C.G. Jung & Jungian Studies

Carl Gustav Jung (C. G. Jung)  was a Swiss-German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.  He was born in 1875 and lived through the major European wars of the 20th century, and the accompanying extraordinary transformation of the western hemisphere.  He died in 1961, leaving a massive opus of writings and letters which are studied around the world today.

Jung's work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli Hospital in Zurich, under the hospital Director, Eugen Bleuler. During this time, he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology.  Freud, 25 years his senior, expected Jung to inherit his psychological work and carry it forward in a like manner.

Their paths diverged when Jung could not agree completely with some of Freud’s theories.  Freud expelled him from the International Psychoanalytic Association, and Jung went on to develop the theories and practice of analytical psychology, also known as depth psychology.

Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual's conscious and unconscious elements. Jung considered it to be the main task of human development. He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion.

C. G. Jung was also an artist, craftsman and builder and a prolific writer. Many of his works were not published until after his death and some are still awaiting publication.

​

C.G. Jung Image from public domain