How Jung's Philosophy Deviates from the Principles Declared by Freud (Essay Sample)

HOW JUNG’S PHILOSOPHY DEVIATES FROM THE PRINCIPLES DECLARED BY FREUD

Nicholas Jackson
Scholarly Personal Essay
Feb 18th 2015.
How Jung’s philosophy deviates from the principles declared by Freud
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist and the most renowned follower of Sigmund Freud, who was an Austrian neurologist. They were best friends and together gained a commendable professional rapport in the lines of their career. In the early days of their friendship, both of them agreed on the psychoanalytic techniques that were used by Freud in his practice of medicine and the significant role that was played by the unconscious. However, they later parted ways following an acrimonious disagreement between them.
Freud often used the analogy of the iceberg to explain the nature of the unconscious. The unconscious portion of the mind and personality of a being representing the 90 percent of the glacier that is underneath the surface. The theory put forward by Freud concerning the nature of the unconscious did not seem to satisfy Jung’s ideas, the latter regarded Freud’s theory as incomplete and unnecessarily negative.
Jung therefore veered off from the emphasis of sexual forces being the motivating factors that could define every action and motivation. Although Jung was in agreement with Freud’s model of the personal unconscious that the latter claimed to be solely as a repository of repressed emotions and desires. The former went ahead to purport that there was another level of unconscious beneath the personal unconscious. But, according to Jung was composed of shared memory of a symbol, imagery and memories that he called archetypes. Jung referred this level as the collective unconscious.
The archetypes hearken back to the dawn of human consciousness and are same in all civilizations and cultures around the world. Opposed to Freud who compared the unconscious to an iceberg underlying a glacier, Jung’s comparison of the unconscious in our mind was of a cork in a large water body, preferably a lake or an ocean with wild currents that made the cork bob continually. He (Jung) says that unless we take control of the nature of the true self, of which we are fuzzily aware of, the cork will be tossed about at the impulses of the sea.
The psychotherapeutic process of taking control of the nature of the true Self, according to Jung is the analytical psychology. Both men agree on the interpretation of dreams, and they both give weight to the significance of dreams in therapy. Although they differ slightly in the manner in which the information obtained from dreams can be put to use. Freud claimed that dreams were merely a mirror of conflict that needed to be discovered while Jung searched for solutions that were already expressed in dreams.
Jung differed with Freud holding that not all themes expressed in dreams were subject to repressed sexual traumas. He claims that we can as well repress things like "the problem of social adaptation, tragic life circumstances, a need for respect, and so forth. Freud and Jung also differed on sex and sexuality. Freud believes that sexuality was the biggest motivator of behavior. To him, expressed and repressed sexuality was everything. He claimed that male children are attracted to their mothers sexually and hold resentment for their fathers while the opposite applies to the girls who have strong sexual desires to their fathers and wish to eliminate their fathers.
Jung, on the other hand, felt that Freud was paying too much attention towards sex. He argued that the motivator behind behavior was a psychic energy or life force whereby sexuality could just be a mere manifestation.
The relationship between children and their parents depended on the love and protection offered by the parents to the child. The other disagreement between Jung and Freud was on religion. Freud believed that religion was an escape for most peop...