JUNGIAN ANALYSIS: WHAT IS IT?

Also known as "Analytical Psychology" or "Jungian Psychotherapy", Jungian analysis was developed by the Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). It is a psychodynamic therapy based on a unique and inspired way of understanding the elements and workings of the human psyche within the individual and the world.

Central to Jung's approach is the recognition that within everyone exists an unshakable, organic drive toward Wholeness. He called this process Individuation and wrote, "The urge and compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature and thus an invincible power...". Jung's approach is focused on bringing consciousness to imbalances in the psyche. Often this comes about through identifying and dealing with unconscious complexes that are frequently at the root of emotional and physcial pain and/or unwanted behaviour.

Symptoms are viewed both as natural responses to psychic one-sidedness and as potential starting points toward recovering a more balanced or "whole" approach to one's life.

Being conscious of complexes and the individuation process not only gives one much more freedom and choice in day to day life situations but also leads to a feeling of being connected to the underlying current of one's life.

WHO WAS C.G. JUNG?

Born in Switzerland in 1875 into a family of modest means, (his father was a minister in a small rural community), Jung became one of the most significant thinkers of our time. His pioneering work has profoundly touched many aspects of our modern culture, including medicine, religion, philosophy and psychoanalysis. It is through his work that many of the terms we now consider common have been intoduced into culture, for example, archetype, introvert and extrovert, collective unconscious, anima and animus, persona, synchronicity, shadow, etc.

Jung was a contemporary of Theodore Flourney and William James, and in the burgeoning days of psychoanalysis, was a close colleague of Sigmund Freud's. In 1910, he became the first President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. However, in 1914, he abandoned Freud's theory and founded his own approach to psychoanalysis and psychology.

Included in Jung's investigation of the human psyche was a diversity of areas including mythology, alchemy, fairy tales, modern physics, the I Ching and eastern religions.

Jung's understanding of the interpretation of dreams, the make-up of the psyche, the unconscious and the dynamics of the personality continue to attract scholarly investigation and influence collective thought today.