Jung and Freud: Two Views of the Unconscious
Getting Beyond the Psychology of Repressed Sexuality and Memory
Jan 14, 2009
Both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, two of the greatest psychologist/thinkers of the twentieth century, used the term unconscious but each defined it differently. The one thing they agreed on, however, is that the unconscious is that part of the psyche inaccessible to the ego. It is only when the ego drops its guard such as in dreams that the unconscious expresses itself.
Two Great Minds Diverge
But here the similarities between the two men diverge. To Freud, who had been Jung’s teacher, the unconscious contains that which is repressed or forgotten while remaining within the individual psyche. It becomes a sort or repository for forgotten things of one's past. It is exclusively personal in nature and belongs to the individual person alone. In other words, it contains no commonly held or universal archetypes such as understood by Jung.
Jung maintained, on the other hand, that yes there is something like Freud’s “personal” unconscious but this merely rests or floats upon an infinite collective unconscious which does not at all derive from the personal unconscious. Instead it comes to the individual as a part of something universal in nature. Its “contents and modes of behavior,” says Jung, are essentially “the same everywhere and in all individuals.” This is not to say that it expresses itself the same in all individuals only that the archetypal patterns are universally present.
Dreams and Archetypes
The actual psyche is known only by its contents. In other words, it is seen only by what the individual actually expresses through action. But with the collective unconscious no such expression is available except through dreams and the various archetypes that make themselves known via behaviors and obsessions.
The personal unconscious, according to Jung, is far greater than a storage for past traumas and emotional history as Freud would contend. Instead, it serves as a pathway to the collective unconscious and is constantly being fed by those deep reservoirs.
Fairy Tales and Myths
Through dreams and other means of intensely engaging with unconscious its contents are accessed. Fairy tales and myths are another way that the unconscious can be recognized on a larger cultural level. All fairy tales and myths contain within them the seeds of the collective unconscious, which accounts for the great interest in fairy tales and myths by such giants as Joseph Campbell and Jung's student Marie Von Franz.
It was this sharp distinction between the two men, the nature of the unconscious, that was at the root of their falling out. Namely, it was Jung who departed from Freud’s circle as his own thinking began to mature and develop taking on this larger viewpoint of the role of the collective and personal unconscious.
The Final Mysteries
In sum, with Freud everything came down to the individual’s past: family, relationships between members, repressed sexual longings and confusions. With Jung, although he understood the importance of family and experience, it was more the collective unconsciousness itself wherein he found the mysteries behind the individual’s psyche. The collective unconscious was the great sea upon which all these other aspects of the psyche came to rest and take their shape.
For more articles explaining usefulness of archetypes and collective unconscious, please refer to Overcoming the Archetype: Why it Can't be Done.
Sources: A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. Samuels, Shorter and Plaut. (2005). New York: Routledge.
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