Posted by Aunt B on May 26, 2000, at 23:40:42
In reply to So then what do you folks think of Jung?, posted by allisonm on May 26, 2000, at 21:52:49
> To extend the conversation from Freud, if it's not too early, I would be interested in thoughts on Carl Jung.
Both of these guys were a phenomenon of a particular time. The franchise that allowed the church to define reality had eroded and the definition of self was among one of the last areas to be taken over by secular European society. The printing press, electronic communication and transportation were being refined to the point that ideas could spread to far reaching audiences, essentially allowing new ideas to fill a vacum left by the church's waning franchise.
Jung's ideas of introversion and extroversion are still widely used, such as in the Myers Briggs personality profiling tests. My opinion is that insies and outsies are not set for life, but rather are determined in part by social factors, and can be fluid if a person's social environment changes.
More important, perhaps, to the development of psychological thinking in western society was Jung's notion of a collective unconscious, and his recognition of archetypes. Both of these ideas had been around, at least in practice if not in written form, for eons. My impression of the practice of sorcery is that it deals with collective ideation (as well as individual ideation).
Jung created a new form of pshycological/scientific fundamentalism, in which the collective unconscious was presumed to be populated by a specific cast of archetypes. It was fundamentalism that rendered his ideas imperfect, I believe.
A very rigid, structured society might indeed share a fundamental set of archetypes. More recent study into human development seems to indicate that we form archetypical ideas around our primary care-givers and our closest early social sets. But beyond these very basic structures – images of "mom" or "dad" likely carved in the limbic system as we first experience other humans – archetypes are very fluid, kind of like slang.
For example, you ask, "what do you folks think..." In most American circles, "folks" is a general social reference. But in parts of Chicago and many other midWestern cities, "Folks" is a specific reference to membership in the Gangster Disciples street gang. In Vice Lord territory, "folks" would be a very unfriendly, even accusatory reference.
Well, I digress. That is just an example of how diverse definitions can evolve for a shared idea. A genuine understanding of the archetypes that inhabit the unconscious of any particular individual or social group requires more time than most institutions can afford. Such an understanding would require matrixes of long-lasting, person-to-person relationships that go against the grain of a mass-market economy, or of a mass socialist society. Such understanding would imply commitments to person and place that are rarely found in our society. I would say our society is well adapted for fabricating, manipulating and exploiting handy archetypes, but not very adept at allowing a durable ecology of archetypes to evolve among diverse communities.
The archetypes that populate the human psyche are not as rigid as the ones Jung proposed. He, like many scientists and academians have for generations hence, defined a fundamentalism that in turn defined who was "supportive" and who was "disruptive." Those who do not buy the fundamental tennants of a particular academy are often chastised, banned, ignored, ridiculed or otherwise attacked (sometimes labeled as being, get this, "unsupportive").
I often wonder why Freud's other collegue, Alfred Alder, did not gain the same lasting recognition as did Jung.
In the profitable self-help publishing market of the late 20th century, Jung's ideas fit well into dream interpretation manuals that could be mass marketed. People could sound smart, spouting their knowledge of esoteric "Jungian psychology."
Alder's "individual psychology" likely contributed more to the development of various therapuetic methods, but I think the feelings and behaviours he associated with social interest were probably too empowering – ultimately too subversive – to be mass marketed. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I do notice that large institutions are often reluctant to promote ideas that will not contribute to individuals' continued dependance on institutions. If ideas Alder suggested, like the courage to be imperfect, or reforming behavior, became too widely practiced, what would that mean to the salaries of deans, pscyh-doctors, department heads, and the profit margin of publishing companies? In the end, many of Alder's ideas were either too obvious to be attributed solely to him, or were lost as the century ground the great international socialist experiment into hamburger to feed an ecomonic caste system.
poster:Aunt B
thread:34802
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/34811.html