Analytical psychology: Encyclopedia - Analytical psychology

Analytical psychology

Analytical psychology (also known as Depth Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, Dream Analysis, or Jungian Analysis) is based upon the movement started by Carl Jung and his followers as distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis. Its aim is the personal experience of the deep forces and motivations underlying human behavior.

Analytical psychology - Assumptions

The basic assumption is that the personal unconscious is a potent part — probably the more active part — of the normal human psyche. Reliable communication between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche is necessary for happiness.

Also crucial is the belief that dreams show ideas, beliefs, and feelings of which individuals may not be readily aware, but need to be, and that such material is expressed in a personalized vocabulary of visual metaphors. Things "known but unknown" are contained in the unconscious, and dreams are one of the main vehicles for the unconscious to express them. An innate need for self-realization leads people to explore and integrate these rejected materials. This natural process is called individuation, or the process of becoming an individual.

If a person does not proceed toward self-knowledge, neurotic symptoms may arise. Symptoms are widely defined, including, for instance, phobias, fetishism, depression. Symptoms are interpreted to be similar to dreams in that there is a concealed meaning in the apparently useless symptom.

Analysis is a way to experience and integrate the unknown material. It is a search for the meaning of behaviors, symptoms, events. Many are the channels to reach this greater self-knowledge. The analysis of dreams is the most common. Others may include expressing feelings in art pieces, poetry or other expressions of creativity.

Analytical psychology distinguishes between a personal and a collective unconscious.

The collective unconscious contains archetypes common to all human beings. That is, individuation may bring to surface symbols that do not relate to the life experiences of a single person. This content is more easily viewed as answers to the more fundamental questions of humanity: life, death, meaning, happiness, fear. Among these more spiritual concepts may arise and be integrated into the personality.

Giving a complete description of the process of dream interpretation and individuation is complex. The nature of the complexity lies on the fact that the process is highly specific to the person who does it.

While Freudian psychoanalysis assumes that the repressed material hidden in the unconscious is given by repressed sexual instincts, Analytical psychology has a more general approach. There is no preconceived assumption about the unconscious material. The unconscious, for Jungian analysts, may contain repressed sexual drives, but also aspirations, fears, etc.

Analytical psychology - Psychological types

Analytical Psychology distinguishes several psychological types or temperaments.

• Extrovert
• Introvert

The attitude type could be thought of as the flow of libido (that is psychic energy, or qi). The Introvert's flow is inward to the subject and away from the object, ie. external relations. The Extrovert's is outward toward the object, ie. towards external relations and away from the inner, subjective world. Extroverts desire breadth, while introverts seek depth.

The Introversion/Extroversion attitude type may also influence mental breakdown. Introverts may be more inclined to catatonic type schizophrenia and extroverts towards manic depression.

Analytical psychology - Post-Jung

Samuels (1985) has distinguished three schools of "post-Jungian" therapy - the classical, the developmental and the archetypal.

Analytical psychology - Classical school

The classical school is that which tries to remain faithful to what Jung himself proposed and taught in person and in his 20-plus volumes of work.

Analytical psychology - Developmental school

The developmental school, associated with Michael Fordham, Brian Feldman etc., can be considered a bridge between Jungian psychoanalysis and Melanie Klein's object relations theory. Laings and Goodheart are also often mentioned.

Analytical psychology - Archetypal school

The archetypal school (sometimes called "the imaginal school"), with different views associated with the mythopoeticists, such as James Hillman in his intellectual theoretical view of archetypal psychology, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in her view that ethnic and aboriginal people are the originators of archetypal psychology and have long carried the maps to the journey of the soul in their songs, tales, dream-telling, art and rituals; Marion Woodman who proposes a feminist viewpoint regarding archetypal psychology, and other Jungians like Thomas Moore, as well. Most mythopoeticists/ archetypal psychology innovators either imagine the Self not to be the main archetype of the collective unconscious as Jung thought, but rather assign each archetype equal value...Others, who are modern progenitors of archetypal psychology (such as Estés), think of the Self as that which contains and yet is suffused by all the other archetypes, each giving life to the other.

Robert L. Moore, one of Jung's most dedicated followers, has explored the archetypal level of the human psyche in a series of five books co-authored with Douglas Gillette, which have played an important role in the men's movement in the United States. R. Moore likes to use computerese, so he likens the archetypal level of the human psyche to the hard wiring of a computer. Our personal experiences of course influence our accessing the archetypal level of the human psyche, but personalized ego consciousness can be likened to the software in a computer (e.g., Microsoft Word).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Analytical psychology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki