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C.G.Jung….
I was first exposed to Jung's works in introductory courses at the university I attended. But the jargon and complexity of his thinking was so difficult that I was forced to put it aside. Gradually, I discovered that many of the authors, whose work attracted me most, referred to the vast life's work of Jung in their own writing. Gradually, I began read his works, as well as many that have been written about him.
After several years of intense study, I developed a strong sense of connection with Jung (as with many other writers), who became my mentors across the vast, invisible expanses of time and space.
While I embrace much of the work and philosophy articulated by Jung, I consciously decided not to study to become a Jungian analyst, and not to practice therapy. I decided on coaching as an opportunity to work with individuals who were not in need of in-depth therapy, which I am neither educated nor licensed to provide. There are significant differences between the goals of coaching and those of therapy. I have the greatest respect for those who have made psychoanalysis their life's work, and call several of them my friends. I have decided that coaching would be my vehicle for establishing the connection with one's life's work. Through my academic and philosophical endeavors I have learned personally the importance of Jung's psychology. I am deeply indebted to Jung whose life's work has been so tremendously important to the world, and in the development of my own way.
For those who are not familiar with Jung's life and work, the following brief biography will help to put his life in some perspective.
CARL GUSTAV JUNG (1875-1961) was a Swiss-German psychoanalyst who, with Sigmund Freud, was instrumental in bringing psychology into the twentieth century by developing one of several theories of the unconscious. As a
a young man in Zurich, Jung developed the concept of the autonomous (and unconscious) complex and the technique of free association, well before joining forces with Freud's Viennese school of psychology. Moreover, he soon broke with Freud over the latter's psychosexual view of the unconscious, as being an inadequate explanation of psychic processes.
Just before the outbreak of World War I, Jung experienced his own mid life crisis in the form of a creative illness. While his "visions" and dreams from the deep
unconscious nearly led him to psychosis, they also awoke in him a revolutionary appreciation of how close his own dreams were to the primitive myths and rituals of humankind, forcing him to acknowledge forces within the human psyche for which the Freudian view had no explanation. (In addition, Jung's early exposure, in Zurich, to lower-class psychotics, as opposed to the middle-class neurotics encountered by Freud in Vienna, may explain, in part, their theoretical rift.) In Jung's writings, henceforth, the unconscious would encompass not only the biological drives that Freud had emphasized, but also those metaphysical or spiritual aspirations that, Jung now realized, were just as integral and innate a part of human individuality.
Thus, in formulating his theories on the collective unconscious and the archetypes, he would posit an unconscious--and hereditary--source for all of humankind's creative endeavors and spiritual yearnings. And so his definition of the archetype: "The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. . . ." (CW 15: par. 127).
Aside from his original work on the archetypes, Jung also developed a ground-breaking personality theory that introduced to the world the concepts of extraversion and introversion and explained human behavior as a combination of four psychic functions--thinking, feeling (better English translation: valuing), intuition, and sensation. Along with the psychological processes of repression and projection, terms which he borrowed (and modified) from Freudian psychology, Jung also frequently employed the word "compensation" in his writings, to refer to the unconscious's continual efforts to correct the ego's one- sided and limited view of reality. He also coined the term "synchronicity"--or "meaningful coincidence"--as an a-causal, non-mechanistic explanation for extra-sensory events traditionally deemed occult." And at last, Jung proposed the concept of "individuation" for his own brand of human psychological development, a life-long dialectical process of encountering the archetypes and opposites within. His unique contributions to the field of psychology, philosophy and spirituality have gradually become recognized is a unique explanation of the workings of the human mind. Jung stands as one of the seminal thinkers of the 20th century, whose full impact will likely not be felt for centuries to come.
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