Introduction to Philosophy Donna Chapman
Take Home Test #2 January 3, 2000

Question 1: Compare the tripartite self of Freud with the multi-layered self of Jung:
• How does the conscious mind function?
• What is the structure of the unconscious?
• What is the relation between consciousness and the unconscious?
• What are the methods and purposes of accessing the unconscious?
• Which view best fits your own experience and understanding?

Answer:

As the end of this class approaches – and with full understanding that we have only scratched the surface of the content of ANY of the theorists that we have looked at this semester – I am drawn to the conclusion that all of the men (in our case, they have all been men, although I know that there are a few women philosophers.....somewhere) are up to their eyeballs in a desperate attempt to find the answer to “life the universe and everything”1 {L/U/E} A major difference between pre-Descartes and post-Descartes philosophers, in my opinion, is that the post-Descartes philosophers try to validate their elaborate educated guesses in the framework of scientific method as developed by Descartes/Locke/Newton.

In the case of Freud and Jung, there is a new extended differentiation of {L/U/E} which here to fore only Plato seemed to hit on: that is {L/U/E} without, pertaining to the external world, and it’s influence on an individual or personality, and {L/U/E} within, that is with the self/I at the center. Also to be considered are the pressure these two exert on each other, the fight for dominance if you will, almost akin to Yin/Yang.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have had significant impact on modern life. Our common language has been modified by words coined for use in their psychologies. Words like introvert, extrovert, complex, free association, therapy, analysis, collective, archetype, synchronicity, self, Ego, erogenous zone, oral fixation, Oedipus complex, penis envy, phallic symbol and the ever wonderful anal retentive (how many of these people do you know? I know quite a few.) are all now in use by all of us every day.

I think that it would be easier to discuss each philosopher/psychologist as a whole before I contrast their views. I’m going to start with Carl Jung because I like his model of consciousness.

Carl G. Jung
Jung’s psychology is uniquely androgynous. In the healthy personality there is balance between the male and female. He comfortably takes into account, and validates the existence of unprovables like “intuition”. Jung defines consciousness as awareness. This is a great word because the root word “aware” has two levels of definition, one level being: knowledge gained through one’s own perceptions, the other level being: alert, vigilant or watchful. The definition of consciousness as an essence alert and watchful gaining information through the perception of the senses is, in my opinion, delightful and accurate.
In studying the conscious person, Jung noticed two distinctive attitude types – the extrovert – focused on the outside, the social, the physical and the introvert – focused on the inside, on feelings, on ideas, on insight. Although shy people are often referred to as introverts and outgoing people as extroverts, this is a bit of an understatement of these personality types. Extroverts tend to be objective thinkers valuing literal unbiased facts, while introverts tend to be subjective thinkers valuing opinion, perception and imagination.


The concept of inward/outward is also reflected in Jung’s “contents” of the conscious mind. The introverted part of consciousness content is called Personal. The personal contents of consciousness are an individuals thoughts, feelings and perceptions. The extroverted part of consciousness content is called the Collective. The collective contents are the parts of an individual influenced by the outside world such as language and culture.


In analyzing consciousness Jung differentiated four functions: Thinking, Feeling, Sensation and Intuition. Thinking is rational. Thinking makes judgments about the physical environment or ideas or a set of ideas, categorizes information by importance or by types, looks at relationships, probability and looks for causality. Kind of like a calculator. Linear, mathematical. Feeling is also rational. Feeling assigns value, makes value judgments on the moral, spiritual or aesthetic level. Feeling is closely connected to emotion. For example, I love animals. If anything happens, either by accident or on purpose (heaven forbid) that causes me to hurt an animal (do something that I don’t want to do) an emotion is invoked: sorrow, maybe even anger depending on the circumstances. Feeling also assists the thinking function as an auxiliary. For example I VALUE exercise, particularly in the form of martial arts. Why? Because my body works better when I exercise, it reduces the effects of aging, my body is more resilient and resistant to disease, and I feel better both physically and emotionally. Sensation and Intuition are both non-rational functions. Sensation is the collection of information through the senses. Information gleaned in this way is subject to the time and space of the incident of capture. For example, the fragrance of a rose smelled out doors is influenced by many factors, one of which is whether or not is it raining outside – the smell of ozone and mud change the perfume of the rose. Intuition is, for lack of a better way to put it, a knowing. It is understanding without perception or thought. It is an inner knowing of the significance, consequence, motive and results of human action. Intuition is sensing without sensation. Emotions interfere with intuition, particularly fear. Intuition is the closest of the conscious functions to the unconscious. It is interesting to note that most women accept intuition as a dominant function, and operate in it a lot of the time. Males tend to invalidate it as not “provable”. I’m reminded about the student who stayed late after class to try to get his mind around intuition. He never got it. Interestingly though, he had no problem accepting Jung’s theory about the thinking function, but just could not accept intuition. The truth is that Jung did no better a job at proving thinking than he did proving intuition, but the male student could make the leap of faith to accept thinking, but not intuition.

Jung believes that the functioning of the mind is an organic process – not a mechanical one, hence the use of a water lily as a model. see fig 2 It is a living process not stimulus/response. One function is usually dominant in an individual. The remaining functions may then be auxiliary (assistors) for the dominant, or they may become inferior (not developed at all). This, as in the above example of the student, is best illustrated in the personality models of men and women of today. Still today in spite of all our enlightenment, men tend to be dominated by thinking and sensation, feelings and intuition aren’t even auxiliary, they are usually downright inferior. Women tend to be dominated by feelings and intuition, with sensation and thinking as auxiliary. Sadly sometimes even today thinking in women is actually inferior.

Jung uses the symbology of the mandala to diagram the contents sand layers of the mind. The mandala is a circular symbol seen in Eastern philosophy as the representation of the universe with God at the center – for Jung the “I” is the center with the whole of the mandala representing the “Self”. The conscious mind is the outermost layer thus illustrating the relationship of the conscious to the unconscious. see fig 1


Once again, Jung divides the unconscious into two sections, the Personal unconscious and the Collective unconscious. And once again they are subjective and objective in nature and have contents influenced by inner focus (introverted) and outer focus (extroverted). “The personal unconscious contains all the stuff that simply isn't conscious. It contains stuff that can be made conscious by simple act of will, stuff that requires some digging as well as stuff that may never be recalled into consciousness ever again.”2 It is made up of memories of daily experiences. It is also a dumping ground for stuff we don’t like and would rather not think about. There are two sections of the personal unconscious: the Persona and the Shadow. The persona is us as perceived by the outside world. This mask that we build to show others is based on external influences such as religion, sexual orientation, politics or culture. These masks are owned by the personality. For example: you won’t hear a homosexual male refer to himself as “I am a homosexual male” he will say “I am gay”. Gay is the persona. Gay is a social statement, homosexual is a statement of sexual orientation. Gay encompasses homosexual plus more. A well adjusted person has many masks and is quick to know which is appropriate and when. The shadow is the yuck of each of our personalities that we don’t want to think about...the darker elements of our natures. Frustrated and undeveloped aspects of our selves may also be dumped here as well. While we can be aware of our persona at any given time, the shadow is usually totally unconscious to the individual and for good reason. “A person who grew up in a family where level headedness prevailed and such things as art making were not given much value may discover some artistic aptitude hiding out in their shadow. There are treasures here, but they are buried in stinking muck.”3 The collective unconscious is the container of archetypes. Archetypes are Jung’s way of explaining elements of individuals that are common to all humans. For example: everyone dreams of falling, of running but getting no where. Classical and mythological symbols are also common to everyone’s dreams. Jung believes that these belong to the species. These are elements in our unconscious that did NOT pass through our conscious mind as experiences and get dumped there to be buried and forgotten. It is as if we are each born with a copy of the book in our unconscious, handed down biologically/genetically from generation to generation. Archetypes are not to be confused with the personal image (persona). Archetypal images are influenced unconsciously by culture and individuality, and can’t be explained by intellect. Basic archetypal forms are the anima/animus. The animus is the male soul image of a woman and the anima is the female soul image of a man. The anima/animus is a messenger between the conscious and unconscious. Other archetypal forms are: The Wise Old Man, the complete man, The Great Mother, the complete woman, and Mythological images such as prince, princess, the quest, the sacred mountain.

The purpose of Jungian analysis is to get in contact with and become fully aware of deep buried abilities, feelings, and intuitions and to develop them. To become whole. Access of the unconscious is accomplished by means of hypnosis, meditation, dream analysis, creative fantasy, and hermineutical interpretation of images. The goal of Jungian analysis is Individuation – the balance of conscious mind to unconscious mind to outside world. An un-individuated person may be one who is enticed by the latest exercise or religious guru. They may identify with their persona to an excessive degree – to the point that only the persona exists and the individual drops away entirely. The individuated person is rests comfortably between the outside pressure (the social pull to be one way or another) and the inside pressure to “be a man” or “act like a lady”. Like the constant pressure of Yin to Yang. The individuated person realizes their own unique individuality, and can be who they need to be for any given moment in time. What would a fully individuated person look like?

“The individuated human being is just ordinary, therefore almost
invisible...His feelings, thoughts, etc., are just anybody’s feelings, thoughts
etc., quite ordinary, as a matter of fact, and not interesting at all....He will
have no need to be exaggerated, hypocritical, neurotic, or any other nuisance.
He will be in modest harmony with nature....No matter whether people
think they are individuated or not, they are just what they are...
The criterion is consciousness.”4 C.G. Jung

Sigmund Freud


Freud has been called the father of psychoanalysis. He considers all mental function to be a mechanical process: stimulus/response. There is no free will. (It is interesting to note that although he is very analytical in is approach, the starting point for his system of analysis is often the dreams of his patients.) Stimulus can be from the outside – as in a threat to the physical body causing the “fight or flight” response, or from the inside – as in the body’s insatiable demand for pleasure.

Freud holds a “tripartite” view of the mind. see fig 3 The part of the conscious mind that mediates and integrates the inner demand for pleasure with the demands and expectations of the outside world and society at large is called the Ego. The Ego is the focal point of the conscious mind. The driving force of the Ego is the Reality Principle: maximize instinctual gratification while minimizing punishment and guilt. A secondary process of the ego is thinking. This is the part of the interface that deals with the external world. Freud believes that there are no choices, one drive merely wins out over the others. (Interesting isn’t it that Freud relegates thinking to a secondary process!)

The subconscious mind is divided into three parts – the Preconscious, the Repressed Contents, and the ID. The preconscious is a storage area for normal memories that the consciousness can access at will. The repressed contents area is a stash place for painful or traumatic memories or desires that cannot be accessed by the consciousness because of willful forgetting. There are no innate memories, ALL memory whether repressed or consigned to preconscious came into the mind through the conscious by experience at some time or another. Repressed memories can pop up at any time, but are most likely to reveal themselves in dreams, or in verbal faux pas hence the term “Freudian slip”. According to Freud, when these “slips” happen we must ask ourselves what does this situation really mean to me, that the slip occurred now of all times. Why now?

The ID contains the instincts – the wants, needs and desires of the body. The focus of the ID is the Pleasure Principle: Maximize instinctual gratification. That’s it. Who cares about anything else. The ID has two types of instinct Eros and Thanatos. Eros is the life/sex drive that wants to continue pleasure indefinitely. Thanatos is the death/destruction instinct, the drive of life to destroy itself. I recently went to the Grand Canyon. At one of the viewpoints I ventured out without thinking to see the beauty of the canyon. When I finally looked at where I was, I found myself out on the end of a very narrow cliff. The way down was long and rocky. I wasn't even thinking when I went out there. This is thanatos.

The ID is the originator of neurosis, psychosis and complexes. The term complex was actually first coined by Jung for an unconscious collection of ideas. Jung evolved this idea into the term archetype, but “complex” has stuck in Freudian circles. The complex that just about everyone has heard of is the Oedipus complex. Freud blames most mental illness on sex – usually a disturbance, frustration, interference or truncation of normal sexual development during childhood, and it’s the parent’s fault! The Oedipus complex is a normal state for a well developed male. The complex is initiated at the age of about 6-8 years old. The boy is becoming sexually mature, he experiences primal lust for the female in the house – mom. He fears what dad will do to him if he finds out what he is thinking (castration anxiety) at the same time, he views dad as his rival for mom’s attention. He wants mom all to him self. The solution: drop the desire for mom (taboo), identify with dad (make a friend of the enemy), and repress the whole thing (the best evidence is NO evidence). The term Electra complex has come to be known as the female version of Oedipus, but there is no evidence that Freud ever used the term. Freud wasn’t much concerned with female sexuality and never fully developed his psychology of it. He was obsessed with male sexuality as evidenced by the imposition of “penis envy” on females as their part of the Electra complex. So, we may not have much, us women, but what we do have is penis envy. Freud was a sexually obsessed nut. (my opinion)

Neuroses are the autonomous operation of complexes which frustrate conscious intention. Examples of neurosis in action are exaggerated behavior or excessive emotions. I work with John. John cannot open any doors (touch any door knob) without covering his hand with his shirt sleeve before he opens the door. (gotta watch out for them germs, I guess...) He once asked me if it would be ok if he emptied my trash can for me. John is a salesman not a janitor. John absolutely cannot help himself – he must do these things to feel comfortable. John is neurotic.

Psychosis is the collapse of the personality causing splintering of the ego into partial personalities. In the case of a psychotic individual, one may see the ID in full unfettered control.

As if the ego’s job isn’t massive enough – balancing the world against the ID – there is a voice of parental authority exerting influence on the ego as well. This voice of authority is the part of the mind which contains the traditional values and taboos of society as interpreted and taught by the parents. The super ego is Freud’s name for this permanent parent that we carry. Truth be told – the super ego of an individual is actually a mirror of the superego of the parents and their parents before them flavored only slightly by each subsequent generation. This comes from Freud’s idea that when your situation warrant it, for example when you become a parent, the super ego comes to the surface and imposes itself on the super ego of the child. This would explain my mental cringing at my inability to stop myself when I hear myself saying to my kids the very words that I hated hearing my father say. “Because I said so” or “Stop or I’ll give you something to cry about”. (ugh) Freud compares the action of the super ego to a paranoid person’s feeling that they are being watched with a parental voice saying “now he’ll do this” or “now he’ll say that” before an action occurs. In this way the super ego lurks autonomously observing...waiting...to judge and punish (by invoking guilt or remorse). “Our moral sense of guilt is the expression of the tension between the ego and super ego”5 The super ego has two parts: the Conscience and the Ego Ideal. The conscience is all about inhibiting the satisfaction of desires based on morality imposed by it and enforced by the administration of punishment usually through the invocation of emotion: shame, remorse or guilt. In a psychotic individual, the punishment could manifest itself as self destructive behavior or even physical harm. The voice of the conscience says “bad girl” The ego ideal is the rewarding section of the super ego. Rewards like good feelings are administered. The voice of the ego ideal says: “I’ve done a good job on this paper” “Good girl”. The problem is that the punisher is the stronger force.

In summary: the ego represents the external world to the ID. It determines need vs action. The ego has 3 masters – the outside world, the ID and the super ego. Ego has to serve all 3. “Ego driven by ID confined by super ego, repulsed by reality struggles to master it’s economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces...”6
The intention of Freudian analysis is to strengthen the ego and make it more independent of the super ego, and to align the conscious with the subconscious. The classic illustration of the Freudian mind is the man in The Boat, see fig 4. By means of dream analysis and free association repressed memories are brought to the surface, analyzed and thereby neutralized. To this I say: Hah! (oops, there goes another opinion)

“If the ego is obliged to admit it’s weakness, it breaks out in anxiety – realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super ego, and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of the passions of the ID...”7

Briefly contrasting Jung with Freud:

Freud: All contents of subconscious must have been experienced. (come through the conscious).

Jung: Some contents of the unconscious are innate to the species like an owners manual.
We’re born with it.
Freud: All problems are rooted in sexual frustration or interrupted sexual development.

Jung: Problems occur when an individual identifies with archetype and loses awareness of the persona. This can happen for all sorts of reasons, not just sex.

Freud: Life is a battle, the world is like a stormy sea, to be battled continuously

Jung: Life is a natural organic process.

Freud: Memories pop up at any time in the form of “Freudian slip” or dreams. They threaten to destroy the personality

Jung: Memories are nothing to fear – we have survival within us.

Freud: Exhaustively developed male psyche, no attention to female psyche

Jung: Androgynous approach honors male in female and female in male.

Freud: Deals in absolute/rational tries to use scientific method

Jung: Deals in non rational/rational, intuition, non-provables.

In my own experience (and I have some years of analysis in my past) Freud’s ideas of behavior being influenced by the subconscious is valid. However I think that his notion that once “repressed memories” are brought to the surface and analyzed they neutralize is absolute garbage.

I believe that the subconscious/unconscious is more of a place for the mind to hide true motive than a place for repressed sexual frustration. It is my experience that once you figure out what it is that influences your behavior, then the real battle begins. It doesn’t go away, only your excuse for bad behavior because of it does. It doesn’t matter if your parents are responsible for it, YOU are responsible for dealing with it and getting on with your life. Sometimes the level of functionality after the discovery of it is low. And that is sad. I have a friend (not me, honest!) who endured terrible sexual abuse at the hands of her father. She is no more able to alter her behavior now than when was before the incest was exposed and analyzed. She still has to sleep with her back to a wall. She still wears shorts under dresses. And she is still in therapy more than 20 years after the incidents, and 15 years after the exposure of the incidents. Today she works responsibly, is married, is able to be present in a relationship, and has a lovely little girl. She functions effectively, but is still very damaged emotionally. The damage didn’t magically go away after analysis. Also, she is living breathing proof of Freud’s idea about the imposing of our super ego on to our kids. My friend imposes her defense mechanisms on her child. (The poor kid has to wear shorts under her dresses!) Occasionally I get to be her voice of reason..to remind her that she is not her daughter, and what happened to her will not happen to her daughter, with or without shorts under her dresses. Sometimes she hears me, sometimes she doesn’t. It all depends on how afraid she is or threatened she feels at the time.

Without realizing it, I find myself imposing the super ego of my dad on to my step kids. I lost my mom when I was 13 years old, so there isn’t much of her in my super ego. She lives on in my intuitive and sensitive side...oh, but that’s Jung, I’ll get to him in a minute... In my super ego I see strong elements of my dad, a career U.S. Marine. (poor step kids huh?)

I like Jung’s psychology because it strives for balance...for comfortable moving from one area of consciousness to another. He also takes into account intuition. There is no burning desire for absolutes, for empirical proof. He acknowledges that there are unexplainable events that are part of the personality that are to be developed every bit as much as the tangibles are to be developed. Emotion and sensitivity matter to Jung. A man’s soft side, a woman’s strong side matter to Jung. I live for the day when I can trust and act on my intuition with confidence. To be able to trust it without needing the validation of the incident “almost happening” to prove that the intuition was valid. My mom had an innate psychic sensitivity. She was a healer. Her profession was nursing, and I am told that she had a “healing touch” that actually soothed the pain of people she took care of. That element of her lives on in me. I have intuition about people, and empathy for them. Her spirit of compassion lives on in me too. When I’m not threatened or afraid, I have an empathic ability, kind of heightened perception/intuition. I can sense the emotional state a person is in and sometimes their true motives in a given situation. I have the occasional premonitory dream, which are usually goofy images that I’ve never seen before and don’t make much sense, so I write them down and wait. They always come true, sooner or later.

The universe of the personality revolves around the “I”, the god in myself the same way that the creative power of the universe revolves around God.

This concludes my answer to the test question however I came across something about Freud in my research which makes me even less inclined to value his psychology. I would like to discuss it now.

Freud contends that women have “less developed” super ego’s than men. There is a suggestion in several of my readings that due to pressure from his peers Freud actually tweaked his psychology to cover a dark ugly secret. There is a suggestion that Freud, during his research on repressed memory, found that an alarmingly high number or Viennese women had repressed memories of sexual abuse from their childhoods. “Questions concerning the traumas suffered by his patients seemed to reveal [to Freud] that Viennese girls were extraordinarily often seduced in very early childhood by male relatives; doubt about the actual occurrence of these seductions was soon replaced by certainty that it was descriptions about childhood fantasy that were being offered.”8 What if the whole Oedipus complex theory is Freud’s effort to reconcile the sexual predatorship of the Viennese men of the time? Now I do acknowledge here that today there are incidents of false suggestion in these cases usually instigated by either an ambitious therapist or a vengeful child or adult. These false suggestions certainly wreck havoc in the life of the accused and usually cause permanent damage – but for this argument let’s assume that this is not the case. I would suggest for thought that perhaps Freud’s obsession with male sexuality and the almost ignoring of the female may have been out of guilt imposed by his super ego. “the best evidence is no evidence” Perhaps Freud needed to repress the knowledge of the sexual abuse of the Viennese girls because he had daughters of his own. Perhaps his apparent obsession with male sexuality and sexual dominance it was a vain attempt to diagnose and analyze the drives that would cause Viennese men to prey on your Viennese girls, without coming right out and saying so. if the super ego is the parent – punishing with shame and guilt and remorse – why would Freud say that “women have less developed super ego’s than men” when the men were perpetrating sexually on the little girls. There is no mention of the women perpetrating sexually on the little boys. It seems to me that the women’s super ego’s are developed just fine. OR, if the super ego really is the parents super ego imposed on the child, then this would indicate a generational abuse that may have been too disgusting for even Freud to approach. Certainly his peers felt this way – in implying that he would be ruined if he stuck with this line of study, and published his findings.
Interesting.

Bibliography
Freud, Britannica.com
Sigmund Freud, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep
http://oldsci.eiu.edu/psychology/Spencer/Freud.cfm
Personality & Consciousness Website – Jung Bio
http://www.wynja.com/personality/theorists.com
http://www.wynja.com/personality/jungarchf.cfm
http://www.wynja.com/personality/individuationf.cfm
Jung, Britannica.com
http://www.dictionary.com
The American Heritage Dictionary
Introduction to World Philosophy, Eliot Deutsh

1 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

2 http://www.wynja.com/personality/jungarchf.cfm

3 http://www.wynja.com/personality/jungarchf.cfm

4 http://www.wynja.com/personality/individuationf.cfm

5 Introduction to World Philosophy, p.12

6 Introduction to World Philosophy, p. 19

7 Introduction to World Philosophy, p. 19

8 http://oldsci.eiu.edu/psychology/Spencer/Freud.cfm


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