which placed great value on the reports of his patients.
The relationship with Sigmund Freud
Later, Jung moved to Paris and began testing his associative experiment with a view to its use for diagnosis. At this point in his career, Jung met Sigmund Freud and his work, and the two began to exchange works and letters, clinical cases, theories, etc. The first conversation between the two scholars would have lasted thirteen uninterrupted hours, which was the beginning of an exchange relationship that would last almost seven years.
The break in the relationships occurred for theoretical reasons: Freud did not accept Jung's interest in spiritual as a field of study in itself and Jung disagreed with the theories of sexual trauma proposed by Freud. In the years of the breakup, Freud had his books burned by the Nazis, while Jung's theories spread and he was seen as one of the most significant exponents of German psychiatry. It was precisely the anguish of separation between Jung and Freud that yielded material so that Jung could continue his studies, now much more focused on the studies of the individual and imagination relationship, moving away from sexual theorizations of Freud.
Jung's analytical psychology
From his studies, Jung developed what would later come to be known as “Analytical Psychology” which investigates dreams, drawings and other materials as ways of expressing the unconscious. Jung, unlike Freud, assumed the existence of what he calls collective unconscious which, unlike the individual, would be composed of a tendency to sensitize elements such as images and symbols, based on a universal appeal. These symbols of collective importance would be the well-known Jungian archetypes. Jung's proposal for clinical interventions consisted precisely in exploring the dialogue between the contents unconscious and the archetypes, and it would be precisely the distance between these elements the origin of the illness psychic.
In Brazil, the Jungian theory had a lot of resonance. Among its best-known scholars, is Dr. Nise da Silveira who wrote a book called “Jung: Life and Work”. Nise is the founder of the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, which was the result of her tireless encouragement to the artistic productions of psychiatric hospital inmates, analyzed using the Jungian approach.
How to find out more?
The most expressive source of information about Carl Gustav Jung is his autobiography, entitled “Memories, Dreams and Reflections”, released in 1961.
In 2012, David Cronenberg directed the film “A Dangerous Method” which tells the story of history of the encounter between Freud and Jung, in addition to addressing the vicissitudes of union and separation of theories.
Juliana Spinelli Ferrari
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Psychology from UNESP - Universidade Estadual Paulista
Brief psychotherapy course by FUNDEB - Foundation for the Development of Bauru
Master's Student in School Psychology and Human Development at USP - University of São Paulo