The Depth Psychology of Carl Jung and the Complexity of Carl Jung's Archetypes

When I was eight years old, I had this reoccurring dream about being in an open playing field with friends. We were in the center of the field in a bright sunny day. The weather is pleasant with an enjoyable breeze. The color of the playing field was vivid and precious. I could smell the scent of the flowers and inhaling the clean air. I was sitting around with a group of friends talking and laughing. I recall feeling like I had everything I ever wanted at that time. I felt like I could conquer the world. Suddenly, I would begin to feel ill. I got up and excused myself from the group. My friends would aske me, “Hey Danny, are you okay?” I couldn’t respond. Everything appears to be losing its color. I remember rolling my eyes back and waking up in a hospital. I was told that I had cancer, but they wouldn’t know how long I would have. I was told that it could happen at any moment. I recall that everyone’s expression was not congruent to the feelings that they claim they have. For example, my parents told me how sad they were sad to find out I had cancer, but their facial expression didn’t show any sense of sadness. I remember feeling like I started to see everything in grey. I could literally feel color and associated for mood and a state of mind. I felt that I had a lump on my throat and was hard for me to speak. The ending of my dream ends with me going to sleep feeling ambivalent.

I spent a lot of time thinking what this dream meant. Jung expressed that “we allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw conclusions from them” (Jung, 1963, p. 210). At first, I thought that this dream had to deal with the fear of death. In my childhood years, I had to go to several funerals every year and I had anxiety that one of these days it would be my parents. I remember wanting to hold onto their embrace a little longer than usual. My parents did a real good job in providing me assurance that they are fine and validated my feelings. However, I noticed in my dreams there was not a death that was happened. I was informed about an impending death approaching, but I don’t necessarily die in my dream. In my dream I felt a sense of confusion. Like I knew I was going to die but I felt fine. I didn’t feel that my emotions were congruent to what I was thinking. I felt that the losing of color in my dream was a sign of discomfort and distress. That’s where the color grey felt most prevalent. It was situations in my life was draining me emotionally, physically and mentally. During this time in my life my siblings from my mother side found out that my father was not their biological father. I had a close relationship with my siblings and in mere moments after they found out my relationship with them were tainted with resentment projected on to me from their feelings towards my parents. My siblings took out their anger out on me and for a good moment in time I was disowned by my siblings. In this time, I attended a funeral finding out that it was my brother (from my father side) who passed away. I was convinced for several years that I was going to die from cancer, and it would be in my early adulthood years.

The basic understanding of Jungian dream theory is that dreams reveal more than they conceal. They are natural form of expression in symbolic fashion. Jung says, “The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life” (Jung, 1963, p. 211). Cancer to me felt like I was struggling with the problems that I was facing. It represented my fear that I had no control over my circumstances, and it was destruction waiting to happen. I view the dream as my journey to get to know myself in this world. I have six siblings, three brothers and three sisters, and I felt like the only child in the family. I come from a very big family where it matters to be “someone.” It is rooted in me the importance of family. I felt like I had nothing to offer and felt that people only love me because I was a member of the family. The feeling overwhelmed me through my adolescent years. It wasn’t until I went to therapy was I able to address these feelings head on. My therapist mentioned that I have a creative way of expressing myself. I can’t articulate my feelings easily unless I tell her about the dreams I have or write them down. It was the only way I would be able to make sense of them.

Personally, I have always had a sense that dreams are a way for your mind to process what your experience are when is not publicly express. For me, my dreams have always been vivid and detailed orientated. I found freedom in expression through creative writing, music, photography, and dance. I noticed that if I listen to a song that taps to the emotion that I was feeling in my dream it would help induce having that very same dream or a close variation of it. I learned to express myself and process my emotions through color and imagery because of my dreams. An example of this would be this concept of an imaginary friend. I’ve dreamt many dreams about an imaginary friend and losing them in various scenarios. I look at imaginary friend as the attachment to one’s innocence. Wanting to hold on to something but can’t because it is no longer there. So, what do you do? You imagine it’s there. I wrestled with this concept throughout my life. The more I think about it the more I feel like I understand Jung stance in the matter.

Oedipus

Understanding the Oedipus complex by Sigmund Freud was interesting topic in the course. As I felt that I may not fully understand his stance of the matter but was interested in his direction of his message. In the Greek mythology, Oedipus was abandoned at birth and throughout the story he did not know who his parents are. In his journey, he came across a man who he ends up killing and marrying a woman in the process. He came to realize that he ended up killing his father and marrying his mother. This psychoanalytic theory suggests that a child’s desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex, specifically a boy’s sexual interest to his mother. However, this desire is repressed, and Freud expressed that it plays a role over child’s behavior. In its simple and misunderstood form, it is about the child loves the parent of the opposite sex and hate the parents of the same sex as the rival. I don’t think Freud intention was to say that children want to have sex with their parents. What children want is, at the oedipal stage, they want to possess the mother. They want to bond in an intimate way. We are not meant to take it in a literal sense. The way I see it is that if you have a thirty-one-year-old saying “I want to have sex with you,’ that could mean something to you. But for a three-year-old who wants to get some pleasure from his mother. The child’s mother who has been giving the child pleasure all of its life, it means something completely different. The Oedipus complex explores more about sexual pleasure but the idea of love and jealousy due to feeling of exclusion. When the child notices that the mother has needs of her own, the child would be being to feel jealous. Anything that gets presented as a rival the child would build hate towards it, in this case it would be the father.

Freud introduced the female version of the Oedipus complex, which is called the Electra Complex. According to the Simply Psychology website the Electra complex “involves a girl, aged between 3 and 6, becoming unconsciously sexually attached to her father and increasingly hostile toward her mother” (McLeod, 2018). For girls, the Electra complex is rooted in a belief that girls already been castrated, and places blame to the mother for this. It also explains that girls expressed penis envy. Girls journey is basically overcoming her fear of losing her love and mending the relationship with her mother.

Personally, I side with Jung in his dissatisfaction with certain aspects of Freud’s theories. Jung felt that Freud placed too much emphasizes the role of sexuality plays in human behavior. He felt that Freud theory of the unconscious as flawed and negative. According to Psychology Today article it states, “Jung spent so much time decrying Freud's tendency to find sex under every rock. But in the end, their relationship confirmed that emphasis. Sex derailed the work” (Schultz, 2009). Jung eventually resigned from affiliating with Freud due to conflicting beliefs. However, I don’t feel that this would be a deal breaker in a relationship. I would have been more interested in understanding how conflicting opinions plays a role in human behavior. The bond that they both shared were deep and intimate.

Archetypes

Carl Jung believed that we inherit ancient memories from our ancestors, these memories are stored deep in the subconscious mind in the collective unconscious. According to the Verywellmind website, the collective unconscious (also known as objective psyche) “refers to the idea that a segment of the deepest unconscious mind is genetically inherited and is not shaped by personal experience” (Frischer, 2019). These memories are collected and organized by archetypes. In a textbook Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century the author states, “archetypes are emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning” (Weiten, 2005, p. 41). Archetypes serve two functions: (1) they organize these memories into themes, and (2) they send them to the conscious mind when the appropriate situation arises. Archetypes have been compared to instincts (biological urges) because when they are activated, they influence our behaviors. Archetypes can be behavior patterns, images, memories, symbols, thoughts, and characters with distinctive personality attributes. It builds our personalities and they steer our values. They guide us through the stages of life. If they are successful, we will think and act similarly to our ancestors. How archetypes express themselves depends somewhat on culture and unique life experiences. For example, our ancestors all had mothers. Their mothers would nurture them and provide care for them. Their mother would feed them, make them feel loved and appreciated. An archetype gathered these memories together and thus became a mother archetype. When we are born, we meet our mothers for the very first time. This experience of seeing your mother activates the mother archetype and this guide the expectations of your mother. It guides how you interact with her. Therefore, archetypes are activated when you get in the ideal situations similarly to instincts.

If one starts to fall in love, this then activates a marriage archetype and archetype for starting a family. In the same manner there are archetypes for every situation. Jung believed that archetypes are like blueprint for your life. The archetypes tend to use the memories from our ancestors to get you to live similarly like they did. Archetypes show up all throughout literature as characters and themes. For example, the wise old man, he is characterized as father-figure type that possesses great knowledge of the world and provide guidance. The child archetype contains our feelings of security and safety. It balances out our responsibilities by integrating playfulness in our lives. The hero is about overcoming obstacles and adversities. It’s about being able to achieve goals. The villain is the one who causes harm and tries to ruin plans. Archetype bring meaning symbology in the conscious mind. This is seen in dreams, culture, myths, stories, religion, traditions and legends from all over the world.

Conclusion

Overall, my understanding of depth psychology has increased since taking this class. I felt that there is a lot to learn about depth psychology and all the people that are involve in building this approach. The exploration of dreams, complexes and archetypes do interest me dearly. I feel that my struggle with understanding Freud and Jung in max compacity will be an adventure I am looking forward to taking. The conversations about dreams really made an impact on me and created a fondness about the matter.