Carl Jung, Personality theories, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - 2

continued from previous article on same topic..

In Carl Jung’s personality theory, he divides the psyche into three parts.

-The first part is the ego, defined as the conscious mind.
-Second, is the personal unconscious, which he says includes anything that is not presently conscious but can be. It is said to include both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason.
-Finally, Jung adds the part of the psyche that make his theory different from all others, the collective unconscious. Jung says that this is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge that we are all born with. It influences all of our behaviors and experiences, especially the emotional ones, but we are never directly conscious of it, it is only revealed by looking at those influences.

The contents of the collective unconscious are known as archetypes. An archetype is defined as an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. It has no form of its own, but acts as an “organizing principle” on the things that we see or do. It works very similar to the way instincts work in Freud’s theory. One example of an archetype is the mother. All of our ancestors had mothers, and we have evolved in an environment that included a mother or mother-substitute. As helpless infants we never would have survived without our connection to a nurturing one. Therefore, Jung says that we are built in a way that reflects our evolutionary environment, so we come into this world looking for a mother. Another example of an archetype is the persona. This is a defined as your public image. It is said to be the mask that you put on before you show yourself to the outside world. Although the persona begins as an archetype, it is the part of us that finds itself most distant from the collective unconscious.

Included in our persona is the role of male or female that we must play, which is determined for most by their physical gender. Jung, however, like Freud, and Adler, and others, believed that we are all really bisexual in nature. Beginning at birth we are under the influence of society that mold us into males and females. Jung therefore believed that all men have a female aspect present in their collective unconscious, which is referred to as the anima, and that all females have a male aspect present in their collective unconscious, known as the animus. They are together referred to as syzygy. The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious. It is also the archetype, which is responsible for much of our love life. Jung says that we are as ancient Greek myth suggests, constantly searching for our other half, which the Gods took away from us in members of the opposite sex. Therefore, when we fall in love at first sight, we have actually found someone that fills our anima or animus archetype particularly well.

to be continued...