Carl Jung

As a solitary child, Jung felt he possessed two distinct identities. "Personality No. 1" was the typical citizen of his time, while "Personality No. 2" felt like a dignified, influential man from the past. This early duality, combined with his mother’s "mysterious" nocturnal behavior—which included visions of floating figures—primed him to believe the human mind was far more complex than a mere container for personal memories.

Even his childhood play foreshadowed his professional theories. At age 10, he carved a secret wooden mannequin and hid it in his attic, performing private rituals with "soul-stones" to find inner peace. Years later, he realized these were not just "weird kid things" but spontaneous, unconscious rituals that mirrored indigenous traditions he had never studied, leading him to suspect the existence of a shared, universal human psyche.

Sigmund Freud originally viewed Jung as his "crown prince"—the Christian heir who could help psychoanalysis escape its perception as a "Jewish science." However, the two were fundamentally mismatched. While Freud saw religion as an illusion and focused heavily on sexual drive, Jung viewed religious experience as a vital, functional necessity for the human soul.

Their 1913 breakup was professionally and personally agonizing, leading Jung into what has been called a "creative illness"—a period of intense psychological transformation. From this wreckage, Jung founded "Analytical Psychology." He pivoted away from Freud’s focus on the past (repressed trauma) to focus on the future: the process of a person becoming who they were truly meant to be.

Jung’s first love was archaeology, but his family’s poverty forced him into the more "practical" field of medicine. He never lost the "digging" mindset, however. He was fascinated by the discovery of Neanderthal and Homo erectus fossils, theorizing that just as our bodies carry evolutionary history, our minds carry an "ancient layer" of the psyche.

This became his most famous concept: the collective unconscious. Jung argued that we aren't born as blank slates. Instead, we inherit "archetypes"—universal blueprints for characters like the Hero, the Mother, or the Shadow—that appear in the myths, dreams, and art of every culture across time. To Jung, a patient’s dream wasn't just about their own life; it was a conversation with the history of the human race.

Jung did not believe the goal of psychology was simply to be "happy" or "normal." Instead, he proposed individuation: a lifelong journey to integrate the various parts of the self—including the parts we try to hide (the Shadow). He introduced the terms introversion and extraversion not as social labels, but as ways to describe how an individual’s energy flows in this internal balancing act.

His influence extended far beyond the therapist's couch. In 1926, his treatment of an American businessman helped spark the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous; Jung believed that chronic addiction could only be overcome by a "vital spiritual experience." This blend of science and mysticism allowed his work to permeate diverse fields like literature, anthropology, and even the study of "meaningful coincidences," which he called synchronicity.

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