Next up we have Carl Jung. He was the major theorist for what is known as the neo-psychoanalytic approach when it comes to personality development. He was heavily influenced by Freud but in building on Freud's work, he takes a new direction whereby there is more of a spiritual emphasis in his theory rather than a sexual one.
With Jung we see a lot more focus given to our unconscious if one compares him to Freud. His theory always makes me think of a yin-yang symbol because it's all about balance. Jung claims that we have the characteristics of all personality types and that what is dominant in our realm of consciousness is counterbalanced by its opposite characteristic in the unconscious. So if according to Jung, I would suggest that you don't judge other people for being the way they are... because there's a part of you somewhere that is just like them. This claim allowed Jung to explain why people react differently depending on a particular situation. For example, I'm not generally an introverted person yet when I am in a bizarrely new environment and I'm intimidated and unfamiliar then I tend to become extremely shy and withdrawn until I think that I am able to deal with that situation as I normally would.
Jung is the guy that introduced us to the terms extroversion, introversion, collective unconscious and archetypes... So if you have ever used one of those terms which I am sure most people have - thank Carl Jung.
So according to Jung we have what is called a psyche that is made up of all that is conscious as well as unconscious to us - he goes on to claim that we have three level of consciousness. The Consciousness of our being consists of the Ego which allows for both our internal (awareness of ourselves) and external(interactions with the world around us) functioning. Then we have the personal unconscious which is different for each individual as we each have our own individual experiences and subsequent reactions to said experiences. Thereafter we have the collective unconscious which contains instincts and archetypes. Our instincts are physiologically inherited impulses that determine our behaviour without our conscious motivation. Archetypes are 'intuitions' or images that we are born with that help us categorise and interpret our experiences.
The Collective Unconscious is what I find most interesting about Jung's theory. This is because it accounts for what causes us to be a certain way in accordance to society or to the public. First we have the Persona which is our 'public self' and it consists of the different masks one wears. We determine how we act around certain people our types of people according to our experiences with them and the expectations that are place on us thereafter. Think of the Persona in terms of how you act around your parents as opposed to how you act toward your friends, teachers, work colleagues or strangers. We act according to expectation. For example, I am relatively quiet and 'normal' around my parents and family but as soon as I'm with my friends, I am a completely different person in that I am a lot louder and 'weirder' by comparison. Having these different masks doesn't make one two-faced or fake in any way it is simply the natural and unconscious tactic one employs in order to appropriately associate with the external world. One isn't being fake, you are just reflecting a different part of yourself - regardless of what it entails, it is still you.
The next component of the collective unconscious it The Anima or The Animus. Like I said earlier, Jung was very yin-yang. He believed that we possess the physiological (bodily) traits of both sexes (hormones) and therefore we also possess the psychological traits of both sexes. So in guys, the female archetype present within them is known as the Anima while the male archetype present within women is known as the Animus. These archetypes operate at an unconscious level so they can translate into our logic and rationality without conscious decision on our behalf. That's it is in fact possible for a girl to think like a man and to subsequently act like one - the same can be said for the converse.
Then there is The Shadow which is representative of all of impulsive urges and emotions that aren't acceptable to our society - hence why it is called the shadow because it 's not part of our public self it is the background of who we are because we repress these urges. So for example, aggression and sexuality are examples of instincts/feelings that we repress and therefore don't express outwardly or as openly as we would other traits.
Finally we have The Self. This is the part of our collective unconscious that causes and motivates one to integrate all of the various parts of one's psyche. If you've ever wondered what account for one's desire for wholeness - the Self is what Jung accredits it to.
The psychic energy generated from one's psyche is therefore lead to either introversion or extroversion whereby this energy is channelled either inwards or outwards respectively.
So what I basically have gathered from Jung is that our personalities are not as clear cut as one may think. We all have shared characteristics that are just manifested differently according to experiences and our individual interpretations of those experiences.
--J.
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