Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 141they must be willing to set aside the goals and behaviors of youth and adopt
a new style appropriate to their stage of psychic development.
Even after people have achieved individuation, made an acquaintance
with their inner world, and brought the various opposing forces into balance,
they remain under the influence of an impersonal collective unconscious that
controls many of their prejudices, interests, fears, dreams, and creative activities.
On the dimension of biological versus social aspects of personality,
Jung’s theory leans strongly in the direction of biology. The collective uncon-
scious, which is responsible for so many actions, is part of our biological
inheritance. Except for the therapeutic potential of the doctor-patient relation-
ship, Jung had little to say about differential effects of specific social prac-
tices. In fact, in his studies of various cultures, he found the differences to
be superficial, the similarities profound. Thus, analytical psychology can also
be rated high on similarities among people and low on individual differences.
Key Terms and Concepts
∙ The personal unconscious is formed by the repressed experiences of one
particular individual and is the reservoir of the complexes.
∙ Humans inherit a collective unconscious that helps shape many of their
attitudes, behaviors, and dreams.
∙ Archetypes are contents of the collective unconscious. Typical archetypes
include persona, shadow, anima, animus, great mother, wise old man,
hero, and self.
∙ The persona represents the side of personality that people show to the
rest of the world. Psychologically healthy people recognize their persona
but do not mistake it for the whole of personality.
∙ The anima is the feminine side of men and is responsible for many of
their irrational moods and feelings.
∙ The animus, the masculine side of women, is responsible for irrational
thinking and illogical opinions in women.
∙ The great mother is the archetype of fertility and destruction.
∙ The wise old man archetype is the intelligent but deceptive voice of
accumulated experience.
∙ The hero is the unconscious image of a person who conquers an evil foe
but who also has a tragic flaw.
∙ The self is the archetype of completeness, wholeness, and perfection.
∙ The two attitudes of introversion and extraversion can combine with any
one or more of the four functions—thinking, feeling, sensation, and
intuition—to produce eight basic types.
∙ A healthy middle life and old age depend on proper solutions to the
problems of childhood and youth.
∙ Jungian therapists use dream analysis and active imagination to discover
the contents of patients’ collective unconscious.