Jung

Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961] established an analytic psychology that emphasized the self -- the achievement of harmony among the various strands of personality. He displayed an early ambivalence in his approach to psychology: on the one hand, he developed a method of determining emotionality from associative reaction times to words; on the other, he studied occult phenomena and alchemy. Just was closely associated with Freud's more constrained model of personality. Jung's approach to individual differences focused on the resolution of contrasting attributes, like extroversion and introversion (terms he introduced). Personality was taken to be comprised of the person (the socialized self), The anima or animus (characteristics of the opposite sex of which the individual in unaware), and the shadow (the instincts). The integration of these components defines the self, which undergoes changes throughout life, particularly in middle age. Reality for Jung was psychical and the unconscious involved personal and collective components. Dreams provided an avenue into both aspects of the unconscious, either through underdeveloped features of the shadow or through the archetypal themes expressed. "The symbols of the process of individuation that appear in dreams are images of an archetypal nature which depict the centralizing process or the production of new center of personality." It was the emphasis of the collective unconscious, archetypes, and synchronicity that placed Jung more firmly in the Romantic tradition than Freud.

Jung studied comparative religion and the occult throughout his life, and he placed particular significance on visual symbols, like the mandala, used in different cultures. These included yin-yang -- representing the union of opposites -- and Jung is shown within a variant of this symbol made up of concentric circles. ~ Page 131