Personality holism is the core theory of Jung's analytical psychology. Jung took the mind as the research object of psychology. In his view, the mind is a pre-existing concept, which is equal to spirit and soul. Mind is the entirety of human software content, such as thinking, emotion, action and all conscious and subconscious contents. The original unity and prior integrity of personality not only pursue the overall synthesis of the mind in theory, but also require the restoration of personality integrity in clinic. Therefore, the methodology of analytical psychology is essentially a holism.
In Jung's view, the mind or personality structure consists of three levels: consciousness (self), individual subconscious (complex) and collective subconscious (prototype).
Consciousness: the top layer of personality structure is the part of the brain that can be perceived by people, such as perception, memory, thinking and emotion. Its function is to make individuals adapt to the surrounding environment. Self is the center of consciousness and the purpose of self-awareness and individualization. Jung believes that consciousness is a very small part of the mind, selective and eliminated. It is the ego that ensures the unity, continuity and integrity of a person's personality.
Individual subconsciousness: the second layer of personality structure, including forgotten memories, perceptions and repressed experiences, and dreams about individual nature, which is equivalent to Freud's pre-consciousness and can enter the field of self-consciousness. Jung believes that the content of individual subconsciousness is mainly complex, that is, groups of repressed psychological content are gathered in an emotional concept group, such as the Oedipus complex and sexual complex. It determines our personality orientation and development motivation.
Jung believes that the function of complex can be transformed: it can be an obstacle in people's adjustment mechanism, and it can also be a source of inspiration and creativity. This complex comes from the psychological basis of the pre-existing superego.
Collective subconsciousness: the lowest subconscious part of personality or mental structure, including the genetic traces of generational activities and experiences in the human brain structure. Different from the individual's subconscious, it is not acquired by the individual, but inherited by nature; It is not a part forgotten by consciousness, but something that individuals are always unaware of. The content of the collective subconscious is composed of all instincts and their related prototypes. Instinct and prototype are interdependent, instinct is the basis of prototype, and prototype is the subconscious image inside instinct. Because the prototype inherited by human beings can make individuals do similar actions to their ancestors in similar situations without the help of experience, "the artist's creation is assisted by God" is a part of the original image.
There are four main prototypes of personality system: personality mask: refers to the illusion of hiding the true self in the outermost layer of personality, always acting according to the expectations of others, which is inconsistent with its true personality. Anima (or negative matrix) means that the basic characteristics or characteristics of women only exist in men. When Anima is highly concentrated, it makes men easily excited and depressed. Animus (or positive matrix) refers to the basic characteristics of men in women. When men's intentions are highly concentrated, women will become aggressive and pursue power. The innermost layer of the shadow (or dark self) personality has animal low-level racial inheritance, which is similar to Freud's "ID". In addition, there are two prototypes in Jungian system to promote integration:
Self has two basic meanings: it refers to the internal potential integrity and the balanced development of all parts of personality, and the mutual penetration of consciousness and subconscious. It includes all aspects of the subconscious and plays a role in integrating and stabilizing the whole personality structure.
Datura refers to a symbol that appears repeatedly in different cultures. Jung regarded the image of Datura as the symbol of self and the core of personality.
Jung believed that an individual's personality is always developing, and the historical experience of individuals and nations has an influence on the formation of personality, but more importantly, people always strive for future goals, so as to achieve harmony and perfection in all aspects of personality, which Jung called self-realization.
Personality motivation theory
Jung believes that personality motivation promotes the development of personality. He believes that the energy of the mind comes from the outside or the body, but once the external energy is transformed into the energy of the mind, its use is determined by the mind. Psychological energy is a universal vitality, not a sexual instinct. He borrowed the principle of energy conservation in physics to explain psychology, that is, energy can be transferred in psychological structure, and some characteristics of a structure can also be transformed in the past. Jung's theory of personality motivation includes the following points.
The mind is a relatively closed system or a self-sufficient energy system. Once the mind gets energy, it takes it for itself, and how to use this energy is up to the mind. The mind has only one input port to receive energy, which is the closeness of the mind. Can only be relatively stable, can not achieve perfect balance.
Psychological energy is the motive force of personality. Psychological energy can be conscious or unconscious. Psychological energy affects psychological activities through transformation. It will never disappear, but it can be transformed from one psychological content to another. In addition, psychological energy and physiological energy can also be transformed into each other.
Psychological value is the standard to measure psychological energy. Psychological value can be measured conveniently in three ways: (1) judging a person's psychological value by observing his choice of various activity objects, (2) observing the time it takes a person to overcome obstacles in order to achieve his goal, and (3) recording and analyzing various dreams. In addition, people's psychological activities can be expressed through behaviors such as anxiety and depression, and can also be expressed in emotions. Therefore, measuring a person's pulse, breathing and skin electrical response with psychoelectric equipment can also judge a person's psychological value.
The principle of equivalence and entropy is used by Jung to explain the distribution and movement of energy in personality structure. The principle of equivalence refers to the reduction or disappearance of energy used in one psychological activity, which means the increase and generation of energy in another psychological activity. Entropy principle means that the distribution and flow of psychological energy are directional, and this directionality is to balance all the structures of high-quality mind. Jung believed that mental patients built a shell to protect themselves in order to avoid overwhelming stimuli, while normal people protected themselves in various ways, reaching a state close to entropy.
The advance and retreat of psychological energy. Moving forward means that people use their daily life experience to meet the needs of the environment. In the process of progress, every psychological function will absorb all kinds of life experience and psychological energy, so that people can strive to keep consistent with the requirements of environmental conditions. Degeneration means that by depriving the opposite function of energy, the value of the opposite function is gradually lost, and finally the opposite function is replaced by a new function. Its function is to activate the subconscious content that is rejected by consciousness, and the right to use becomes a new function. At this time, the new function needs to adapt to the external environment, which leads to the resumption of the daily progress. In this way, human beings can constantly adjust their inner world by going forward and retreating, and their psychology can develop healthily.
The psychological energy of the energy transfer system can undergo energy conversion and morphological changes. First of all, when a new activity simulates instinctive activity, instinctive energy will be integrated into this new activity, which is energy transfer. That is, psychological energy must be transformed into new activities through an energy transfer system in order to do work like physical fitness. Secondly, psychological energy is transformed by imitation or production. Jung found that primitive tribes used various rituals and dances to transform psychological energy, while modern people used science and technology to turn their dreams into reality through "will behavior", thus realizing the transformation of psychological energy.
Personality type theory
First of all, Jung divided people's attitudes into introversion and extroversion. Introverts' psychological energy points inward, which is easy to produce inner experience and fantasy. Such people are far away from the outside world and are interested in the nature of things and the results of activities. Extroverts' psychological energy points to the outside and tends to objective things. This kind of person likes to socialize and is interested in all kinds of concrete things outside.
Secondly, Jung believes that there are four functional types, namely, thinking, emotion, feeling and intuition. Feeling is to perceive the existence of things with the senses; Emotion is the tendency to like and dislike things; Thinking is the judgment and reasoning of what things are; Intuition is a premonition of the change and development of things, and it doesn't need to be explained or inferred. Jung believes that people should use rational judgments when thinking and feeling, so they belong to rational functions; But rational judgment is not used for feelings and intuition, so they belong to irrational functions.
Jung combined two attitudes and four functional types to form eight psychological types. Extroverted thinking, introverted thinking, extroverted emotion, introverted emotion, extroverted feeling, introverted feeling, extroverted intuition, introverted intuition.
Jung's eight types are extreme cases. In fact, one personality type is often dominant, and the other or two personality types are in an auxiliary position.
theory of personality development
Jung believes that the ultimate goal of psychological development is personalization, which has gone through a series of development stages. In his early years, he divided his life into four stages: (1) the first year of his life; (2) From childhood to adolescence; (3) from adolescence to adulthood; (4) old age.
The first stage is childhood (from birth to adolescence): at first, it is a disorderly stage, and children have only scattered and chaotic consciousness; Then there is the monarch stage, where children produce themselves and the seeds of abstract thinking appear, but they lack introspective thinking; Finally, in the dualistic stage, children appear introspective thinking, and self is divided into subject and object, and children gradually realize that they are an independent individual.
The second stage is adolescence (from adolescence to middle age): with the development of self-awareness, young people need to get rid of their dependence on their parents. However, the psychological development is still immature. Jung thought this stage was "the birth of the mind". To get through this period smoothly, we must overcome the narrow consciousness of childhood, strive to cultivate willpower, and keep our psychology consistent with the external reality, so as to survive and develop in the world.
The third stage is middle age (from the age of 35 for women and from the age of 40 for men until old age): this is the period that Jung is most concerned about. Middle-aged people have often laid a foundation in social and family life and won brilliant victories. However, they are faced with the decline of physical strength, the disappearance of youth and the dim ideal, which leads to psychological crisis. Jung believes that the key to successfully pass this period is to transfer psychological energy from the outside to the inside and experience one's own heart, so as to understand the meaning of individual life.
The fourth stage is old age: the elderly are easily immersed in the subconscious, like to recall the past, fear death, and consider the afterlife. Jung believes that the elderly must discover the meaning of death in order to establish new life goals. He emphasized that the individualization of the mind can not be realized until the life after death, which means that the individual life is integrated into the collective life and the individual consciousness is integrated into the collective subconscious.
Disagreement with Freud
There are three main differences between jung and Freud. The first is the explanation of the concept of Japan-Japan ratio. Freud believed that libido was sexual energy, and the impulsive injury of libido in the early years would have lifelong consequences. Jung believes that daily ratio is a kind of extensive life energy, which has different manifestations in different stages of life. Jung opposed Freud's view that personality is determined by early childhood experiences. Jung believes that personality can be shaped and changed through the hope for the future in the second half of life. These two people have different views on human nature itself. Jung emphasized the preconceived tendency of spirit and opposed Freud's naturalistic position. He believed that human spirit had lofty aspirations and was not limited to those dark forces discovered by Freud in human nature. Etiology search method
Jung believes that we should look for the causes of mental illness from the present rather than the past. According to him, when patients fall into a state of "stagnation", they are insane, that is, they no longer follow the psychological development law that appears with age. The reason of stagnation is generally attributed to the evasion of some kind of "responsibility" in life, which Jung has explained many times. So, a man who always abandons women; Women who want to be mothers may find themselves insane because they lack courage. Jung noticed that in this case, the patient showed the psychological characteristics of infancy in many aspects, including incest desire, sexual desire in infancy and all other childhood fantasies. Jung believes that compared with other problems in the factory, the emergence of this psychological feature in infancy is secondary. Only when a person's motive force can't find a suitable expression here and now will his childhood illusion be revived in a retrogressive way. The reason why these patients fall back to the fixed stage in the past is only because their real life has encountered obstacles. There are many examples of these two views.
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams
Jung believes that one of the important functions of dreams is to put forward ideas that people don't realize or notice. The symbolic function of dreams is mainly the expression of collective unconsciousness. Only by "magnifying" can we really understand their meaning and prototype. The information provided by dreams can help people regain the balance in life, and its function is mainly compensatory. It reconstructs the balance and balance of the whole spirit by creating the content of dreams.
In the process of dream interpretation, it is very important to know as much as possible about the dreamer, the activities his personality participates in and his mood. Being able to combine the dreamer's dream association with his waking life and reveal what the dream predicts in a compensatory way has a great relationship with the analyst's skills and knowledge.
Another feature of Jung's psychoanalysis of dreams is that he attaches great importance to the series analysis of dreams in addition to the individual analysis of dreams. He believes that the individual analysis of dreams is of little significance, and the dreamer's series of dreams over a period of time can provide a coherent personality picture, and the main tendency of the dreamer can be revealed by revealing some recurring themes.
After parting ways with Freud, Jung used the theory and method of personality analysis to analyze social and historical phenomena, which made personality analysis transcend the fields of psychiatry and psychology and widely involved in many social and cultural fields of human beings. The basic view of Freud's social and cultural view is that as long as one lives in this world, it is impossible to be isolated from the world, because there are many similarities between personal psychological phenomena and social and political phenomena.
Jung believes that the desire for power is human instinct. If an instinct is not realized, it will be suppressed. If this repression lasts for a long time, or is too strong, the repressed content will burst out destructively sooner or later. The consequences of this repression can be observed through social groups, such as churches and other social organizations. These groups can openly oppose advocating power, but because their hostile acts are not recognized by government agencies, their voices are usually not reflected in government policies. For individuals, the result of this repression will lead to destructive interpersonal relationships and blocked personalized process.
Jung expounded social and cultural phenomena according to the above theory. For example, Jung accepted the feminist phenomenon in 1960s, thinking that it expressed his recognition of animation. The principle of women has been belittled in history, so it is more necessary to develop than the principle of men. He appreciates the characteristics of women and respects their Anims, thus giving content to gender equality. Similarly, in Anima's theory, Jung emphasized that by urging them to develop their own feminine factors, men would become less masculine. It is this natural heterosexual tendency of men and women that makes the communication between men and women have a harmonious foundation. For another example, he thinks that the final result of culture is personality. "It was not Goethe who created Faust, but Faust who created Goethe." Those who have never experienced the purgatory of passion have never conquered passion. In the study of literary works, we should not only study the author's background through personality analysis, but also analyze the author's personality from the perspective of the protagonist.