Personality Theory

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Personality Theory

• Chapter 4Analytic Psychology
• Carl Jung

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Carl Gustav Jung

• Born in 1875 in a village on the shore of Lake
  Constance
• His father was a country pastor.
• Jung was an awkward, introverted boy, and an
  indifferent student.
• As a pre-adolescent, he determined that he had 2
  personalities, No. 1, the dull school-boy, and
  No. 2, a wise old man.

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• He had a sudden adolescent realization that his
  indolence would give him no future, and overnight
  became a good student.
• He obtained an MD at 25 from the University of
  Basel, and then became an assistant at the
  Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital in Zürich
• The director of the hospital was famed
  psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler

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• Jung was also a student of Pierre Janet for a
  time
• He soon became famous as a psychiatrist,
  scientist, and psychotherapist
• Impressed by Freud, he began to correspond with
  him, and the two hit it off.
• After several years of close relationship, Jung
  and Freud broke off their friendship.

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• Jung moved to a village on the shore of Lake
  Zürich
• Established a psychiatric practice and wrote
• He underwent several years of either a creative
  illness or a psychosis
• Emerged fully intact in 1919

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• He studied, travelled, and wrote voluminously,
  achieving worldwide fame.
• His theory, Analytic Psychology, grew
  incrementally over his long life.
• He died at 86, honored the world over.

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Emphases

• 2 outstanding emphases in Analytic Psychology
• Teleology a stress on the human orientation
  toward the future
• Causality only part of the story of personality
• Collective unconscious a store of ancestral
  memories of the species
• a startling concept

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• Question Does the collective unconscious imply
  the inheritance of acquired characteristics?

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• Jung also developed
• A concept of psychic energy, libido, which is not
  specifically sexual
• Concepts of both ego and self.
• The ego opposes the personal unconscious and is
  the center of consciousness.
• The self, developing later in life, drives the
  search for unity and completeness.

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• He had a strong interest in religion, a source of
  hope, completeness, and self-realization
• A principle to account for non-causal
  coincidences - the Principle of Synchronicity -
  explained paranormal experiences and clairvoyant
  thoughts.
• Causally unconnected events reflecting a layer of
  order beyond causality

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Major Concepts of Analytic Psychology

• Structural
• Dynamic
• Process
• Typological

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Jacobis Diagram of Jungs Theory
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The Structural Concepts

• The conscious ego
• Perception, thinking, feeling, and remembering.
• The sense of identity and experience of
  continuity.
• The ego opposes the personal unconscious.

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• The personal unconscious adjoins the ego
• Sometimes vying with the ego for control.
• Ideas, feelings, wishes, and experiences that
  have been repressed, forgotten, or were weakly
  registered to begin with.
• Not as impenetrable as the Freudian unconscious.

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• Complexes emotional constellations of ideas
  exist in the personal unconscious
• Complexes have an unrecognized effect on
  behaviour.
• A Jungian example the mother complex

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• The collective unconscious store of ancestral
  memories of the human species the echo of
  prehistoric world events.
• It doesnt store specific memories but rather the
  potential for ancient memories to be revived in
  us.

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• What kind of memories?
• About puzzling phenomena
• birth and death, mother, father, people of great
  wisdom, heroes, the sun, the moon
• These ideas are archetypes, which exercise a
  lifelong influence over us and cannot be
  dismissed.
• The collective unconscious and archetypes are
  inherited. The mechanism (denied by Jung) is
  suspiciously like Lamarcks inheritance of
  acquired characteristics.

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4 Archetypes that have Become Structures of
Personality

• Persona the mask that we present to others.
• If the ego invests too much in the mask,
  genuineness is lost.

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• Animus and anima, the unconscious male part of
  women and female part of men.
• Animus gives women under-standing of men
• Anima gives men understanding of women.

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• Animus and anima have their dark sides. The dark
  side of the animus
• For example, in Richard Wagners opera Das
  Rheingold
• The dark side of animus is represented by
  Alberich, the ugly, power-crazed, violent,
  thieving dwarf.
• The dark side of anima is represented by the
  Lorelei Rhine maidens, who sit on rocks in the
  river and sing beautiful songs that lure sailors
  to their deaths.

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• Shadow in the deepest part of personality, made
  up of animal instincts.
• It personifies evil.
• Note that animal instincts are not all bad.

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• Self representing the quest for unity and
  integration in personality.
• Develops in midlife.
• The Jungian mandala is a visual depiction of the
  expression of self

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The Dynamic Concepts

• Libido the energy in the psychological system
  that fuels all activity.
• A partially closed energy system
• 2 principles of psychodynamics
• Principle of Equivalence energy is conserved
• libido withdrawn from one system appears in
  another
• Principle of Entropy energy flow seeks a balance
• flows from strong structures (or activities or
  values) to weak ones

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• These principles are drawn from the 1st and 2nd
  laws of thermo-dynamics.

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The Process Concepts

• The 4 functions
• 2 rational functions
• thinking and feeling
• 2 irrational functions
• sensation and intuition
• 1 function is superior and it dominates
  consciousness
• 1 function is inferior and unconscious

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Personality Development

• Childhood to puberty
• Young Adulthood from puberty to the 30s or so
• Middle Age from late 30s to old age,
• The most important to Jung
• Striving for meaning and the development of the
  self are its significant features.
• Old Age, not a creative period and not of
  interest to Jung

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The Typologies

• The attitudes
• Introversion and Extraversion
• Orientations toward the external world and toward
  oneself.
• Each person has both attitudes, one dominant and
  more conscious, the other unconscious.
• Combine the attitudes with the functions and we
  have 8 psychological types.

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Jungs 8 Psychological Types

• Extravert Thinking
• objective, represses feelings, cold, distant
• Extravert Feeling
• sensitive to the emotional tone of social
  situations, socially adaptive, repressed thinking
• Extravert Sensation
• captivated by sensory experiences, not
  introspective, sensual, outgoing

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• Extravert Intuitive
• jumps from one new idea to another, decides on a
  hunch without deliberate thought, creative
  visionaries
• Introvert Thinking
• rational, preoccupied with abstractions,
  impractical, cold, inflexible, arbitrary

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• Introvert Feeling
• self-absorbed, occupied with intense emotional
  experiences, uncommunicative, childish
• Introvert Sensation
• strongly affected by sensory experiences in a
  subjective way, passive, may be artistic
• Introvert Intuitive
• inner dominated, strange dreamer

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Research

• Jung principally studied human history and
  prehistory, religions, myths, the occult, other
  cultures.
• Early in his career he developed the word
  association test to reveal emotionally laden
  complexes.
• It has had wide influence, and it is a forebear
  of modern lie detection.

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The Word Association Test

• Some stimulus words from Jungs list
• 1-7 head, green, water, to sing, death, long,
  ship
• 21-27 ink, angry, needle, to swim, journey,
  blue, lamp
• 31-36 tree, to prick, pity, yellow, mountain,
  to die, salt
• 41-47 money, stupid, exercise-book, to despise,
  finger, dear, bird

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• 76-82 to wash, cow, friend, happiness, lie,
  departure, narrow
• 94-100 contented, ridicule, to sleep, month,
  nice, woman, to abuse

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The Research Influence of Analytic Psychology

• Jungs introversion-extraversion typology has
  strongly influenced modern trait theory.
• H.J. Eysenck brought this typology into trait
  theory research and into behaviour genetics.
• Psychological Assessment the Myers-Briggs Type
  Indicator

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Illustrative Items from the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator

• 1. Given a free evening, I would prefer to
• a. stay home by myself.
• b. go out with other people.
• 2. In gathering information, I am more
  interested in
• a. facts.
• b. possibilities.

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• 3. In making a decision, it is more important to
  me to
• a. come up with a correct answer.
• b. consider the impact of the solution.
• 4. I prefer to do activities
• a. that have been planned in advance.
• b. on the spur of the moment.

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Scoring of the Myers-Briggs TI Items

• 1. a is introversion, b is extraversion
• 2. a is sensation, b is intuition
• 3. a is thinking, b is feeling
• 4. a is judgment, b is perception
• The dimensions of judgment and perception were
  added by Myers

For a very skeptical and extremely critical view
of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (and of Jung),
visit The Skeptical Dictionary
http//skepdic.com/myersb.html
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Jung in Perspective

• Jungs great scholarship earned him a place of
  honour.
• He is recognized by world authorities in history,
  religion, mythology

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• As a scientific theory, Analytic Psychology has
  not commanded equal respect.
• Many concepts, which are loosely connected
• Untestable concepts
• Questionable heredity theory (Lamarck)

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Take-Home Messages

• Jungs personal history a strange, introverted
  boy who grew into a a strange, introverted man
• Disciple of Freud for a time, then an ugly break
• Practicing psychoanalyst, scholar, writer

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• Emphases in Analytic Psychology
• Teleology the pursuit of future goals
• Collective unconscious store of ancestral memory
• Dynamic concept of libido
• Structural concepts of ego and self

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• Importance of religions experience
• Causality, teleology, and events beyond them.
• The principle of synchronicity

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• Major concepts
• Ego the conscious core of personality
• Personal Unconscious contains the repressed,
  forgotten, and complexes
• Collective unconscious the store of species
  wisdom in archetypes
• strongly influencing personality

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• 4 archetypes that are personality structures
• Persona the mask
• Animus and anima unconscious maleness in women,
  femaleness in men
• Shadow consisting of animal instincts, the bad
  in humans
• Self the realization of unity and integration,
  achieved in midlife

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• The dynamic concept of libido
• 2 energy principles govern libido
• The Principle of Equivalence
• The Principle of Entropy
• 4 Functions thinking, feeling, sensation, and
  intuition
• Personality development childhood, young
  adulthood, middle age, and old age

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• Personality typologies
• The influential concepts of introversion and
  extraversion
• 8 personality types, derived from
  introversion-extraversion and the 4 functions.
• Are they stereotypes?

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• Jungs research
• Studies in history, religion, mythology, the
  occult, comparative cultures
• The word association test to investigate
  complexes

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• Research influence
• The modern trait study of introversion-extraversio
  n
• Personality assessment
• the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

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• Jung in perspective
• An incredibly complex theorist
• Respected by non-psychologists
• Not given much credited by scientific personality
  psychologists