carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist known for his collaboration with Sigmund Freud and the founding of the school of analytical psychology, named so to avoid comparisons with the Freudian psychoanalysis of his mentor. Despite all the contributions that Jung made to psychology, especially in the area of dream activity, symbols and how these influence Western culture, he is a character widely criticized for his particular interest in occultism, mythology, religion and alchemy. If you begin to read Jung’s works without being familiar with his peculiar tastes, you would think that he belonged to some type of secret sect or that he was part of the belief system known as “New-age.” In addition to this, it must be taken into account that Jung was Swiss and, as such, his original works may have suffered distortions during translation, not to mention that there are words in the Swiss vocabulary that are not found in ours, this represented a weakness that Most, if not all, of Jung’s contemporary authors suffered, including Sigmund Freud, with certain degrees of variability.
It should be noted that Jung was an extremely curious man who was constantly searching for explanations, so to understand the origin of his thought and be able to understand his works, rigorous training is required in subjects such as Latin, Greek, French. , German, numerology, astrology, symbology, mythology, Gnosticism, Kabbalah and alchemy, all of them main sources of influence for Jung’s thought. I must admit that until this moment he had not heard of at least two of the aforementioned terms (gnosticism and kabbalah).
Jung was an extremely curious man who was constantly searching for explanations.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to ask Jung directly about the why and wherefore of his ideas, so we must resort to interpretations of his works, a difficult task considering how complicated they are to read; take “Aion: Contribution to the Symbolisms of the Self” and, its still emblematic and recently published, “Red Book” as an example of this. Even so, I have found no evidence that points to Jung’s intentions as an attempt to compromise science with mysticism. Instead I see a style of writing not intended for others, but for oneself. By this I mean that Jung wrote for himself on topics that were of interest to him and to a few people who could understand his ideas and continue his work in the future. One of the reasons that lead me to this conclusion is the near-death experience that Jung had in 1944, an experience in which he says he had very strange visions that were difficult to explain to others. As someone who has experienced sleep paralysis on several occasions, I know how difficult it is to explain the feelings of terror that come with this phenomenon to others who have never experienced it, so I choose to keep those stories to myself. I think that perhaps something similar happened with Jung and this was the reason for the change in his way of writing.
Is it possible, then, that Jung and his theories have been misinterpreted until now due to a lack of training and interest in the areas that fascinated this past intellectual? To answer this question I will focus on some of the criticisms that have been made towards the ideas of Carl Jung and his person, in addition to mentioning aspects of his theory that have been taken and used today, such as the terms introvert and extrovert.
- The zodiac: One of the criticisms made of Jung is that he was a believer in the signs of the zodiac, or in the powers of the constellations. But in reality there is no documentation to support this. Jung considered the characters our minds created by observing a random pattern of stars to be of great interest and he theorized that these characters were archetypes that man projected to the world around him. In a way, this is how the Rorschach test works, designed by Hermann Rorschach, an acquaintance of Carl Jung and student of Eugen Bleuler, who also taught Jung.
- Collective unconscious: One of the easiest terms to appropriate by people with “New-age” type thinking or with ideas of some type of awakening or new evolution. In reality, the collective unconscious refers only to inherited responses based on what our ancestors learned and that are shared by a large number of people in different cultures.
- The search for balance: Influenced by Eastern philosophy during his travels, Jung considered that the human psyche would reach equilibrium at some point, and that this homeostasis would lead man toward “self-actualization,” as some humanists have called it. Jung stated that no person is 100% introverted or extroverted, but that we have parts of both and it is important to learn to use them together. The shadow, one of Jung’s main archetypes, works in the same way and the more we resist accepting this primitive and dark side, the stronger it will manifest when we fail to contain it due to the organism’s own tendency towards balance.
- Archetypes: For Jung, archetypes are primordial constructs, images and symbols shared by people of all places and times, which express primitive behavioral patterns existing within the collective unconscious.
As I mentioned before, Carl Jung was an extremely curious person and among the fields to which he dedicated time was mythology, it was here where he observed that many elements, such as images and symbols, were repeated, even when cultures were separated by great distances, or for long periods of time. This gave rise to the idea that there are images embedded in the human psyche that, in some way, influence cultures.
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I believe that Jung has been misunderstood as a person and that he was simply a very curious individual who could entertain an idea without accepting it as absolute truth.
- Personality Types: He theorized that people could be characterized by their preferences for a general attitude type: Extraverted vs. Introverted, Sensory vs. Intuitive, Thoughtful vs. Emotional, Judgment vs. Perception. According to Jung, we all tend to prefer one area that is considered the dominant function and ignore another that is called the weak function. The dominant function is the one that governs the way people are and the way they solve their problems.
It is these characteristics on which the Myers-Briggs personality test is based, designed by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, which shows us 16 different personality types.
Finally, and personally, I conclude by asking the reader to, like me, investigate and generate their own judgment. As I mentioned before, reading Jung’s books is an extremely complex task due to the language he uses, the terminology used, the necessary technical knowledge and the language barrier we face due to translations. I believe that Jung has been misunderstood as a person and that he was simply a very curious individual who could entertain an idea without accepting it as absolute truth. I perceive him as an incredibly flexible person in his thinking, who considered the possibilities and looked for answers where he could.
Bibliography:
- Alonso G., Juan Carlos, Jung’s Analytical Psychology and its contributions to psychotherapy. Universitas Available at:
- Huerta Torres, Octavio, Theoretical review of the Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung Yearbook of Psychology Available at:
- Biography.com Editors. (2015). Carl Jung Biography. from The Biography.com Available at:
- Carl Jung. (2009). Red Book: Liber Novus. Publisher: Philemon Foundation and WW Norton & Co.
- The Myers & Briggs Foundation. (2016). MBTI Basics. Available in:
- Biography.com Editors. (2016). Herman Rorschach Biography. from The Biography.com Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/hermann-rorschach-20821095#death-and-legacy
- McLeod, S. A. (2014). Carl Jung. Available in:
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