International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: Active Imagination, Mysticism, Types, Synchronicity
ACTIVE IMAGINATION (ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY)
Active imagination in Carl Jung’s analytical method of psychotherapy involves opening oneself to the unconscious and giving free rein to fantasy, while at the same time maintaining an active, attentive, conscious point
of view. The process leads to a synthesis that contains both perspectives, but in a new and surprising way.
‘‘The Transcendent Function’’ (1916b [1958]) is Jung’s first paper about the method he later came to call active imagination. It has two parts or stages:
Letting the unconscious come up and Coming to terms with the unconscious. He describes its starting points (mainly moods, images, bodily sensations); and some of its many expressive forms (painting, sculpting, drawing, writing, dancing, weaving, dramatic enactment, inner visions, inner dialogues). In this early essay he links his method to work with dreams and the therapeutic relationship.
The term ‘‘transcendent function’’ encompasses both the method and its inborn dynamic function that unites opposite position in the psyche.
Jung discovered active imagination out of his own need for self-healing in a certain period of his life.
It all began with symbolic play: ‘‘I had no choice but to. . .take up that child’s life with his childish games’’ (Jung, 1962/1966, p. 174).
He found that as long as he managed to translate his emotions into symbolic images, he was inwardly calmed and reassured.
When he opened to the raw material of the unconscious, he did not identify with the affects and images, rather, he turned his curiosity toward the inner world of the imagination.
This led to a deep process of renewal, as well as insights that gave him a new orientation.
In the years that followed, he recommended it to many of his patients and students. He presents active imagination as an adjunctive technique, but by linking it to his symbolic method of dream interpretation and work with the analytic relationship,
Jung laid the groundwork for a comprehensive method of psychotherapy.
Active imagination is a direct extension of Freud’s free association (Jung, 1929, p. 47).
Other related notions include the transcendent function; the natural
healing function of play and imagination; Sandplay; active vs. passive attitudes toward fantasy; reductive and constructive ways to understand the unconscious content; creative formulation vs. understanding; liberation
from the analyst (Chodorow, 1997).
Jungian analysts hold a wide range of views on active imagination (Samuels, 1985).
For some it is a peripheral technique not much used anymore.
For others it is the essence and goal of analysis. ~JOAN CHODOROW
See also: Amplification (analytical psychology); Analytical psychology.
Bibliography
Chodorow, Joan. (1997). Introduction. Jung on active imagination (pp. 1–20). London: Routledge.
Jung, Carl Gustav. (1916b [1958]). The Transcendant Function. Coll. Works (Vol. VIII). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
———. (1929–31). Freud and Jung: Contrasts. Coll. Works (Vol. IV). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
———. (1966).Memories, dreams, reflections. London: Routledge. (Original work published 1962)
Samuels, Andrew. (1985). Jung and the Post-Jungians, London-Boston: Routledge. ~International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Page 14-15
MYSTICISM
Mysticism is a set of beliefs and practices evoking an intimate union of man and the principle of being (god or divinity).
The term mystic (mystisch) appears in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a).
In its March 20, 1907, session, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society listened
to a talk by Adolf Ha¨utler on ‘‘Mysticism and the Comprehension of Nature,’’ with critical comments by Adler, Rank, and Freud.
Mysticism was understood at that time in a pantheistic sense, as a union of man and nature and of nature with God.
In a related sense, Freud ‘‘reserved for mysticism a consciousness of the inanimate,’’ that is of matter and the mineral world (1915e).
The discussions between Freud and Romain Rolland on the ‘‘oceanic feeling’’ and ‘‘Universal river’’ partook of the same pantheistic atmosphere that the French writer was fond of attributing to the ‘‘Germanic soul,’’ and that he had borrowed from Indian thought.
The feeling for nature and the idea of God were combined in a communion that drew equally on art and religion. For his part, however, Freud wrote to
Rolland, on July 20, 1929, ‘‘I have as little appreciation for mysticism as I do for music.’’
Unlike Carl Jung, Freud was distinctly reticent about mysticism, which he felt had more to do with nature than with culture, more to do with intuition (if not drives) than with reason.
Near the very end of his life, on August 22, 1938, he wrote in his notes: ‘‘Mysticism, the obscure self-perception of a kingdom outside the ego, or id.’’
This obscurity, according to Freud, is not unrelated to the ‘‘dark continent’’ of the female psyche.
But although he seemed to reject mysticism, Freud acknowledged an irrational element in himself: the residue of his self-analysis, which he called ‘‘the specifically Jewish nature of [his] mysticism.’’
Moreover, he loved mystery and wrote to Fliess (June 12, 1900) that he had
dreamt of a marble plaque on his house that read:
In this house, on July 24, 1895, the mystery of the dream was revealed to Dr. Sigmund Freud.
See also: Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, A; Jung, Carl Gustav; Oceanic feeling; Rolland, Romain Edme Paul-Emile.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1915e). The Unconscious. SE, 14: 159–204.
———. (1970). Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873–1939. (Ernst L. Freud, Ed.; Tania and James Stern, Trans.). London: Hogarth.
Ha¨utler, Adolf. (1962–75). Scientific meeting, March 20, 1907:Mysticism and the comprehension of nature.
In Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn (Eds.), Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (M. Nunberg, Trans., Vol. 2, 1906–08). New York: International Universities Press.
Jung, Carl Gustav. (1980). The psychology of the transference. Coll.Works, Vol. 16. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Vermorel, Henri, and Vermorel, Madeleine. (1993). Sigmund Freud et Romain Rolland. Correspondance 1923–1936. (Alain de Mijolla, Ed.). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ~International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis,Page 1090-1091
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES (ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY)
Carl Jung’s discrimination of human consciousness according to its functions (thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition) and habitual attitudes (extraversion and introversion) was his attempt to provide a psychology of experience with a critical orientation in sorting out the empirical material of psychic dispositions, tendencies, and convictions.
Jung’s first presentation of the idea of psychological types was in a
lecture delivered at the Psychoanalytical Congress in Munich during September 1913.
He noted the striking difference in attitude toward the external world
between patients diagnosed with hysteria and those diagnosed with schizophrenia in terms of intensity of feeling, the former displaying an exaggerated emotivity with regard to the environment and the latter an
extreme apathy.
He also noted characteristic differences in thought content: the fantasy life of the patient with hysteria may be accounted for in a natural and human way by the antecedents and individual history of the patient, whereas the patient with schizophrenia consciously experiences fantasy closer to dreams than to the psychology of the waking state in having a distinctly
archaic character, with mythological creations more in evidence than the personal memories of the patient.
From these facts, Jung concluded that hysteria is characterized by a centrifugal movement of libido, which he called extraversion, and schizophrenia by a contrary movement, which he called introversion,
toward the core of the personality (which he later called the self ).
Although Jung recognized that in these two clinical syndromes he was witnessing regressive extraversion and regressive introversion, he nevertheless concluded that there was in the development of
consciousness a normal distinction between the two movements of libido.
Extraversion, he postulated, tends naturally to bond and even merge with objects in the outer world, while introversion naturally turns away from such objects in order to link up with the internal objects that Jung eventually called archetypes.
Kenneth Shapiro and Irving Alexander have subsequently noted that these two movements of libido are constitutive of experience itself for the different types, experience only being experience for the extravert
when it is shared with another person or object in the outer world and, for the introvert, when it matches up to some a priori archetypal category or capacity to experience just that type of thing.
The theory of psychological types itself is an introverted way of thinking
about experience and making it real, which may account for its difficulty for psychologists using an extraverted attitude.
In the years between 1913 and 1921, when the book Psychological Types finally appeared, Jung developed the theory to include what he called the functions of consciousness, which he named sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition.
Whether deployed toward objects in the outer world or toward the
inner world of archetypes, sensation gives consciousness the practical sense that an object is really being presented to it;
in other words, that it is, thinking gives it a name, feeling assigns it a value (for which reason Jung’s feeling is sometimes replaced by analytical
psychologists with the word valuing or with feeling valuation) and intuition grants consciousness a direct, uncanny perception (from the perspective of
the ‘‘absolute knowledge’’ of the unconscious) of the origin and fate of the object, as Jung puts it ‘‘whence it arises and where it is going.’’
For Jung sensation and intuition are irrational functions in being functions of perception which are irrationally ‘‘given.’’ Thinking and feeling, by contrast, are rational functions, being choices, in the sense of judgments
by consciousness, as to how to discriminate among objects that are perceived.
That individuals develop consciousness in different ways, according to their preference for using certain functions over others has led the theory of psychological types to be used to type people and to predict their
likelihood to succeed in certain professions.
A test based on Jung’s model, known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has had widespread use in the United States. The MBTI uses categories of judging and perceiving to distinguish Jung’s rational and irrational extraverted functions.
In typing the preferred mode of consciousness of an individual, an attempt is made to define the person’s typical ‘‘superior function’’ according to whether it is extraverted or introverted, whether it is most characterized by sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition, and whether it is rational or irrational.
There will normally be an auxiliary function that is ‘‘different in every respect’’ providing the individual with an alternative mode of consciousness with which to meet inner and outer situations. In depth psychological work, it is also important to define the ‘‘inferior
function’’ which, though much less easily differentiated into a conscious competence, is the place one most often experiences unconscious complexes and conflicts. ~JOHN BEEBE
See also: Analytical psychology; Animus-Anima; Extroversion/
introversion (analytical psychology); Midlife crisis.
Bibliography
Franz, Marie-Louise von, and Hillman, James (1971). Lectures on Jung’s Typology. New York: Spring.
Jung, Carl Gustav (1913). A contribution to the study of psychological types. Coll. Works, Vol. 6. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
——— (1921). Psychological Types. Coll. Works, Vol. 6. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Myers, Isabel, and Myers, Peter (1980). Gifts Differing. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Shapiro, Kenneth, and Alexander, Irving (1975). The Experience of Introversion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ~International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Page 1395-1397
SYNCHRONICITY (ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY)
Carl Jung offered synchronicity as an acausal ‘‘principle of explanation’’ to account for ‘‘certain remarkable manifestations of the unconscious.’’
He saw the principle of synchronicity as an addition to the principle of
psychic causality, which Freud had emphasized so strongly Jung ‘‘found that there are psychic parallelisms which simply cannot be related to each other causally,’’ such as ‘‘the simultaneous occurrence of identical thoughts, symbolism or psychic states’’ in analyst and analysand.
In cultural history, one can also observe uncanny parallels, such as the coincidence of Chinese and European periods of style pointed out by Jungs friend Richard Wilhelm, the German translator of the Confucian classic
I Ching (Book of changes; also romanized as Yijing).
This ancient book of wisdom has been used throughout its history as an oracle.
Jung testedWilhelms translation by counting out yarrow stalks and tossing coins—the traditional chance operations of Chinese divination—to
locate specific chapters and verses in the I Ching, which he found would speak, like well-timed analytic interpretations, to his psychological situation at the time.
In his memorial to Wilhelm in 1930, Jung enunciated the synchronistic principle as an explanation.
But it was not until the 1951 Eranos Conference that he fully described the ‘‘meaningful coincidence’’ and other sorts of facts that the concept ‘‘is intended to cover.’’
‘‘Synchronicity: An Acausal connecting principle,’’ Jungs full-blown development of the notion, appeared, together with an article by Nobel Prize– winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in German in 1952.
There Jung offers synchronicity as a law of nature as important as the laws of causality and chance, which it supplements in governing the connections of events.
Jung quotes Schopenhauer (2000): ‘‘All the events in a mans life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process;
secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams.’’
Jung understood this ‘‘subjective connection’’ to be the significance a subject finds in the linkage of events, but he located this meaning beyond the subject experiencing it in the psychoid nature of the archetypes themselves.
An archetype, for Jung, is a field of meaning in the unconscious that may be registered simultaneously as a psychic event in the mind and as a physical reality in the outer world. As Robert Aziz (1990) has noted, such ‘‘simultaneity’’ need not mean occurring at the exact same moment of time; it is enough that events having a common meaning be linked without a plausible causal sequence.
One of Jungs favorite examples of such a meaningful coincidence occurred while he was analyzing a young woman patient.
She was telling a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. Jung
Bibliography
Aziz, Robert. (1990). C. G. Jungs psychology of religion and synchronicity. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jung, Carl Gustav. (1930). Richard Wilhelm: In memoriam. In his Collected works (Vol. 15). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
———. (1950). Foreword to the I Ching. In his Collected works (Vol. 11). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
———. (1952b). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. In his Collected works (Vol. 8). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. (2000). Die Transzendentale Spekulation des Einzelnen In Parerga and paralipomena: Short philosophical essays (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1851) ~International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Page 1719-1721
The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/
Carl Jung Depth Psychology on Instagram
psychoanalysis psychoanalysis psychoanalysis psychoanalysis
