Introduction
This essay has undergone numerous revisions. Today I will focus on the elements of both Freudian Psychoanalysis and Jungian Psychology that have influenced the development and evolution of DGB Psychology -- and particularly my latest integrative model of the personality that borrows significantly from both Freud and Jung.
-- dgb, March 31st, 2009.
Part 1: Sunday, March 3rd, 1907, Freud and Jung Meet For The First Time -- And Talk For 13 Hours Straight!
Freud and Jung -- theirs was an all too short and tumultous seven year relationship (1907-1914), passionate and explosive, reverent from each side at the beginning, much more rebellious from Jung's side as things progressed, often compared to a common father/son type relationship with Freud maintaining his authoritative paternal boundaries and Jung challenging these same boundaries -- eventually to the point of separation, and the building of two separate schools of psychology with partly siimilar, partly different philosophies and conceptualizations concerning human psychology.
Freud and Jung both shared a partly Hegelian, partly Nietzschean philosophy. Freud was more a product of the Enlightenment, Jung a product of Romantic Philosophy. Jung seemed a little more willing to integrate the 'darker side' of human nature in a productive manner with the rest of man's personality, whereas Freud seemed more about 'rationally analyzing' this same dark side with the goal 'of bringing it under more rational, conscious, enlightened control -- but control none the less. Jung was willing to give up more of this control with a trust things would eventually integrate in a more healthy direction.
This was one of the main dialectical splits or differences in opinion between Enlightenment and Romantic Philosophy -- just how much reason was man willing to give up and trust that man would still land back on firm ground again -- after some kind of a 'romantic flight' to who knows where.
Jung was more the mythologist, mystic, astrology, occult and para-normal psychologist. Freud didn't seem too comfortable following Jung into these areas. It just happens to be my birthday today -- Jung might be more apt to make a psychological interpretation in this regard, as I try to mediate between Freud and Jung, although I am just speculating here. Besides, if he wouldn't I will.
March 3rd. My birthday. I am a pisces -- often equated with 'two fish swimming towards each other and away from each other at the same time'(or not knowing which way to swim while wanting to swim both ways at the same time). Towards intimacy and committment. And/or away from intimacy and committment and towards more 'individual freedom and self-expression'.
How appropriate that Freud and Jung should meet together for the first time on this 'dualistic-dialectic, thesis-anti-thesis' day. Two very strong-willed and creative men each doing their absolutely very best to 'will to power' their own separate vision and creation while admiring, respecting and learning from each other at the same time.
Or at least in the beginning. Until their respective creative visions came into conflict with each other -- and this conflict became stronger and stronger, reaching more and more of an impasse that just would not go away. And then the anger and resentment started to seriously set in and put a fast ending to what had started out as such a strong and passionate relationship with Freud wanting to pass the leadership of his 'Psychoanalytic Torch' onto to Jung, his heir-in-waiting.
But it was not to be. Psychoanalysis -- at least as Freud defined and described it --was just too tight a 'theoretical box' for Jung to accept and live with. Jung needed a significantly different theoretical box that he could create himself, accept because it was his own Romantic-Mystical-Mythological Vision; not Freud's 'Pseudo-Scientific-More-Rational-Enlightenment Vision' -- that just did not work for Jung.
One of the dividing issues between Freud and Jung was Freud's often stated 'pre-occupation with sexuality' or 'pansexuality'.
Jung wanted to define 'libido' as 'life energy'; not just 'sexual energy'. Freud would have nothing to do with this. For Freud, 'life energy' at this point in his career was to be equated with 'sexual energy'; nothing more, nothing less. His message to Jung was basically this: If you don't want to follow the instructions of the Creator of Psychoanalysis here, then leave. Jung did indeed leave -- like Adler before him and like quite a few psychoanalysts after him who just could not find enough 'theoretical and/or clinical harmony' with Freud.
The irony here is that after Jung left -- probably partly because of the 'libido' controversy, partly because of Freud's strong authoritarianism -- Freud would create a 'life instinct' years later that included but did not only include man's 'sexual instinct'.
Maybe Freud was listening to Jung after all, and/or Freud was in a different time and place with new clinical information to absorb and explain that wasn't adequately explained by his old model. (Both Adler's and Jung's key reason for leaving.)
Specifically, there was the phenomenon of World War 1 soldiers coming back from the war and 'repeating their war traumacies' in the psychotherapy room. This 'repeating of horrible experiences' didn't seem to adhere to either Freud's ideas of 'the pleasure principle' or to Freud's principle of 'wish-fulfillment'.
The clinical phenomenon of 'repetition compulsion' needed a better theoretical explanation. So too did the clinical phenomenon of 'masochism' -- specifically, the type of masochism that Freud labelled as 'Primary Masochism'. Again this clinical phenomenon, didn't seem to follow the rules of either the Pleasure Principle or The Wish-Fulfillment Principle. Again, a new explanation was needed.
In this regard, Freud thought long and hard about introducing the concept of 'the mastery compulsion' but ultimately rejected it -- perhaps because it was too close to Adler's idea of 'superiority striving'. It is too bad that Freud ultimately rejected this concept of the mastery compulsion because it would have fit in nicely with his ideas about the nature and dynamics of transference. Specifically, we 'repeat' in order to 'master'.
However, Freud chose to go another theoretical direction by introducing the 'life' vs. 'death instinct' ('instinct' also often being translated as 'drive' or 'impulse' -- depending on the particular translation and/or interpretation).
But by the time Freud got to a 'life drive' that seems to more closely reflect Jung's definition of 'libido' than Freud's earlier 'sexual' definition, Freud and Jung were way too mornings and way too many theoretical miles apart from a place they could ever return.
Freud: Thesis (More 'anal-retentive' in his approach to Psychoanalysis); Jung Anti-Thesis (More willing to 'let go of the Psychoanalytic anal-retentive, tight controls', and 'widen the boundaries of psychological investigation' into areas of mythology, archetype figures, parapsychology, astrology, the occult, mysticism, alchemy, romanticism...
I like both theorists and borrow from both in DGB Philosophy-Psychology. I 'theorize in the gaps' -- look for creative and interesting ways in which Freudian and Jungian Theory can be integrated along with elements of Nietzsche, Adler, Perls, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Korzysbki, Hayakawa, Ellis, Beck, Branden, Rand, Masson and more as well...
Call my latest work in personality theory another attempt at doing this -- adding different bits and pieces as we move along. Too many attempted integrations here? Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see.
Let's see where it takes us.
One of the ideas that Jung incorporated into his own system that wasn't in Freud's was the idea of 'The Collective Unconscious'. Here Jung showed his interest in, and influence from, mythology. Freud had an interest in mythology as well -- witness his incorporation of 'The Oedipal Complex' which is taken from a Sophocles mythological trilogy. But Freud wasn't as keenly interested in myths -- or probably as sophisticated in them -- as Jung would become. Nor did Freud have any ambition to explore the world of the occult and par-psychology and astrology -- like Jung did.
Mythology would become a centre-piece of Jung's fast evolving Personality Theory.
The idea of 'Archetypes' arose from this area. Archetypes are basically Gods and Heroes and Villains from mythology that have been 'introjected' or 'internalized' into man's Collective Unconscious. They can be 'acted out' through 'the Personna' (the dominant conscious part and style of the personality by which a person interacts with other people) or they can be acted out in 'the Shadow' -- a more 'Id-like' part of the personality that is disowned, suppressed, repressed, kept 'secret', and kept in a 'darker corner' of the personality.
The Shadow can be projected out into the world in the form of a 'lover', a 'hated person', a 'hero' or 'idol', a 'villain'...and so on...
In Gestalt language, the Personna is the 'figurall' part of the personality; the Shadow is the 'background' part of the personality that 'pops up seemingly out of nowhere -- 'seemingly nowhere' being the 'home of The Shadow' -- much to our often personal embarrassment and/or chagrin -- or to that of someone in our social environment who witnesses it.
One of the goals of Jungian Psychotherapy is to help the client achieve a better integration/synthesis between the Personna (the dominant, active social side of the personality and The Shadow (the part of the personality buried deep in the Unconscious that strives to actively 'compensate' for the limitations and weaknesses of The Personna.
This has some similarities, some differences, with Freud's desire in Psychoanalysis to help a client's 'Superego' and 'Id' get along more harmoniously through the mediating, 'compromise-formation' negotiating and integrating skills of the 'Ego' other than in a completely 'neurotic' and/or 'psychotic' 'conflict-resolution that socially is just not working.
In past essays, I have compared Freud's conception of The Superego vs. The Id as being very similar to Nietzsche's earlier conception of Apollo vs. Dionysus. What Jung's model allows for that Freuds' model really doesn't is the possibility than in any one particular case a person's 'Dionysus Archetype-Figure' could dominate his or her particular Personna whereas it could be Apollo that is buried in the person's Unconscious Shadow.
Nietzsche himself was seemingly like this -- or believed that he was.
After 'disowning' himself from the 'Hegelian Dialectic' and from his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- Nietzsche basically 'abandoned' and/or 'suppressed' and/or denied his 'own Apollo' -- religating it to the Shadow of his Mythological and/or Personal Unconscious -- while 'Dionysus' went 'hogwild' in his conscious personality, taking over his Personna, and possibly having something to do with Nietzsche's ultimate self-destruciton (or not). Nietzsche's 'insanity' between 1890 and 1900 is still a subject of academic debate. I think if I remember properly, Nietzsche's father was also cursed with some form of mental disorder and/or psychosis (schizophrenia) so we may be talking about some sort of genetic disorder on Nietzsche's father's side that may have had nothing to do with Nietzsche's evolving 'Dionysian philosophy and lifestyle'. So Nietzshe's eventual self-destruction over the last 10 years of his life may have been genetic, not learned. Or it may have been both. Subject for further debate.
Anyways, to conclude this essay today, I will simply say that my 'bottom 3 floors (unconscious or subconscious levels) of the personality are influenced by both Freud and Jung as well as Adler and Perls.
A DGB Integrative Model of Unconscious (Subconscious) Elements in The Personality
1. The Top 'Personal Memory' Basement(Unconscious)Floor of The Personality: The Freudian-Adlerian-Gestalt realm of personal memories, transference templates, transference complexes, transference dynamics, including introjections and internalized projections, potential associations, displacements, sublimations, compensations, and more...
2. The Middle 'Mythological' Basement (Unconscious) Floor of The Personality: Full of myths, symbolism, archetypes or archetype-figures -- Gods, Idols, Heroes, Villains, Anti-Gods, etc...
3. The Genetic, Biological and Psychological Potential Self (The 'Soul' of The Personality): Full of talents, capabilities, potentials, biological and psychological impulses towards self-assertion and self-empowerment which can take either a 'healthy' and/or 'pathological' direction depending on the other influences going on within the personality, good and/or bad.
That is enough for today concerning Freud and Jung.
-- dgb, March 31st, 2009.
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