Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 135regarded both positive and negative transference as a natural concomitant to patients’
revelation of highly personal information. He thought it quite all right that a num-
ber of male patients referred to him as “Mother Jung” and quite understandable that
others saw him as God or savior. Jung also recognized the process of countertrans-
ference, a term used to describe a therapist’s feelings toward the patient. Like
transference, countertransference can be either a help or a hindrance to treatment,
depending on whether it leads to a better relationship between doctor and patient,
something that Jung felt was indispensable to successful psychotherapy.
Because Jungian psychotherapy has many minor goals and a variety of tech-
niques, no universal description of a person who has successfully completed ana-
lytical treatment is possible. For the mature person, the goal may be to find
meaning in life and strive toward achieving balance and wholeness. The self-
realized person is able to assimilate much of the unconscious self into conscious-
ness but, at the same time, remains fully aware of the potential dangers hidden in
the far recess of the unconscious psyche. Jung once warned against digging too
deeply in land not properly surveyed, comparing this practice to a person digging
for an artesian well and running the risk of activating a volcano.
Related Research
Jung’s approach to personality was very influential in the early development of person-
ality psychology. In recent times, however, its influence has waned, even though
there are still a few institutions around the world dedicated to analytical psychology.
Today, most research related to Jung focuses on his descriptions of personality types.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Myers, 1962) is the most frequently used
measure of Jung’s personality types. The MBTI adds a fifth and sixth function, Judg-
ing and Perceiving, to Jung’s original typology, creating a total of 16 possible per-
sonality types. Judging involves the preference to come to firm conclusions rather
than staying open minded to new evidence (perceiving). This instrument is often used
by school counselors to direct students toward rewarding avenues of study. For exam-
ple, research has found that people high on the intuition and feeling dimensions are
likely to find teaching rewarding (Willing, Guest, & Morford, 2001). More recently,
researchers have extended work on the usefulness of Jungian personality types by
exploring the role of the personality types in leadership style as well as in clergy and
their congregation. Lastly, we take a critical look at the MBTI.
Personality Type and Leadership
The MBTI has been used extensively in organizational behavior research, specifi-
cally related to leadership and managerial behaviors. Interestingly, some of this
work suggests that the preference for thinking over feeling and for judging over
perceiving (e.g., Gardner & Martinko, 1990) is characteristic of effective managers,
who are commonly called upon to focus on achieving results through quick analy-
sis of problems and confident implementation of decisions. Indeed, people who
display the sorts of behaviors associated with the thinking and judging functions
are commonly considered “leadership material” (Kirby, 1997), because these have
almost become defining characteristics of what it means to lead.