One of the most influential theories of personality was developed by a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung. Jung suggested that personality is determined both by the (inherited) individual and the collective unconscious, a reservoir of all human experience over many generations and archetypal symbols. To him the psyche is composed of both the conscious elements, e.g. thoughts and perceptions; and unconscious elements which determine behavior in ways which cannot be discerned now.
C.G.Jung. Early Life and Career
Jung was born in a family which was distinguished by its academic and religious background; his father was a philologist and a pastor at the same time. His childhood was for the most part lonely, but it developed a rich imagination. Since childhood, he has been paying some attention to what his parents, as well as teachers, did and was thinking of their actions and trying to find answers to the questions of the relations between people as well as the corresponding philosophical aspects.
Another theme recurring in Jung was relating to his father losing his faith in religion and thus Jung decided to share with him his own religious experiences hoping to help them understand each other. Despite the tolerance of his father, they could not come to an understanding. As he had a history of generations of clergymen in his family, Jung appeared fit to follow that path as well.
Nevertheless, in adolescence, his burgeoning interest in philosophy and certain disappointments early in his life caused him to abandon theology and pursue the study of medicine and psychiatry.
Jung finished the Medical University of Basel (1895-1900) then transferred to the Zürich, whre he worked in the famous. Psychiatric Hospital Burghölzli. In paralell he wrote his doctoral disertetion. recaived the PhD. His workat in Burghölzli Hospital under Eugen Bleuler open his long and sucessful professional career.
The Word Association Test
Jung created the association tests using the guidance of Bleuler, which manifested the gut instinct of patient behavior when attempting to achieve an outcome to a set of stimulus words. He found that these reactions are associated with emotionally aroused sets of thoughts, which people feel obliged to censor because they are objectionable, morally delicate, or more frequently, sexual. To explain these unconscious emotional patterns Jung came up with a term complex which today still remains central to psychology.
The main principle of the theory developed by Jung is that of archetypes, which are patterns and symbolic images common to all cultures, literatures, mythologies and dreams. Examples are the Hero, the Mother and the Shadow. Such archetypes basically determine how individuals think, feel and behave most of the time without planning to do so consciously.
C.G.Jung Psychological Types
Jung was also able to distinguish between psychological types of an individual on two parameters, attitude (an orientation to either the outer or inner world) and dominant psychological functions (the way a person perceives and makes decisions). He identified four dimensions which were:
Psychological Functions
Extraversion vs. Introversion – Preference for being externally oriented and engaging in activity and interaction with others versus a self-oriented orientation of being internally oriented and looking inwards.
Atitudes Determining Personality Typs
Sensation vs. Intuition The preference is in favor of concrete information and immediate reality as opposed to patterns, possibilities, and abstract ideas.
Thinking vs. Feeling– the ability to allow any decision process to be influenced by or made based on logic and objective analysis as opposed to empathy and value-based considerations.
Judging vs. Perceiving – The need to have order, structure, and decisiveness as opposed to being flexible, adaptable and open.
The basis of this framework was later used in the Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTI), a systematic evaluation instrument based on the theory of Jung, to generate a sense of personality in contemporary society.