In this, his most famous and influential work, Carl Jung made a dramatic break from the psychoanalytic tradition established by his mentor, Sigmund Freud. Rather than focusing on psychopathology and its symptoms, the Swiss psychiatrist studied dreams, mythology, and literature to define the universal patterns of the psyche. In Psychology of the Unconscious, Jung seeks a symbolic meaning and purpose behind a given set of symptoms, placing them within the larger context of the psyche. The 1912 text examines the fantasies of a patient whose poetic and vivid mental images helped Jung redefine libido as psychic energy, arising from the unconscious and manifesting itself consciously in symbolic form. Jung's commentary on his patient's fantasies offers a complex study of symbolic psychiatry and foreshadows his development of the theory of collective unconscious and its constituents, the archetypes. The author's role in the development of analytical psychology, a therapeutic process that promotes creativity and psychological development, makes this landmark in psychoanalytic methodology required reading for students and others interested in the practice and process of psychology.
Author
Carl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death. The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development. Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types. Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
