Carl Jung

I was curious to know how Jung’s views are looked at from the modern psychiatric viewpoint. Has his theory of collective unconscious archetypes stood the test of time?

I’ve only read “An Introduction to Jung’s Psychology” by Frieda Fordham. His theories interest me, and seem much more grounded than Freud’s, but I was rather dismayed after reading this entry in the Skeptic’s Dictionary. I’m not sure what to think.

I believe the psych field has pretty much discarded Jung, much as it has discarded Freud. Their theories are simply unnecessary in my opinion, due to the more rational, experimentally verified newer approaches used today which have replaced Freud, Jung et al.

Wow, what a reply - what the previous respondent means (I think) is that behavorialism has replaced theory & practice - prescription drugs have elminated the need for treating the problem at all. But that hardly responds to the very salient question about the “collective unconscious.” Yes, Carl Jung’s theory is as valid today as it was then. But the c.u. is not a uniform, reliable entity - still it is broad. Behavorialists will reject this as it may not fit their silly - and usually profoundly inaccurate - survey research in which half-bright people concoct telephone or personal questionaires of questions which commonly are not understood to mean what the questioners really meant, and the surveys are not really conducted but filled in by grad students or hourly people, then the bogus responses are fed thru cpu programs about 100 times & then published & reported in the media as ’ Today the Bogus U. Med. Review said that 46% of left handed lesbians who read People magazine while riding a 3 legged horse on Welfare, eat twice as many peanuts annually as pygmies in Alabama.’ It is so important to READ both Jung & Freud - NOT about J&F, but the works of J&F & you will understand a great deal more about life around you (and me).

Actually the main reason that neither Jung or Freud is held in high regard nowadays is because neither offers anything that allows us to understand any more about life around us or about our own mental workings. They both offer theoretical constructs for which there is no concrete evidence and in both cases the nature of their theories is more revealing of the doctor than any of his patients. They certainly served critical roles in allowing psychiatry and psychology to be where it is today but are no longer seen as infallably correct.

The methodologies of Jung and Freud are highly suspect these days. Currently cognitive psychology has a more evidence-based and scientific approach to understanding human behavior.

A very positive and useful approach is to view Jung’s work as one of literary interpretation. Just like a great novel has valuable insight into human behavior without any science behind it, Jung’s work has some useful models of the world. Just be careful about passing his findings off as fact.

Jung’s sometimes pandering to Nazism has also diminished his standing.

The problem with Jung (and Freud) is a lot of his concepts simply aren’t testable, from a scientific point of view.

This Paper sheds some light on the accusation that Jung was a Nazi sympathizer.

It is simply inevitable that the Hitler-Jung hype would appear - no doubt we will next get a complaint that Jung was certainly a heterosexual and therefore a womanizer, or treated sheep badly. Remember - if Hitler loved spinach, and you also love spinach what you may well be accused of today. If Hitler sucked lemons and you suck lemons, think of what you will be called. Pierre Eliot Trudeau used a phrase once about constitutionalism that co-incidentally had a similar phrasing to what Hitler said once - about something else, and you should have heard what Trudeau was accused of. Some people will never, ever let the Hitler crap die because it is just so useful to them.

Thanks, twelvericepaddies. It is annoying to make every early 20th century european as some sort of Hitler lover.
Just as it is to make anyone now who speaks out against the war on Iraq as some sort of terrorist lover. (Boy, …can’t wait for the Bush campaign BS to start flying…oh wait, it already has…)
A good read about Jung and others in the light of their political times is The Politics Of Myth by Robert Ellwood.

Anyway, I think the psychoanalytical theories of Jung are, as said, not useful in these chemical-tweaking times, but they are still valid methods of helping one work out psychological problems. They are patterns that one may use to help explain thoughts, life, and being, however Romantic they may be. And they are no less useless than, say, religious patterns which do the same thing.

Whether Jung meant for concepts like the “collective unconscious” to be taken literally or not is up for debate, but in light of his explaining many literal beliefs (like UFO’s) as being simple unconscious pattern projections places him as quite on top of the game.

*say, what happened to the frequent alien abductions? did we scare them off? * :wink:

I should point out that gregongie’s link is not to an article that calls Jung a Hitler sympathizer, but rather it defends the accusations as such.

That’s an interesting point, that I wouldn’t have thought about. What has happened there, all forms of alien activity have gone off the radar…so to speak.

The explanation is obvious–X-files is no longer in production. :smiley:

Thank you, beajerry. I apologize for not making myself more clear.

Even from what little I have read, Jung’s archetypes are very useful in analyzing myths.

But with Jung it seems like pick and choose. His concept of synchronicity (“meaningful coincidences”) I really don’t buy, but I did happen to find a book on it, Synchronicity: Through the Eyes of Science, Myth, and the Trickster by Allan Combs and Mark Holland.

The first half of the book is about “scientifical” evidence backing up the idea of acausuality. He starts with quantum physicist David Bohm’s Implicate and Explicate Orders, then tries to relate them (poorly) to synchronicity. Though once Sheldrake’s “morphic fields” were brought up, my open mind shut like a bear trap. The second half of the book–much more grounded–is about synchronicity in terms of myth.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that synchronicity exsists in the sense that the coincidences are meaningful simply because we make them meaningful. If something happens that connects the outside reality with your inside unconscious reality, creating a sensation of synchronicity, then great. However, I think it’s quite a jump to invent theories of an acausual universe, when statistics explains these coincidences well enough.

Here is a link to F. David Peat on synchronicity.
http://twm.co.nz/ISSS_synchr.html