November 14, 2024
Carl Jung Offers an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3-Hour Interview (1957)

Within the Nineteen Fifties, it used to be fash­ion­ready to drop Freud’s title — regularly as now not in pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al intercourse jokes. Freud’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions had as a lot to do along with his reputation because the actu­al prac­tice of psy­chother­a­py, and it used to be assumed — and nonetheless is to a really perfect level — that Freud had “gained” the talk along with his for­mer stu­dent and buddy Carl Jung, who noticed reli­gion, psy­che­del­ic medication, occult prac­tices, and so on. as legitimate kinds of indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing and inte­grat­ing human selves — selves that had been in any case, he idea, con­nect­ed via excess of bio­log­i­cal dri­ves for intercourse and loss of life.

Now Jung’s insights according to­me­ate the cul­ture, in increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar fields like transper­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, for examination­ple, that see people as “rad­i­cal­ly inter­con­nect­ed, now not simply iso­lat­ed indi­vid­u­als,” psy­chol­o­gist Har­ris L. Fried­guy argues. Transfer­ments like those grew out of the “coun­ter­cul­ture transfer­ments of the Sixties,” psy­chol­o­gy lec­tur­er and writer Steve Tay­lor explains, “and the wave of psy­cho-exper­i­males­ta­tion it concerned, thru psy­che­del­ic sub­stances, med­i­ta­tion and oth­er con­scious­ness-chang­ing prac­tices” — the very prac­tices Jung explored in his paintings.

Certainly, Jung used to be the primary “to reputable­imize a spir­i­tu­al option to the prac­tice of intensity psy­chol­o­gy,” Mark Kasprow and Bruce Scot­ton indicate, and “sug­gest­ed that psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment extends to incorporate prime­er states of con­scious­ness and will con­tin­ue thru­out existence, quite than forestall with the reach­ment of grownup ego mat­u­ra­tion.” In opposition to Freud, who idea tran­scen­dence used to be regres­sion, Jung “professional­posed that tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence lies with­in and is acces­si­ble to each­one, and that the heal­ing and enlargement stim­u­lat­ed via such expe­ri­ence regularly employ the lan­guages of sym­bol­ic imagery and non­ver­bal expe­ri­ence.”

Jung’s paintings was increas­ing­ly impor­tant after his loss of life in 1961, lead­ing to the pub­li­ca­tion of his col­lect­ed works in 1969. Those intro­duced learn­ers to all of his  “key con­cepts and concepts, from arche­typ­al sym­bols to ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy to UFOs,” notes a com­pan­ion information. Close to the tip of his existence, Jung him­self professional­vid­ed a ver­bal sur­vey of his existence’s paintings within the type of 4 one-hour inter­perspectives con­duct­ed in 1957 via Uni­ver­si­ty of Houston’s Dr. Richard Evans on the Eidgenos­sis­che Tech­nis­che Hoschschule (Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy) in Zurich.

“The con­ver­sa­tions had been filmed as a part of an edu­ca­tion­al venture designed for stu­dents of the psy­chol­o­gy leave­ment. Evans is a deficient inter­view­er, however Jung com­pen­sates smartly,” the Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library writes. The edit­ed inter­perspectives start with a ques­tion about Jung’s con­cept of according to­sona (additionally, inci­den­tal­ly, the theme and name of Ing­mar Bergman’s 1966 mas­ter­piece). In reaction, Jung describes the according to­sona in undeniable phrases and with each­day examination­ples as a fic­tion­al self “par­tial­ly dic­tat­ed via soci­ety and par­tial­ly dic­tat­ed via the expec­ta­tions or the want­es one nurs­es one­self.”

The fewer we’re con­scious­ly conscious about our pub­lic selves as according to­for­mances in those phrases, the extra we’re susceptible, Jung says, to neu­roses, because the pres­certain of our “shad­ow,” exerts itself. Jung and Evans’ dis­cus­sion of according to­sona most effective grazes the sur­face in their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion in regards to the uncon­scious and the numerous tactics to get admission to it. Via­out, Jung’s examination­ples are transparent and his expla­na­tions lucid. Above, you’ll see a tran­scribed video of the similar inter­perspectives. Learn a pub­lished tran­script within the col­lec­tion C.G. Jung Talk­ing, and spot extra Jung inter­perspectives and document­u­males­taries on the Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Carl Jung Impressed the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Guy Can­now not Stand a Imply­ing­much less Existence’ (1959)

The Imaginative and prescient­ary Mys­ti­cal Artwork of Carl Jung: See Illus­trat­ed Pages from The Purple E book

Josh Jones is a creator and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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