Jungian psychology: Encyclopedia II - Jungian psychology - Key terms

Jungian psychology - Key terms

Jung is best known for his term "archetype" which connotes a structural view of psychological life. The term archetype can be understood as quite similar to — and was probably directly influenced by — Kant's term "a priori." Jung often seemed to view the archetypes as sorts of psychological organs, directly analogous to our physical, bodily organs: both being morphological givens for the species; both arising at least partially through evolutionary processes. Current Jungian-influenced thinking has explored nearly diametrically opposing paths from Jung's structural thinking. Some have pursued deeply structural views, along the lines of complexity theory in mathematics, and some have tried to work with Jung's ideas in a seeming post-structuralist way (most obviously, James Hillman). Jung's work with mythology and archetypes was one of the most significant influences on mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Perhaps the most important archetype to Jung would be what he termed the "self." It could be described as the ultimate pattern of psychological life; he characterized it as both the totality of the personality, conscious and unconscious, and the process of becoming of the whole personality. It could be described as both the goal of one's psychological life and that which pulls one toward it teleologically. One important point to note here about Jung's thinking is that he did not hold to be absolute the four-dimensional space-time continuum that we conventionally conceptualize (see synchronicity).

We can better understand Jung's views of the self by looking at two other archetypal or structural views that were highly important to him: the idea of "the opposites" and his work describing many old, largely despised and forgotten alchemical texts. Jung saw these texts as valuable psychological treatises rather than dry descriptions of arcane magical practices.

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